enamel), varied with gold stars or a meander pattern in gold. Some
unreasoning collectors take their stand upon this blue and gold-starred
border as being the only positive indication and proof to their minds
that the piece thus decorated is truly Lowestoft; but I have seen many
pieces that were positively imported directly from China to America that
bore this Lowestoft border. A red trellis-border and a peculiar
russet-brown or chocolate border also abound on these disputed pieces,
and the scale pattern in purplish pink. A raised border of vine leaves,
grapes, flowers and squirrels is seen on the beakers; I have found both
this form and decoration rare in America.
When a flower pattern appears on Lowestoft china the rose predominates.
Chaffers says that the reason for this use of the rose is twofold; the
arms of the English borough in which the china is said to have been
manufactured or painted, is the Tudor, or full-blown rose surmounted by
an open crown; and the cleverest painter of Lowestoft ware was Thomas
Rose, and he thus commemorated his name. He was a French refugee, and it
is to his French taste we owe the delicate style of whatever flower
ornamentation appears on this china. It is sad to read that he became
blind and spent the last days of his life as a water-vender, plying his
trade with two donkeys that had been given him by the town. The pieces
alleged to have been painted by him, and indeed all the Lowestoft
pieces, were seldom profuse in decoration. Roses without foliage or
stems, little bouquets, or narrow festoons of tiny roses with green
leaves, were his favorite designs. Often a piece bore only a single
rose.
The mugs and tea and coffee-pots usually have twisted or double handles
crossed and fastened to the main body of the piece with raised leaves or
flowers. The large pieces, such as punch-bowls and pitchers and the
helmet creamers, sometimes have an irregular surface, as if, when in the
paste, they had been patted into shape by the hands. I have often seen
this appearance also on blue and white undoubted Chinese ware. The mugs
are both cylindrical and barrel-shaped; the cups are handleless, as are
usually the cups of all Oriental china manufactured at that date.
Mr. Chaffers says that occasionally the smaller pieces of Lowestoft will
be seen embossed with the rice-pattern or basket-work. I have never seen
a piece thus embossed but was as plainly and unmistakably Oriental as a
Chinaman’s pigtail and his almond eyes.
The oval teapot shown on page 208 is a typical Lowestoft piece, though
not a choice one; and by many ignorant collectors all teapots of that
particular shape, with twisted handles held to the body with embossed
leaves, no matter with what other decoration, are firmly assigned to the
Lowestoft factory. Many unmistakably Chinese pieces, however, are seen
in this exact shape; for instance, a beautiful rice-pattern teapot in
the Avery Collection, in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This piece is
rich in gold and blue, but has the knobs, twisted handles, and embossed
leaves of the Lowestoft pattern. Perhaps, in spite of its Chinese
rice-pattern, and the quality of the paste, Chaffers would class it as
Lowestoft.
There are found in America certain Oriental vases of typical Lowestoft
decoration which are usually in one or the other of two shapes,
cylindrical with suddenly flaring top (or rarely an ovoid cylinder with
similar top), or a vase with small base, sharply bulging out at half its
height, and as suddenly contracting to a small neck. These vases, in
sets or garnitures of three or five pieces, the two end vases always
alike, graced the mantel of many a “parlour” a century ago, and were
frequently decorated with initials or coats of arms. Such are the
beautifully-shaped vases with exquisite blue, brown, and gold
decoration, given by Lafayette to Cadwallader Jones of Petersburg, Va.,
one of which is here shown. These vases exhibit the impressed
basket-work design; they are in perfect preservation, and have recently
come by gift into the possession of the Washington Association of New
Jersey.
[Illustration: Lowestoft Vase.]
There are in English collections a few specimens of the early soft-paste
Lowestoft manufactures, which were always decorated in blue, which bear
Lowestoft names or distinguishing dates. Indeed, these blue and white
pieces are the only ones that do have designating Lowestoft marks, or
bear dates, which seems to me a very significant fact. I have never
found any of these blue and white Lowestoft pieces in America, either
marked or unmarked, nor do I know of any marked Lowestoft pieces in any
American collection. There are none in the Trumbull-Prime Collection. I
have seen a few rather coarse blue and white Delft-ware pieces which I
suspect might be classed as Lowestoft.
I fear that in this attempt to throw light, or rather borrow light, on
the Lowestoft question, I have not succeeded very well, and have perhaps
cast a deeper shadow. There is one other condition which has influenced
and helped me to form my condition of mind about Lowestoft china, and
that is the situation of the town. It is the absolute “Land’s end,” the
extreme eastern point of England; the sand and some of the clay
necessary to make all this porcelain would have had to be transported
from the extreme western “Land’s end” of Cornwall, and the great supply
of coal to burn in the kilns, from the extreme northern coast of
Northumberland and Durham—two most inconvenient and expensive
contingencies. It was, however, near to Holland, that great producer of
Delft-ware, and had an extensive trade with that country, and Dutch
vessels constantly entered the Lowestoft port. And the first
productions—the only marked and dated ones—are all blue and white and
resemble Delft-ware: none are of porcelain. The Dutch also were great
importers of Oriental china. Of course we must believe that some china
also came out of Lowestoft, but these are some of the very bewildering
accompanying conditions that we cannot crowd out of our minds.
It is difficult to assign prices or values to pieces of Lowestoft china,
for, as in other wares, the quality of the decoration, of course,
influences the price. Teapots similar to the one shown on page 208 are
often offered for from four to eight dollars—one sold in the Governor
Lyon sale in 1876 for $5. At that same sale Lowestoft plates of ordinary
design, with single rose decoration, brought $1.50 each; cups and
saucers of similar design, the same price. A pretty dish of gold and
buff, with brownish bird in the centre, brought $3. A helmet creamer,
with decoration of grapes and vines in gold and brown, brought $4; this
is a decoration and shape frequently seen in America. One bearing the
Morse coat of arms is here shown. One very curious piece, a custard-cup
belonging to a “marriage set,” sold for $6.50. This cup was decorated
with festoons and bunches of roses, and on one side was a hand holding
two medallions, with initials, tied together with a lovers’ knot of
ribbon, with the motto “Unit.” On the other side were two coats of arms
held and supported in the same manner. It is said that this idea of a
marriage set was in high fashion a hundred years ago. At the S. L. M.
Barlow sale in New York, in February, 1890, the prices of Lowestoft
pieces were higher—partly because the specimens were better. A sugar-box
with blue and gold ribbon decoration sold for $5, teapots for $8 and
$10.
[Illustration: Helmet Creamer.]
A device found on Lowestoft pieces is very common in America—or at any
rate, in New England—and is frequently and erroneously supposed to be an
armorial bearing. It is a monogram or cipher written within an oval or
an escutcheon, backed by an ermine mantle, surmounted by a wreath on
which are perched a pair of doves. This device was doubtless sent to
China to be painted on a service as a wedding gift, and proving popular
was often repeated. I have seen it on many pieces in many families, in
gold and various colors, the monogram or initial only being different. A
letter is in existence, written by a gentleman in China in 1810, to a
fair bride in Hartford, saying that he sends to her as a wedding gift a
set of porcelain with this decoration. Portions of the set are still
owned by the bride’s descendants. This of course proves the device to
have been painted in China. Perhaps it was painted in England also, but
I doubt it.
There is a very pretty Lowestoft design which I have seen upon dinner-
and tea-sets belonging to several families in New England, which may
have been made specially for the American market, or at any rate must
have been sent here in large quantities. It consists of the American
shield and eagle in shades of brown touched with gold, with a pretty
delicate border of the same colors, and tiny dots of vermilion. I speak
specially of this design because it is often offered for sale as “George
Washington’s China,” on the slight foundation, I suppose, of having upon
it an American shield and eagle; and not only offered but sold, and no
doubt exhibited with pride by collectors of Washingtoniana. One lucky
dog of a relic hunter recently secured in New York a “Washington” teapot
with this design for the sum of $75—a paltry amount, as he considered
it. There are a number of pieces bearing this decoration in the
Trumbull-Prime Collection, a portion of a set belonging to a member of
Mr. Prime’s family. A coffee-pot of the set is here shown. This service
was purchased in England in 1804. The gilt lettering on it, as on others
that I have seen, is much worn, while the decoration is in perfect
condition.
[Illustration: “Washington” Coffee-pot.]
As an indication of the vast amount of Lowestoft wares to be found in
America, let me state that in the Governor Lyon sale there were
forty-nine lots labelled Lowestoft, and many more among the historical
pieces, while there were only six of Delft, three of Bristol, five of
Chelsea, etc. As Governor Lyon collected nearly all his pieces of
English porcelain in America this might be thought to be a fair means of
judging of the proportionate prevalence of china called Lowestoft, but I
think the number is hardly high enough. In the Trumbull-Prime Collection
are at least a hundred and fifty pieces of Lowestoft, to which, however,
Mr. Prime does not definitely assign that title, but explains the doubts
and questions as to the ware. There are no rice-pattern or basket-work
pieces among them.
In New England seaport towns, where there has been during past years a
large direct trade with China, vast quantities of Lowestoft ware are
found. It would, of course, be argued from this fact that such porcelain
is Chinese, and in truth it is Chinese in nine cases out of ten. And I
presume the reason that I am so incredulous about Lowestoft china, is
that I have really seen so little, my Lowestoft studies having probably
all been in Chinese porcelain. Then, too, the Lowestoft factory, had it
sent all its wares direct to America, could never have furnished our
vast supply, from which we still have plenty of specimens to dispute and
quarrel over.
And is it not strange that we have no record of this vast trade in
English porcelain? Who ever knew of a vessel arriving in an American
port from Lowestoft? Who ever saw an advertisement of Lowestoft china in
an old American newspaper? On the other hand, we know well how Chinese
porcelain could have been brought—nay, was brought—in vast quantities to
New England; for though New York took the lead in sending a single ship
direct to Canton in 1784, the question of the China trade had been
agitating Salem for a year previously, and in Connecticut, state aid had
been asked to further direct commerce with the Orient. This aid had been
at once refused by the prudent home-staying farmers in the Legislature.
Providence, Newport, and Boston quickly awakened to the rich
possibilities of the new commercial opening with the Orient, but Elias
Haskett Derby, of Salem, known as the “Father of the East India Trade,”
crowded his great vessels across the ocean to Canton and brought home
rich stores of Oriental products. His fine Grand Turk sailed from Salem
in 1785, and the return cargo doubled the money invested; and in the
rooms of the East India Marine Company at Salem is a great Lowestoft
bowl bearing paintings of the Grand Turk and the date, Canton, 1786,
which proves that that piece positively was neither made at Lowestoft,
painted at Lowestoft, brought to Lowestoft, nor exported from Lowestoft.
From that year to 1799, of the hundred and seventy-five voyages made by
Derby’s stanch ships, forty-five were to India and China. He had four
ships at one time at Canton. In 1793 three Indiamen brought into New
England ports $14,600 worth of “China-ware;” one of these ships, the
Rising Sun, landed at Providence. And Billy Gray, of Salem, the largest
ship-owner in the world at that date, sold many a hogshead of chinaware
from the cargoes of his great ships, the Light Horse, the Three Friends,
the Lotus, the Black Warrior.
Though Connecticut farmers and law-givers looked with timid and
unfavoring eyes on the possibilities and dangers of Oriental commerce,
Connecticut merchants were not to be left behind in the race for the
golden prizes of India. A great ship was fitted out in New Haven, and
the story of her first voyage in 1799 and of its rich results reads like
the wonder-tales of the East. The ship was manned by thirty-five
Connecticut men, sons of respectable and well-to-do families; many of
them were graduates of Yale. In its provisioning and furnishing
merchants of New Haven, Hartford, Weathersfield, Farmington, Stamford,
and other neighboring towns joined or “ventured.” The ship took no
cargo. She sailed to the Falkland Islands. The crew killed 80,000 seals,
packed away the skins in the ship’s hold, and then sailed to Canton. The
Neptune was the first New Haven ship that furrowed the waves of the
Pacific. The sealskins were sold to Canton merchants for $3.75 each.
With $280,000 of the profits the Connecticut boys laid in a rich store
of Oriental goods, tea, silks, and 467 boxes of fine china. These goods
were sold in New Haven at enormous profits. The ship paid to the
Government, on the results of that single voyage, import duties which
amounted to $20,000 more than the entire State tax for the year. Mr.
Townsend, the builder of the ship, cleared $100,000 as his share of the
profits; the super-cargo, that useful and obsolete officer, took
$50,000, and the thirty-five Yankee sailors and the Yankee merchants all
tasted the sweets of this phenomenal venture. Thirty-six other
Connecticut merchants joined at once in a venture in another ship, and
the Cowles Brothers, of Farmington, fitted out three vessels for Canton,
and vast amounts of Lowestoft porcelain were brought back by them to New
Haven.
It is only recently, and even now only among china collectors and what a
Newburyport dame called “city folks and Yorkers” (that is Bostonians and
New Yorkers—or city people in general), that the pieces spoken of in the
last few pages would be called Lowestoft. In country homes all are still
Chinese or India porcelain. It is the favorite tradition told of nearly
every piece, even of undisputed English wares of the last century, that
“my grandfather brought that bowl to us from Hong Kong,” and even when
you point out the Caughley or Staffordshire marks, the owners are
unconvinced and openly indignant. Chinese porcelain evidently denoted
much higher aristocracy than English ware in early Federal days, and the
sentiment lingers still among simple folk. Crests, arms, and initials
are very common, “put on for us in China,” and the “China” or “India”
tradition, must in such cases never be openly doubted.
Much specially decorated porcelain did come to us from China; there is
plenty of proof in old letters, bills, diaries, and shipping receipts,
that persons in both America and England ordered services of porcelain
such as we now call Lowestoft, to be made and decorated for them in
China. These orders were sometimes filled in a manner which was vastly
disappointing. Miss Leslie, the sister of the eminent painter, related
that she ordered a dinner service to be made and painted for her in
China. She directed that a coat of arms should be placed in the centre
of each plate, and made a careful drawing of the desired coat of arms
and pasted it in the centre of a specimen plate, and wrote under it,
“Put this in the middle.” What was her dismay when, on the arrival of
the china, she found on every piece not only the coat of arms, but the
words, indelibly burnt in, “Put this in the middle.”
Another person ordering porcelain in China sent out a book-plate as a
guide for outline in decoration, and was much disgusted when the service
arrived to find it painted by the literal-minded Chinese artist in lines
of funereal black like the book-plate, instead of the gay colors the
china-buyer had desired, and which were then so fashionable.
But I feel that in all this about the questionable Lowestoft I am
neither quite fair nor quite liberal to the claims of the far Orient. We
do not regard with doubt or with question of English co-operation all
the contributions of China to our early table furnishings. About the
pieces just described, many collectors are reckless in judging and
naming, and too often unjust to our Asiatic ceramic purveyors; but much
porcelain came to America which is known and acknowledged to be Chinese,
and which has never for a moment had the shadow of suspicion of
Occidental manipulation cast over it—I mean “blue Canton china.” A hand
whose clear and perfect touch made beautiful, yet rendered truthfully
everything she described, wrote thus of such porcelain:
“The china here, as in all genuine Salem cupboards, was chiefly of the
honest old blue Canton ware. There were shining piles of these plates,
which while they are rather heavy to handle, always surprise one by
being so thin at the edges. There were generous teacups like small
bowls, squat pitchers with big noses, and a tureen whose cover had the
head of a boar for a handle. And in all this the blue was dull and deep
in tint, with a certain ill-defined vaporous quality at the edges of the
lines, and the white of the cool greenish tinge of a duck’s egg. You can
buy blue Canton to-day, but it is not old blue Canton.”
The stanch ships of Elias Haskett Derby, of William Gray, of Joseph
Peabody, brought to Salem hogsheads and boxes and crates of this old
blue Canton china; it still lingers close-hidden and high-shelved in
Salem cupboards; it has been crushed grievously under foot in Salem
attics; has been sold ignominiously to Salem junkmen, and also proudly
and eagerly bought by Salem collectors.
Many a “venture” was sent out by New England dames to “far Cathay” in
these East India trading-ships, and many a pretty blue Canton teapot and
cups and saucers, or great ringing punch-bowl came home from China in
return for the hoarded egg-money, the inherited Spanish dollars, or the
proceeds of the year’s spinning and weaving. Do you know what a
“venture” was a hundred years ago? It was a gentle commercial
speculation in which all Puritan womankind longed to join, just as all
New England ministers legally and soberly gambled and revelled in the
hopes and disappointments of lottery tickets. An adventurer in those
days was as different from an adventurer of to-day as was an undertaker
of 1792 from an undertaker of 1892. When a ship sailed out to China in
the years following the Revolutionary War, the ship’s owner did not own
all the cargo (if cargo of ginseng it bore), nor send out all the
contents of the bags of solid specie that were to be invested in the
rich and luxurious products of the far land. There were no giant
monopolies in those days. All his friends and neighbors were kindly and
sociably allowed to join with the wealthy shipmaster in his risks and
profits, to put in a little money on speculation—in short, to send out a
sum large or small on a “venture.” Sometimes orders were given that this
“venture” should be invested in special forms of merchandise; sometimes
it was only placed in the supercargo’s hands to share in its proportion
the general profit. Complicated books must Elias Haskett Derby have had
to keep through all these petty “ventures,” but good profits did that
honest man render, though he left at his death the largest fortune of
any American in that century. Women, fired by these alluring profits and
assailed by a gambling obsession, sold their strings of gold beads,
their spring lambs, their knitted stockings, and eagerly sent out the
accumulated sum by the ship’s purser, and received in return tea,
spices, rock-candy, crapes, china, anything they coveted for their own
use or fancied they could sell at a profit. Men, too, sent out a
“venture” as a gift to their new-born children, or to fill their own
pockets; fair maids bought through a “venture” their bridal finery. From
Bristol one young miss sent in to a ship-owner her gold earrings to
“venture” for “a sprigged and bordered India muslin gown of best make,”
and she got it too, thin and sheer, close-sprigged and deep bordered,
just as well selected and carefully conveyed as if she had “ventured a
hundred pound.”
The newspapers of the times abounded in advertisements of blue Canton
china, such as this from the _Columbia Centinel_ of December 19, 1792:
“Superfine Nankin blue enamelled landscape and fancy pattern China-ware
direct from China: among other articles are complete dinner setts, tea
coffee & breakfast do; Teacups & saucers & Teapots separately do; dinner
breakfast & dessert flat & Deep Plates; Punchbowles Mugs & Pitchers.”
Frequently the china was sold direct from the vessel, or from the wharf
alongside. How truly Oriental that old Canton china must have been to
Boston and Providence and Salem dames when they had tiptoed down on the
rough old wharf in wooden clogs or velvet-tipped golo-shoes, their fair
faces covered with black velvet masks if the weather waxed cold or the
wind blew east; when they had seen the great weather-beaten ship, with
its stained sails and blackened ropes and cables—the ship that had
brought the fragile porcelain cargo to port—the Lively Prudence, the
Lively Peggy, the Lively Sally, the Lively Molly, or any of the dozen
great ships named by Yankee shipmasters and ship-owners for the lively
young women of their acquaintance. They had been on board the Indiaman,
perhaps, and smelt its bilge-water and its travelled stale ship-smells;
had watched the strange picturesque foreign sailors, barefooted and
earringed, as they brought the packages and spread out the boxes on
deck, or carried in their brawny arms the great crates on Scarlett’s or
Rowe’s Wharf, and with their bronzed tattooed hands took out the
precious porcelain from its rice-straw packing and rice-paper wrapping.
How that old blue Canton must have savored forever to the fair buyers of
the “bloom raisins,” the cinnamon, the ginger, palm-oil, gum-copal, and
ivory, the tea, the otto-of-roses, that had been fellow-travellers for
months in the good ship’s hold; and have spoken, too, of far-away lands
and foreign sights, and of “the magic and mystery of the sea.” Truly, we
of to-day have lost all the romance, the sentiment, that brightened and
idealized colonial shopping, when we know not the ship, nor scarcely the
country from whence come our stores.