Is there Spode still for tea?
NOTICE the simple, well-balanced lines, the glowing colour set off by translucent white and the subtle pattern which complements the shape of each piece to give a charming unity’ trilled an article in a women’s magazine in 1960. Its subject was a tea set designed by the late Princess Margaret, made specially for her by ceramics manufacturer Spode. Over the past 250 years, Spode has frequently achieved such a harmony of pattern and shape in its output, as well as delightful juxtapositions of glowing colours and a variety of high-quality ceramic bodies.
The factory that Josiah Spode I opened in 1776, for its first three years in partnership with Thomas Mountford, rapidly achieved nationwide renown. Its reputation was based on two of the most important innovations in British ceramics history: the development of underglaze transfer-printed decoration in the mid 1780s and, in the following decade, of bone china, which Spode originally marketed as ‘Stoke China’, a mix of equal parts china clay and china stone to two parts calcined bone.
Both revolutionised the production of
