Review by Robert Hunter
The Limehouse Porcelain Manufactory: Excavations at 108–116 Narrow Street, London, 1990

Kieron Tyler and Roy Stephenson, with J. Victor Owen and Christopher Phillpotts. The Limehouse Porcelain Manufactory: Excavations at 108–116 Narrow Street, London, 1990. MoLAS Monograph 6. London: Museum of London Archaeology Service, 2000. x + 73 pp.; color illus., line drawings, glossary, index. £16.50.

Over the last thirty years, with the enactment of government legislation protecting archaeological resources in both the United States and Great Britain, hundreds of technical reports on salvage excavations have been written annually. Most of these reports and the resulting artifacts end up in government repositories, having only been reviewed by a few bureaucrats overseeing the compliance process. Much of the compiled historical and archaeological information awaits rediscovery in the drawers and shelves of these government agencies. 

Occasionally a technical monograph is made available through a limited publications series. Even more rarely, the results of a rescue excavation are so important that they catch the attention of a broad audience and receive the royal treatment of a glossy, full-color publication. Such is the case with the Museum of London’s excavation of the Limehouse porcelain manufactory site in the east London borough of Tower Hamlets. 

This important factory operated between 1745 and 1748, making it one of the earliest of the English porcelain endeavors. The history of English porcelain, in general, is of great interest to collectors, connoisseurs, economic historians, and students of ceramic innovations. The early attempts at making porcelain are of particular significance as the English factories conducted a tremendous amount of experimentation in the pursuit of marketable products.

The existence of the Limehouse porcelain factory came to light in 1928, when historical references to it were published. Products of the porcelain factory were not specifically identified until 1959, when the eminent porcelain scholar and collector, Dr. Bernard Watney, attributed a group of porcelain long held to be of Liverpool origin to the Limehouse factory. Although these identifications were made using the toolkit of the connoisseur, Dr. Watney provided well-reasoned arguments in his published paper.^[1]

The actual physical remains of the factory lay undetected until the Museum of London’s Department of Greater London Archaeology investigated the site in 1990 in advance of the proposed construction of the Limehouse Link road tunnel. The nature of the agreement between the archaeologists and the construction managers permitted eight weeks of investigation on the site, and the authors acknowledged that consequently much of the Weld research was done “under rescue conditions” (p. 1). These conditions are not unfamiliar to most archaeologists who work on development-driven projects, but the resulting well-designed and informative report is rare for the discipline.

The report consists of four chapters, a bibliography, eighteen data tables, and 127 color illustrations. The first chapter provides background information about the project, a geological and historical overview of the area, and a review of previous research on Limehouse porcelain. The second chapter details the excavation and reviews the features and structures found on the site prior to the construction of the porcelain factory. The report is mercifully concise in this section (at least for the porcelain aficionado), providing enough historical context for the reader to place the archaeological remains of the 1745–1748 porcelain manufactory within the other occupations and activity on the site beginning in the fifteenth century. The sequencing of site activities is presented in a straightforward technical manner with drawings and descriptions of features, deposits, and strata. This information is presented devoid of any sociocultural context for the finds or activities outside of the Limehouse porcelain factory period. The bibliographic references make it clear, however, that additional information is readily available from the unpublished excavation reports and additional publications in progress.

The third chapter contains the primary information about the factory site, the kiln, and the porcelain products. The color photographs of the site and fragments are first rate. In an interesting collaboration, Phillips Fine Arts Auctioneers provided photographs of antique Limehouse porcelain examples from the catalogs of the recent Watney collection sales. It is hard to imagine historical archaeologists in the United States calling upon Christie’s and Sotheby’s auction houses to help illustrate their ceramic reports, although the effort might be mutually beneficial. Line drawings, a hallmark of British archaeological reports, are used in a limited but helpful fashion. 

The primary value of chapter 3 lies in the juxtaposition of excavated sherds with extant porcelain examples. What is remarkable after all is said and done is that only 1,402 glazed and unglazed porcelain sherds and kiln furniture fragments were recovered from the excavation. The authors make considerable use of sherd weight in their tabulations—the entire 1,402 sherds weighed 10,385 grams, merely twenty-three pounds. From these sherds, at least thirty different forms were identified. A breakdown of forms encountered in the stratified proveniences is tabulated by number of sherds and weight. Unstratified porcelain finds also are classified by form. 

Typologies of the painted and molded decoration are provided. Interestingly, the only decoration found on the site is underglaze blue painting. Extant Limehouse wares with colored enamels are known, however, suggesting that overglaze enameling was done elsewhere. Molded decorative motifs are also discussed and classified into eight basic types.

The porcelain information is generally descriptive, rather than analytical. It is difficult to interpret the tables without referring back to the plan drawings of the contexts in which the sherds were recovered. One weakness of the report is the limited discussion and presentation of data on the kiln structure. Although the photography of the kiln remains is excellent, an attempt at a detailed pictorial reconstruction would have been useful. This is particularly true for the discussion on parallel kiln construction from other excavated porcelain factories. It is hoped that this information will be presented in future reports. 

The report by J. Victor Owen provides a glimpse of the rich potential of geochemical analysis of porcelain bodies, although only seven sherds were examined. The preliminary results suggest that at least two types of porcelain were made at the Limehouse factory. Although quite technical in nature, the discussion indicates the potential for understanding the compositional differences among other early English porcelain manufacturers. 

The concluding chapter, eagerly awaited after the presentation of so much raw data, is disappointing, being only slightly more than two pages long. Leading off with Neil McKendrick’s observation on the “china fever” that swept Europe in the mid-eighteenth century, the authors place the Limehouse factory example within a brief context of early English attempts to manufacture porcelain. From there, they offer tantalizing snippets for further study of the Limehouse site. One observation links the architecture of the kiln to the porcelain technology employed in France, where successful porcelain manufacture had been ongoing for at least twenty years prior to the establishment of Limehouse. 

In trying to make sense of the financial viability of the Limehouse factory, the authors propose the European model of factory sponsorship, with aristocratic, even royal, backers but offer no evidence to identify the potential investors in this early English factory. Although it is known that a Joseph Wilson and Company operated the factory, very little else is known. Identifying the economic underpinnings of the Limehouse factory seems a fruitful path for future researchers.

One statement reveals a surprising confession about the analysis of eighteenth-century domestic ceramic assemblages in England. Whereas research on colonial American sites has been ongoing for at least fifty years, relatively little attention has been paid to English domestic assemblages. One would initially suppose that the consumption of English porcelain is best understood by looking at its relationship to Chinese porcelain, Staffordshire white salt-glazed stoneware, and other English ceramic types in the homeland of its production. The authors, however, generally find an absence (emphasis mine) of English porcelain in their domestic sites. Although the situation is certainly not entirely dissimilar, English porcelain does exist, albeit in small quantities, in many American contexts, especially the domestic sites of the upper classes. Thus, as with the case of English pottery, American archaeological sites may ultimately provide the best contextual information for understanding economic and social factors related to ceramic consumption in the eighteenth-century Anglo-America world.

The Limehouse porcelain factory ultimately failed—an oft-told tale in both the porcelain and pottery industry. In some ways, its failure makes it a more tantalizing assignment for future research. In particular, the Limehouse story seems to share many parallels with the failed American china manufactory of Bonnin and Morris in Philadelphia. Only more research in the historical record can flesh out the stories of both porcelain factories.

The Limehouse porcelain manufactory site report is an essential resource for those interested in the history of English porcelain. The report presents this important information in a clear and concise manner. The quality of the photographs and printing is of the highest order and should serve as a model for all archaeological publications. Most importantly, the archaeologists have presented their information in a timely and usable fashion that porcelain scholars will be sure to reference for years to come.

Robert Hunter
Editor, Ceramics in America