EXCITEMENT IS BREWING
Undaunted, the following year, he opened another factory in Camden, South Carolina, from which he was exporting Queens Ware which, according to his advertising, was “equal in quality and appearance, and can be afforded as cheap, as any imported from England.”
The American War of Independence of 1775 affected production and Bartlam died in 1781, his property sold off to clear his debts.
American ceramics scholar Dr George Terry had researched Bartlam for years and knew he had a kiln somewhere in the Cain Hoy area, but not exactly where or what had been made there. The breakthrough came in 1972, when shards of pottery were uncovered by a bulldozer.
One piece in particular caught his eye, a piece of “Pearlware” painted delicately with a blue Chinese figure in a boat with a curved bow. Eighteen years later, Terry and archaeologists from the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology revisited the site, which was about to be cleared for houses.
Digs subsequently revealed the site of Bartlam’s house and thousands more pottery shards, proving that he had worked there from 1765-1770. Among them were more pieces of the same blue and white pottery, which when tested, proved to be true soft paste porcelain.
This astonishing find made Bartlam the earliest known producer of porcelain in North America.
In 2010, the detective story shifted to the UK when a tea bowl whose distinctive transfer-printed pattern matched the Cain Hoy shards was discovered in a private collection. Previously it was believed to have been made by Joseph Shore’s short-lived Isleworth factory in London.
Once identified, it was purchased privately by the Chipstone Foundation, a Milwaukee-based foundation devoted to promoting the study of American material culture and the decorative arts. Although the purchase price is unknown, it is thought to have beeen in the region of $50,000$75,000.
Publicity surrounding that sale alerted the UK owners of two matching saucers and three further tea bowls, all previously thought to be Isleworth. One tea bowl was sold to the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 2012 for $75,000, while another was sold at Christie’s in New York in 2013. It realised $120,000 (£76,000). Both saucers are now in U.S. collections. The discoveries take the total number of known Bartlam pieces to seven. How they reached Britain is not known. The big question is, are there more? Clare Durham believes there could well be as the seven pieces probably came from a matching tea service. Here’s how to spot them: The transfer-printed design is similar on all pieces. One side of the teapot shows two Sandhill cranes (native to South Carolina) beneath a tall palm tree. To the right is a sampan with two figures seated aboard, one rowing, while in the background is a sailboat with a single figure and, to the right, a wooded settlement with two huts. The reverse shows a version of the “Man on the Bridge” pattern, the figure crossing from a Chinese garden with pagoda. This pattern was used at the English factories of Bow, Isleworth and New Hall and it is likely Bartlam employed an English decorator who had worked previously at one or other of the factories. The print on the saucers is the same as that on one side of the teapot. The other giveaway is a triple trellis border seen on the outside edge of the saucers and tea bowls.