Swansea and Nantgarw Porcelains
Swansea and Nantgarw Porcelains

Author: Howell G.M. Edwards

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-03-27

Total Pages: 299

ISBN-13: 3319487132

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This book describes a holistic study of the porcelain manufactured at Nantgarw and Swansea in the first quarter of the 19th Century, using both scientific analytical data and historical provenancing. This porcelain is acclaimed as some of the finest and most translucent porcelain ever produced. These two porcelain factories are linked through the artistic and creative activities of the enigmatic William Billingsley and had a strictly limited production over only three or four years during the period 1812-1820. The earliest chemical analysis of these porcelains were undertaken almost 100 years ago and are compared with the results of more recent analyses The chemical composition of these porcelains, their artistic decoration and the struggle to maintain quality production is reviewed. Scientific explanations are proposed for the characteristic Swansea duck-egg porcelain translucency and for the Nantgarw iridescence. The book is well illustrated throughout and affords a good basis for the further in-depth study of Swansea and Nantgarw porcelains.

18th and 19th Century Porcelain Analysis
18th and 19th Century Porcelain Analysis

Author: Howell G. M. Edwards

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2020-07-13

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 3030421929

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This book addresses the contributions made by analytical chemistry to the characterisation of 18th and early 19th Century English and Welsh porcelains commencing with the earliest reports of Sir Arthur Church and of Herbert Eccles and Bernard Rackham using chemical digestion techniques and concluding with the most recent instrumental experiments, which together span more than a hundred years of study. From the earliest experiments which required necessarily the sacrifice of significant portions of each specimen, which may already have been damaged , to the latest experiments which needed only microsampling or the non-destructive interrogation of valuable perfect specimens a comprehensive survey is undertaken of more than twenty manufactories of quality porcelains. The correlation is made between the quantitative elemental oxide determinations of the scanning electron microscopic diffraction and Xray fluorescence data and the qualitative molecular spectroscopic Raman data to demonstrate their complementarity and use in the holistic forensic assessment of the origin of the fired procelains ; this will form the groundwork for the adoption of analytical techniques for the attribution of unknown or questionable procelains to their potential source factories . The book will also examine the perception of what constitutes a porcelain and its definitions and examines the assignment of porcelains to types which currently employs the definitions of hard paste , soft paste , hybrid , magnesian and bone china from the conclusions derived from the analytical data and a consideration of the raw materials employed in their manufacturing processes. During the discussion of this analytical evidence several themes and protocols have been established for its utilisation in the potential identification of porcelains and several case studies undertaken for this purpose are cited. The book will be of interest to analytical scientists , to museum ceramics curators and to ceramics historians.