Plate 1760 - 1770

This plate was made at the Bow Porcelain Factory, active in London between 1744 and 1775. It is made of soft-paste porcelain, a distinctly European innovation at the time, fired at a relatively low temperature, and then decorated with enamel colors. What is striking here is how this technology was used. The factory's output was largely derivative of Chinese export porcelain, imitating Asian designs to satisfy European demand. The image on the plate shows a figure in a fanciful orientalist setting, carefully painted and enameled onto the surface. Consider the labor involved: from mining the raw materials and processing the porcelain, to hand-painting the design, each plate represents hours of skilled work. Bow Porcelain Factory had over 300 employees, which were divided by labor. This piece offers a window into the globalized economy of the 18th century, and how it was intimately bound up with social and economic issues.