A Caughley service painted for Chamberlain Worcester

It was Geoffrey Godden who discovered that Fidelle Duvivier worked for a short time at the Chamberlain factory in Worcester in 1792, and decorated most pieces of a Caughley porcelain tea and coffee service with scenes of children at work and play. It was a theme he had already used on New Hall porcelain (cf. Blogpost 17: Country togs, angelic faces –Duvivier’s children on New Hall – July/August, 2018, and image 6 below). Godden’s investigations into Chamberlain-decorated porcelain done in Worcester and the Chamberlains’ relationship with Thomas Turner’s Caughley factory in Shropshire, plus his own keen interest in Duvivier’s career and travels, led to new revelations concerning these historical establishments and actors – as well as important new evidence about the painter’s employment after 1790.

Robert Chamberlain (1736-1798) is believed to have been the first apprentice decorator employed at the Worcester Porcelain Co. when it was founded in 1751. He ultimately became the senior decorator in charge of the painting and gilding departments, overseeing the entire ornamental work done at the company from the late 1770s until 1783. In that year Thomas Flight, the former London sales agent for the concern, became the new owner, and the Chamberlains (father Robert and son Humphrey) decided to leave the company to form their own decorating workshop. A few years after setting up business in nearby King Street they were probably decorating wares for their former employers, and by 1788 had moved into a group of buildings surrounding a courtyard in an area that would become the nucleus of the present factory site. (Ultimately, in 1840, the Chamberlains would buy out the Worcester company, which at that time was managed by Flight, Barr and Barr).(i)

By 1790 the Chamberlains were purchasing white porcelain from the Caughley factory in Shropshire for decoration, as Godden explained in his first published article on this service.(iii)
He mentioned that the Worcester factory had been producing this shape of teawares (referred to as “shanked,” or “shankered,” for its spiral fluting) by at least July, 1790. Following the fashion, Thomas Turner of Caughley soon began producing such shapes as well. Godden pointed out that similarly shaped wasters (fragments and discarded fired objects) were later found in excavations done at the Caughley site that confirmed this point.(iv) He also described tracing the whereabouts of several pieces of this particular Caughley service through a “discriminating London dealer” who had bought them at a country auction sale in 1977, then quickly resold them to other dealers.(v) He managed to buy several of these pieces for his own Reference Collection over the years. A few examples shown here are from this collection and have been auctioned within the past 10 years
(1, 2, 5 a,b and 7 a,b,c).(vi) Although these pieces were at first mistakenly thought to be Flight period Worcester porcelain, Godden recognized their true identity as Caughley, decorated at the Chamberlain establishment. Surviving factory invoices for orders of Caughley blanks in this shape substantiated his attribution. As for the decoration, Godden was convinced it pointed to Fidelle Duvivier’s hand: “The gardener watering flowers [5b] occurs also on a cup in the Luton Museum [6], in a selection of [New Hall] pieces long acknowledged as having been painted by Duvivier,” he wrote.(vii) He discovered another encouraging item among surviving records – here are his own words:

“Now, you must be wondering how or why I linked Duvivier with the Chamberlains at Worcester. The reason is simple and I think convincing. The original Chamberlain records include weekly wage-lists and in one of these lists, that for October 13th 1792 we find the following entry: ‘M. Devia £3-3-0′.

(In his subsequent book on Chamberlain-Worcester Porcelain 1788-1852 [1982], Godden mentioned this fortnight wage record again, but corrected the spelling to ‘M. Deviea’.)

“This entry puzzled me greatly. It was a solitary reference … and the rate of payment was very high when compared with that of the other artists who had been employed for years. … One day, when reading through the other Chamberlain records which abound with quaint spellings, the penny dropped! Surely the name M. [Deviea] was a phonetic spelling of Monsieur Duvivier, written by a clerk who was unfamiliar with the true spelling of the name. … Certainly this highly paid artist [‘Deviea’] does not turn up in any other factories records and there is only this one Chamberlain entry.”(viii)

What had brought Duvivier to Worcester, and how long did he stay? In answer to the first question, he had been looking for new employment after ceasing to work for New Hall. Godden quoted a surviving letter in the Derby archives written in 1790 by Duvivier to William Duesbury Jr., asking if he could offer his services to the Derby manufactory as a part-time outside decorator since the New Hall factory no longer had need of his decorating skills. In the same letter Duvivier “explained that he intended to settle in Newcastle-under-Lyme (Staffordshire), ‘being engag’d to teach drawing in the Boarding School in that Place …’.”(x) He obviously believed he would have time to continue decorating porcelain on the side. Godden also referred to the work the Frenchman had done as an outside decorator for other factories, e.g. the “Gerverot Beaker” on which he painted two scenes in 1787 for the Turner factory of Lane End.(xi) We do not know how he learned about the Chamberlains’ business, however. Had he also written to them asking about work and received a reply? In any case, he must have thought it worth his while to travel there and see the factory for himself. The fact that he was paid such a decent wage for his work (apparently for a two-week period) perhaps suggests that the managers wished to show their interest in engaging him. Be that as it may, there is evidence that he was back in Staffordshire by April 3, 1793, at the latest.(xii)
He did carry out at least one more job for the New Hall factory (or for a private customer), as evidenced by a New Hall service whose pieces all bear the date “1796.”(xiii) Also illustrated in Godden’s first article about these Caughley wares are another cup and saucer, a covered sugar bowl, a bread and butter plate he later acquired from an Australian dealer,(xiv) and the following waste-bowl (8) with a painted scene on the inside showing a girl on a swing in the company of a young lad. This piece is now in an Australian museum collection.

The teapot below (9) is in the Norwich Castle Museum and Art Gallery, Norwich, as part of the enormous teapot collection (2,000 pieces) that Philip Miller sold to the museum in 1988.(xv)

Some of these pieces (1, 9, 12 a,b, and 13) were displayed in 2005 at a special exhibition of Caughley porcelain at the Ironbridge Gorge Museum and featured in the exhibition catalogue, Caughley in Colour (Shrewsbury: Livesey Limited, 2005).

At the time the spoon tray (13) was auctioned in 2003, there was some question as to whether the painting in the central panel was done by Duvivier or by another hand.(xvi) Similarly, in the case of the covered sugar bowl of this service, pictured in Fig. 2 of his first article, Godden remarked that he thought it was “painted by a different hand.” We do not know why these two pieces appear to have not been painted by Duvivier but merely imitate his style. They may have been missing amongst the available blank porcelain from Caughley during the time he stayed in Worcester, or they may have been damaged during the firing and had to be copied after his departure. Some postulate that he may have left before finishing their decoration. Added to these mysteries is the question of why his stay in Worcester was so brief.

These questions remain unanswered, but, on the other hand, there is new evidence. Two Caughley dessert plates with familiar Duvivier decoration came on the market in 2014, proving that he had decorated more than just this service at Chamberlains’ in 1792. These plates will be the subject of the next blogpost.

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NOTES

(i) See https://www.museumofroyalworcester.org/learning/research/factories/severn-street-factory/ for a detailed history of this period, and https://www.museumofroyalworcester.org/collection-factory/chamberlain/ for a picture of an 1815 Chamberlains vase and cover with an incorporated painted panel showing a view of the Chamberlains porcelain factory.

(ii) Paul Sandby, a contemporary of Gainsborough, was a gifted landscape painter, who was one of the thirty-four founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768. He etched a large number of his paintings and published them as prints. The 1760 original watercolor on which this etching by Sandby was based is in the collection of the Museum of Royal Worcester. See https://www.museumofroyalworcester.org/archive-article/paul-sandby-painting/.

(iii) Geoffrey A. Godden, “Caughley Teawares Painted by Fidelle Duvivier. The Missing Link,” Antique Dealer and Collector’s Guide, August 1978, pp. 67-70

(iv) Ibid., p. 67-68.

(v) Ibid., p. 67. The discriminating dealer was Jean Sewell, who had a shop in a small street off Kensington Church Street, where many porcelain collectors loved to search for treasures (the author included, during the 1980s).

(vi) The tea canister in 1 was auctioned by Bonhams, London, 13 November 2013, lot 210 (sold for £4,750); the jug in 2 was auctioned by Bonhams, London, 3 October 2012, lot 181 (sold for £3,750); and the cup and saucer in 5 a,b was auctioned by Bonhams, London, 2 May 2018, lot 352 (sold for £1,875). See also Note (ix).

(vii) Godden (1978), op. cit., p. 69.

(viii) Ibid., p. 70, and Geoffrey Godden, Chamberlain-Worcester Porcelain 1788-1852 (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1982), pp. 194-196, with image 1 shown on p. 54. In this work Godden states that Chamberlain began making his own porcelain at the factory in 1791, and stopped decorating Caughley blanks in 1793. But to date no Chamberlain porcelain has been discovered with Duvivier’s decoration.

(ix) Auctioned by Bearnes, Hampton & Littlewood, Exeter, 17 April 2019, lot 596 (sold for £3,100).

(x) Godden (1978), op. cit., pp. 69-70.

(xi) Now in the British Museum. See Charlotte Jacob-Hanson, “Louis Victor Gerverot – Before the Beaker,” Northern Ceramic Society Newsletter (December 2017), vol. 188, pp. 18-28, posted under the author’s name at www.academia.edu

(xii) Godden (1982), op. cit., p. 196. A letter was sent to him on that date, but there are no further details.

(xiii) Charlotte Jacob-Hanson, In the Footsteps of Fidelle Duvivier (Tucson, AZ: Westpress, 2016), p. 71.

(xiv) Godden (1978), op. cit., Fig. 4, Fig. 2, Fig. 7, and Fig. 5, respectively, pp. 68-70. The whereabouts of these objects are unknown. The waste bowl in 8 was shown in Fig. 1. Fig. 5, with a detail from a saucer, is shown as image 10 here.

(xv) Antiques enthusiast Philip Miller began collecting teapots after his wife bought him one as a Christmas present in 1968. He amassed around 2,000 examples, which he later sold to Norwich Castle Museum. The museum was financially helped in acquiring the collection by the Twinings tea company. Together with author Michael Berthoud Philip Miller also wrote An Anthology of British Teapots (Wingham: Micawber Publications, 1985).

(xvi) Auctioned by Bonhams, London, 26 Nov. 2003, lot 332 (sold for £1.553).