This is a beautiful and intriguing porcelain dish made by Caughley and decorated at Chamberlains Worcester in or shortly after 1793. The dish has a "harlequin" pattern with six different finely painted Neoclassical rim motifs in the style of the famous "Marquess of Donegall" pattern.
Dishes like this one usually belonged to a large dessert service, however, it is possible that this was a sampler, showing several different pattern options for clients to choose from.
The Caughley factory ran between 1775 and 1799, founded by Ambrose Gallimore and Thomas Turner. It produced very fine soft-paste porcelain made for the middle classes in mostly underglaze blue and gilt decorations. Today the items are very collectable because of their high quality and elegant yet simple decorations, which tell the tale of the more ordinary well-to-do population, rather than the extremely wealthy clientele that many other factories served.
The Chamberlain factory was founded in the 1780s by Robert Chamberlain, who was responsible for the decoration department in the famous Worcester pottery during the Dr Wall period. He set up his own factory with his son Humphrey, initially buying up stock from Turner's Caughley factory for decoration, but then around 1794 starting to produce their own porcelain, became extremely successful. This dish is clearly from the period when Chamberlain was still purchasing porcelain from the Caughley factory.
The Marquess of Donegall pattern is a pattern that was first ordered at the Caughley factory in 1793 by the Marquess of Donegall. That service, which was in "harlequin" style with a different border motif on each item, was decorated by Chamberlains Worcester and described in their order books. The Caughley service was very large and expensive, consisting of 132 pieces and costing £217 10s and 6d... that's about £28,000 today! The whole service was famously sold by the family at Phillips in 1981, and has later been dispersed, with different pieces popping up in the market at different times.
This dish has six finely painted border motifs in pastel colours, and a beautiful centre decoration and scattered floral sprigs. The mystery about this dish is whether this was a spin-off pattern of the famous Donegall pattern, or whether it was in fact a sample used for the Marquess to choose patterns... we will never know.
The dish is marked with the hand written red Chamberlains Worcester mark; the mark is charmingly misspelled as "Chamberlins" - being a talented porcelain painter did not necessarily mean you had gone to school very long, so these misspellings did sometimes occur.
CONDITION REPORT The dish is in perfect antique condition without any damage, repairs, crazing and hardly any wear. There is a tiny firing fault on the foot rim, that has no bearing on the stability or quality of the dish; for Caughley porcelain of this era this is quite common.
Antique British porcelain is never perfect. Kilns were fired on coal in the 1800s, and this meant that china from that period could have some firing specks from flying particles. British makers were also known for their experimentation, which sometimes resulted in technically imperfect results. Due to the shrinkage in the kiln, items can have small firing lines or develop crazing over time, which should not be seen as damage but as an imperfection of the maker's recipes, probably unknown at the time of making. Items have often been used for many years and can have normal signs of wear, and gilt can have signs of slight disintegration even if never handled. I will reflect any damage, repairs, obvious stress marks, crazing or heavy wear in the item description but some minor scratches, nicks, stains and gilt disintegration can be normal for vintage items and need to be taken into account.
There is widespread confusion on the internet about the difference between chips and nicks, or hairlines and cracks. I will reflect any damage as truthfully as I can, i.e. a nick is a tiny bit of damage smaller than 1mm and a chip is something you can easily see with the eye; a glazing line is a break in the glazing only; hairline is extremely tight and/or superficial and not picked up by the finger; and a crack is obvious both to the eye and the finger. Etcetera - I try to be as accurate as I can and please feel free to ask questions or request more detailed pictures!
DIMENSIONS: 29.5cm (11.6") long.
