LOTS ON OUR PLATES
NEVER underestimate Derbyshire’s artistic heritage because it produced one of the finest porcelain painters in the world – William Billingsley. He was born in Derby in
1785 and his talent has been described as pure genius, a fact I was reminded of when a beautiful cabinet plate, circa 1785-95, featuring his floral decoration entered Derbyshire’s Fine Art Auction with a guide price of £800-£1,000. To add to the rarity, it is the only recorded example of pattern number 174.
Billingsley’s work is a key component in Derby Museum and Art Gallery’s porcelain collection. An example of his work also features in Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the United States.
This master of artistry was one of six children born to William and Mary Billingsley in St Alkmund, Derby, in 1758. At 16 he took a five-year apprenticeship at Royal Crown Derby, working as a painter and enameller for five shillings a week.
His natural artistic talent flourished. He used a thick application of pigment then thinned and refined with dry brushwork. This gave his work an almost textured quality. He would complete his pieces by using a wet brush to add highlights and feather the edges of petals, giving them a translucent quality. Such was his talent, he produced what became known as the Prentice (apprentice) Plate to demonstrate the exacting standards required.
In 1795, after 22 years’ service, he decided to leave the Derby works. He had risen through the ranks and was regarded as an outstanding painter of flowers, the mainstay of ceramics decoration. Joseph Lygo, Royal Crown Derby’s London showroom manager, thought Billingsley was too valuable to lose: “His going into another factory will put them into the way of doing flowers in the same way, which they are at present ignorant of.”
But Billingsley had ambitions and wanted to join Pinxton Porcelain in the Derbyshire village of Pinxton. He had become interested in improving the formula for soft-paste porcelain, apparently with the intention of exceeding the Sèvres soft-paste in beauty. In this he was swimming against the tide. Spode’s improved formula for bone china was taking over most English production, and Sèvres, at this point making both soft and hard-paste porcelain, was to drop the former by 1806.
He stayed at Pinxton until 1799. Further moves took him to Mansfield, operating a painting workshop and, around 1802, he moved to Torksey, Lincolnshire. It is claimed he made porcelain there and in the neighbouring village of Brampton.
It is thought he came into contact with potter Samuel Walker there, who married Billingsley’s daughter, Sarah, in 1812. Another supposed pottery he started, between 1804 and 1808, was at Wirksworth in Derbyshire.
However, in 1808, Billingsley started at Royal Worcester, where he was instrumental in the firm’s refinements of its porcelain recipe. While at Royal Worcester Billingsley signed a contract preventing him from disclosing porcelain recipes, however no clause prohibited him from producing porcelain himself. In 1813 Billingsley took his porcelain recipes and lifetime’s experience in the industry, along with his daughter Lavinia, and sonin-law Samuel Walker to Nantgarw, Glamorganshire, Wales, where he established the Nantgarw Pottery.
Billingsley and Walker had £250 to invest in their project. By January 1814, Quaker entrepreneur William Weston Young had become the major shareholder in their venture. The pottery was set up, but something of Billingsley and Walker’s understanding of the manufacturing process was amiss, as 90% of the porcelain was ruined in the firing.
Billingsley and Walker were later offered use of the Cambrian Pottery to improve their recipe and process, but that too was hit by problems. Billingsley worked for the Coalport Porcelain Works until his death in 1828.
Derbyshire’s rich ceramics heritage comes to the fore in our monthly sales and one woman determined to make its importance shine even brighter is Gillian Finney.
Her broad knowledge, amassed over decades, extends from 18th and 19th Century pottery to Beswick, Moorcroft, Crown Derby, Royal Doulton, Spode and Royal Worcester – and she’s happy to share it with you.
Gillian is at Hansons’ Derbyshire saleroom every Tuesday, from 10am-2pm, to offer free ceramic valuations. To book a ceramics valuation with Gillian at Etwall Auction Centre, Heage Lane, Derbyshire, please email service@ hansonsauctioneers.co.uk or call 01283 733988.