Spode

Spode is an English brand of pottery and homewares produced in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Spode was founded by Josiah Spode (1733–1797) in 1770, and was responsible for perfecting two important techniques that were crucial to the worldwide success of the English pottery industry in the 19th century: transfer printing on earthenware and bone china.

Spode perfected the technique for transfer printing in underglaze blue on fine earthenware in 1783–1784 – a development that led to the launch in 1816 of Spode's Blue Italian range, which has remained in production ever since. The company is credited with developing, around 1790, the formula for bone china. Josiah Spode's son, Josiah Spode II, successfully marketed bone china.

In 2008, the Copeland Spode company went through some financial troubles. It was taken over in 2009 by Portmeirion Group, a pottery and homewares company based in Stoke-on-Trent. Many items in Spode's Blue Italian and Woodland ranges are made at Portmeirion Group's factory in Stoke-on-Trent.

Foundation

Josiah Spode is known to have worked for potter Thomas Whieldon from the age of 16 until he was 21. He then worked in a number of partnerships until he went into business for himself, renting a small potworks in Stoke-on-Trent in 1767; in 1776 he completed the purchase of what became the Spode factory until 2008. His early products comprised earthenwares such as creamware (a fine cream-coloured earthenware) and pearlware (a fine earthenware with a bluish glaze) as well as a range of stonewares including black basalt, caneware, and jasper which had been popularised by

Underglaze blue transfer printing

Josiah Spode I is credited[2] with the introduction of underglaze blue transfer printing on earthenware in 1783–84. The Worcester and Caughley factories had commenced transfer printing underglaze and over glaze on porcelain in the early 1750s, and from 1756 overglaze printing was also applied to earthenware and stoneware. The processes for underglaze and overglaze decoration were very different. Overglaze "bat printing" on earthenware was a fairly straightforward process, and designs in a range of colours including black, red and lilac were produced. Underglaze "hot-press" printing was limited to the colours that would withstand the subsequent glaze firing, and a rich blue was the predominant colour.

To adapt the process from the production of small porcelain teaware to larger earthenware dinnerware required the creation of more flexible paper to transmit the designs from the engraved copper plate to the biscuit earthenware body, and the development of a glaze recipe that brought the colour of the black-blue cobalt print to a brilliant perfection. When Spode employed the skilled engraver Thomas Lucas and printer James Richard, both of the Caughley factory, in 1783 he was able to introduce high quality blue printed earthenware to the market. Thomas Minton, another Caughley-trained engraver, also supplied copper plates to Spode until he opened his own factory in Stoke-on-Trent in 1796. [3]

This method involved the engraving of a design on a copper plate, which was then printed onto gummed tissue.[4] The colour paste was worked into the cut areas of the copper plate and wiped from the uncut surfaces, and then printed by passing through rollers. These designs, including edge-patterns which had to be manipulated in sections, were cut out using scissors and applied to the biscuit-fired ware (using a white fabric), itself prepared with a gum solution. The tissue was then floated off in water, leaving the pattern adhering to the plate. This was then dipped in the glaze and returned to the kiln for the glost firing. Blue underglaze transfer became a standard feature of Staffordshire pottery. Spode also used on-glaze transfers for other wares. The well-known Spode blue-and-white dinner services with engraved sporting scenes and Italian views were developed under Josiah Spode the younger, but continued to be reproduced into much later times.

Bone china

During the 18th century, many English potters were striving and competing to discover the secret of the production of porcelain. The Plymouth and Bristol factories, and (from 1782 to 1810) the New Hall (Staffordshire) factory under Richard Champion's patent, were producing hard paste similar to Oriental porcelain. The technique was developed by adding calcined bone to this glassy frit, for example in the productions of Bow porcelain and Chelsea porcelain, and this was carried on from at least the 1750s onwards. Soapstone porcelains further added steatite, known as French chalk, for instance at Worcester and Caughley factories.[5]

The bone porcelains, especially those of Spode, Minton, Davenport and Coalport. Although the Bow porcelain factory, Chelsea porcelain factory, Royal Worcester and Royal Crown Derby factories had, before Spode, established a proportion of about 40–45 per cent calcined bone in the formula as standard, it was Spode who first abandoned the practice of calcining the bone with some of the other ingredients, and used a mix of bone ash, china stone and kaolin, which remains the basic recipe of bone china. The traditional bone china recipe was six parts bone-ash, four parts china stone and 3.5 parts kaolin.

type	Subsidiary
foundation	1770
founder	Josiah Spode
location city	Stoke-on-Trent
location country	England
industry	Pottery
products	Pottery housewares
parent	Portmeirion Group
homepage	spode.co.uk spode.com

Foundation

Underglaze blue transfer printing

Bone china

Spode "Stone-China"

Later forms of the business

See also

External links

References