Spode
Spode
Like eternal flames, the kilns of the Spode manufacture at Stoke-on-Trent have roared for more than two centuries, turning out fine English tableware collected the world over. And if it's the lilt and lore of blue-and-white that captures your heart, prepare to be dazzled when you decorate your hutch or china cabinet or set the dining room table with Spode.
Spode may very well be some of the most beautiful pieces of antique transferware ever produced in Staffordshire. In heaven-sent blues and richly detailed designs, every bowl and platter tells a story.
It was Josiah Spode, who in the late 1700s, founded that still thrives in the very same spot. It was he who in 1784 perfected the process of transferring intricate engravings from copperplate to dinner plate. What followed was an age of wondrous technical and artistic invention in English pottery. Multitudes of lustrous designs in brilliant blue came tumbling from the kilns of Spode and other nearby potteries.
US $64.99
In 1833 the Copeland’s took over the company and it was renamed Copeland and Garrett.
There are 25,000 engraved copperplates in the Spode archives. They also have books of historic patterns and many times people discover new patterns never seen before.
The technical reason why cobalt became such a favorite goes back to the Chinese who discovered cobalt, imported from Persia, was the only glaze color that could withstand the high temperature firing required for porcelain. For a time, this was true for English earthenware.
It was Josiah Spode’s perfecting of underglaze transfer printing that gave the gorgeous blue and white Staffordshire admired today. The process today is the same, arduous and delicate process of years gone by.
Working with a traced image, an artist would engrave it onto a plate of copper, making deep groves for the deeper blue, shallow ones for the paler. Then oils containing color were rubbed into the copperplate, which printed the design on tissue. Printers and engravers were always men, but the patient, careful hands that cut the colored paper pattern and transferred it to the bisque were women's. Once the tissue was soaked and sponged away, the printed piece would be off to the kiln for firing, glazing and then refiring to seal the glaze.
In this manner, the world's most familiar blue and white pattern, Blue Willow, came into being at Spode around 1790. Spode’s other best seller? Blue Italian.
