Porcelain to Silica Bricks by Howell G. M. Edwards

Author:Howell G. M. Edwards
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030105730
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Another explanation for the discovery of hard paste porcelain shards in the waste pit of a factory which hitherto has always been regarded as an exclusive manufacturer of soft paste porcelain is that some clandestine, unrecorded experiments did take place to change the composition of the porcelain body. The release of the Nantgarw formulation to John Taylor in 1847 (and published in his book, The Complete Practical Potter 1847), apparently from Samuel Walker, does not in itself mean that there had not been attempted another perhaps inferior formulation at Nantgarw which had then been discarded. Whilst at Swansea, Billingsley would have had knowledge of Dillwyn’s attempts to improve the robustness of his china body through a series of experiments which Dillwyn carried out and documented fully between 1815 and December 1817 (see Appendix B for a Transcript of Dillwyn’s Notes and also Eccles and Rackham, Analysis of English Porcelains 1922). Billingsley had left Swansea to set up again the second phase at Nantgarw towards the end of these empirical trials, but it is interesting that Walker remained to assist Dillwyn in his endeavours until September 1817. Eventually Dillwyn did make a more robust porcelain body which he termed his “trident” paste, but this had lost the superb duck-egg translucency of his former body and had instead a muddier, more diffuse translucency with a rather inferior and unpleasant pigskin-like surface texture. Despite being decorated in the finest fashion by Swansea artists such as Henry Morris and David Evans , the trident paste was distinctly out of favour with a London society more used to the extremely fine and delicate duck-egg variety, and as a result Dillwyn lost his market edge rapidly and was faced with bankruptcy in less than two years. The question remains: did Young attempt to make a more robust version of Nantgarw porcelain at Nantgarw in 1819/1820: Walker departed Nantgarw for Coalport along with William Billingsley…. leaving perhaps the seeds of the idea with William Weston Young, already embarking upon his Dinas firebrick experiments at Nantgarw? It is clear that documentation exists in Young’s Diaries which definitively indicates that he undertook some attempts to manufacture a different type of porcelain at Nantgarw after Billingsley had left in 1819 and 1820. It is certainly recorded that after the death of William Billingsley in Coalport in 1828, Samuel Walker approached Dillwyn at Swansea with the suggestion that he may consider the start-up again of porcelain manufacture at either Swansea or Nantgarw, but Dillwyn had had enough of porcelain production at this stage and he had already passed on the reins of his ceramic manufacture at Swansea to his son, Lewis Dillwyn Jr. It is interesting to speculate further on the comment that has been perpetuated, seemingly incorrectly as it now transpires, that in the auctions of 1822 and 1823, the hardware, china moulds and kilns had been purchased from both Swansea and Nantgarw and dispersed—the main recipient being named as John Rose of the Coalport China Works . Billingsley and

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