Object: Porcelain Manufacturing and Consumer Culture

Teapot, Bristol China Manufactory. The colorful decoration and refined form of this teapot indicate its status as a luxury item, though the durable metal spout makes it clear the teapot was also put to good use. The painted images mix standard British floral decoration with the manufacturer's impression of an everyday scene in a Chinese garden.

Teapot, Bristol China Manufactory. Reverse side.

Nest/model, Bristol China Manufactory. This nest could only have had a decorative function, perhaps serving as a small ornament on someone's desk or mantlepiece. The complexity of its structure contrasts with the plain white glaze.

Pickle tray, Bristol China Manufactory. This blue and white dish dish must have seen a lot of use during its lifetime, as its edges are quite chipped. Its construction does not show particularly fine craftsmanship, though the necessity of a pickle dish points to a refined consumer class.

Vase, Bristol China Manufactory. This lavishly-decorated vase likely sought to display the wealth and influence of its owner, perhaps one of the newly-rich mercantile elite.[i] A curator on the British Museum’s website disparagingly notes that the decoration is “conventional” and “somewhat crudely executed in a rather muddy palette,” “perhaps an (unsuccessful) attempt to imitate contemporary Worcester porcelain vases,” dismissing any presumptions it makes toward high class.[ii] But regardless of whtehter or not Bristol consumers similarly perceived the vase as a sham, it hints at a market probably funded by the new wealth of trade and manufacturing in Bristol.

[i] “Vase,” unknown creator, (c. 1770), The British Museum Collection Online, accessed March 2, 2017, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_object_details.aspx?assetId=294932001&objectId=30147&partId=1.

[ii] Ibid.

http://dighist.fas.harvard.edu/courses/2017/hist1002/files/original/d3ef7f1adc69d3e7e26ccdcb22e28c2c.pdf

Advertisement for the auction of Bristol China Manufactory stock in the London Public Advertiser, February 18, 1780. This advertisement's emphasis on the "elegant patterns" in the "newest and most approved Taste" of the "Valuable Stock" demonstrates the importance of taste and class in British ceramic consumption, as well as the development of Bristol's identity into a brand.

The British Museum’s online collection currently houses 79 items produced in the Bristol China Manufactory of the mid-eighteenth century, almost all dated to the 1770s and early 1780s. The range of objects primarily includes implements for serving and drinking tea, as well as decorative figurines, plaques, and ornaments; coffee and hot chocolate cups; and other serveware. Almost everything is painted with floral designs, and several pieces also include natural scenes, views of Bristol, classical allegory, or even “Chinese style” motifs, which include stylized renderings of Chinese people and scenes.[1] During the mid-eighteenth century, British manufacturing was in high demand among the American colonies, where rapidly growing populations, rising standards of living, and evolving tastes kept American consumers buying.[2] A key node in the web stretching from Britain to America, Africa, and beyond, Bristol flourished and its port stayed busy. Alongside its shipping, Bristol benefited from the transatlantic trade as a producer of British goods—most of the exports passed through its shipping yards were manufactured in the city and surrounding region.[3] The wide collection of Bristol China Manufactory ceramics at the British Museum points to an industrial operation employing a considerable workforce to create and standardize its wares for widespread consumption; each of the objects now on display was probably manufactured by a team of trained workers rather than an individual artisan. From those workbenches, Bristol China spread across Britain and its colonies, carrying with it the cosmopolitanism and social capital of global trade.

Two objects from the British Museum collection, a ceramic bird’s nest and a pickle tray, hint at possible markets for Bristol China within a flexible middle class that may have been a result of the city’s expanding trade industry. The small white bird’s nest, only 2.5 inches in diameter and crafted from individual porcelain straws and twigs, is clearly decorative, not functional.[4] Placed in some domestic space, it could have signified disposable income, elevating the status of whatever family it joined. While its small size and lack of color do not speak to fabulous wealth, its decorative nature indicates enough prosperity to enjoy certain niceties. In contrast, the porcelain pickle tray verges more toward the utilitarian.[5] The museum notes manufacturing faults like unevenness and imperfections in its glaze, as well as numerous chips to its edges. Such wear and tear, begun even before the tray left the manufacturing house, points to a market for relatively cheap ceramics for everyday use. The maker’s mark, a simple “X” on the tray’s base, also suggests a lack of artistic investment by the object’s creator. Nevertheless, the mere existence of something as function-specific as the pickle tray alludes to middle class aspirations toward higher culture and ceremony. While the nest is a luxury item lacking in ostentation, the pickle tray is a utilitarian object aspiring to a greater social role. Both the nest and pickle tray were likely made in bulk for distribution across British and American markets, so that on both sides of the Atlantic, consumers of varying means could purchase such objects for both pragmatic and social purposes.

Aside from materializing questions of wealth and class among British consumers, ceramic objects also offered them a lens through which to see diverse and exotic worlds made accessible by Bristol’s global trade. Among the British Museum objects, one teapot stands out for its finely-wrought structure and delicate painting in the “Chinese style,” a category used by the museum to describe English porcelain from this period that either emulated Chinese pottery or sought to portray Chinese subjects.[6] The teapot’s metal spout is built for use and durability, but its attractively molded shape and delicate decoration, which employs tiny brushwork and eight to ten different paint colors, also make the teapot an object for display—a luxury item for a wealthy family with an eye for the exotic. The mix of generic British floral decoration with a Chinese scene (complete with foreign hairstyles, clothing, and landscape) speaks to the makers’ cosmopolitan consciousness. A contemporary London newspaper ad for Bristol China Manufactory ceramics underlines a sense of the exotic, featuring “Medallions of curious China Flowers,” “accurately modelled” to introduce their viewers to unfamiliar (“curious”) Asian flora.[7] Through teapots like this one Chinese imagery (as invented by British manufacturers and consumers) became part of everyday life in Bristol.

Both the cosmopolitanism and upward-searching middle class aspirations potentially spread via Bristol ceramics are evident in February 1780 London newspaper advertisements by two British merchants, Mssrs. Christie and Ansell, for an auction of “the Valuable Stock of the BRISTOL CHINA MANUFACTORY” with “extensive Variety of elegant Patterns,” “highly finished” in the “newest and most approved Taste.”[8] Though the advertisements do not make it clear how much was for sale or what the atmosphere of such an auction would be like, they signify a large market for Bristol porcelain somewhere between the upper and lower echelons of society, among consumers with high social aspirations that nevertheless attended (presumably) unrefined auctions to attain their tokens of class and taste. Furthermore, a very similar notice by Mssrs. Christie and Ansell accompanies the advertisement for Bristol China with references to “ORIENTAL Porcelaine [sic],” “INDIA FILLAGREE DRESSING PLATE,” and carpets from “Turkey, Persia, Axminster, and Wilton,” underlining the cosmopolitan market within which Bristol China might be sold.[9] Interestingly, the latter advertisement also describes “a COLLECTION of very VALUABLE PIECES [ceramics] manufactured in that place [Bristol],” mobilizing the city as a kind of manufacturing label.[10, 11] Thus, Bristol ceramics not only spread class aspirations and cosmopolitanism along their trade routes, but also grew the city’s global reputation as a manufacturing brand.

Products manufactured in Bristol reflected the town’s culture, spreading it across the Atlantic into colonial markets, thereby connecting Britain and America both socially and economically. American consumers of teapots and pickle dishes like those at the British Museum would have encountered Bristol’s appreciation of refined class, ritual tea drinking, and exotic imagery from their British contacts. On the eve of the American Revolution, Bristol had strong economic investment in the American markets, but it also shared a sense of common culture, transmitted commercially across the oceans.

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