1. The earliest historical mention of the Bonnin and Morris factory is found in James Mease, M.D., The Picture of Philadelphia: Giving an Account of Its Origin, Increase and Improvements in Arts, Sciences, Manufactures, Commerce and Revenue; with a Compendious View of Its Societies, Literary, Benevolent, Patriotic, & Religious; Its Police, the Public Buildings, the Prison and Penetentiary System, Institutions Monied and Civil, Museum (Philadelphia: B. & T. Kite, 1811), p. 75. Essentially the same information is repeated in John F. Watson, Annals of Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, in the Olden Time: Being a Collection of Memoirs, Anecdotes, and Incidents of the City and Its Inhabitants, and of the Earliest Settlements of the Inland Part of Pennsylvania, from the Days of the Founders . . . Embellished with Engravings, by T. H. Mumford, 2nd ed. (1843; Philadelphia: The author, 1844), 2:272: “A china factory to was also erected on Prime Street, near the present Navy Yard, intended to make china at a saving of £15,000.” A footnote indicates the following: “This long row of wooden houses afterwards became famous as a sailor’s brothel and riot house on a large scale. The former frail ware proved an abortive scheme.” This information was repeated by almost all subsequent Philadelphia historians. See also Edwin AtLee Barber, The Pottery and Porcelain of the United States: An Historical Review of American Ceramic Art from the Earliest Times to the Present Day (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1893), pp. 91–100.
2. John Spargo, Early American Pottery and China (New York: Century Co., 1926), pp. 76–84.
3. John Ramsay, American Potters and Pottery (Clinton, Mass.: Hale, Cushman and Flint, 1939), pp. 45, 98–100.
4. Arthur W. Clement, Our Pioneer Potters (New York: Privately printed, 1947), pp. 60–65.
5. “Found! Bonnin and Morris Porcelain,” Antiques 59 (1951): 139. This classification of the wares as “glazed earthenware” is still common; see Louis B. Wright et al., eds., The Arts in America: The Colonial Period (New York: Scribner, 1966), p. 333.
6. The Tucker factory actually produced hard-paste porcelain (hardly a novelty in 1830), but it has always been claimed as the first factory in America to make any kind of porcelain in any quantity.
7. Carl Bridenbaugh, Cities in Revolt: Urban Life in America, 1743–1776 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), p. 217n, modifies his earlier statement that in the 1770s Philadelphia was the second largest city in the British Empire. Sam Bass Warner Jr., in his The Private City: Philadelphia in Three Periods of Its Growth (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1968), chap. 1, calculates that the population of the city in 1775 was only about 24,000, which, according to Bridenbaugh’s figures, would have made it the sixth and possibly even the seventh largest city in the empire.
8. “A Variety of Bow China, Cups and Saucers, Bowls, etc. . . . Just Imported by Philip Breadnig, and to be Sold at His House in Fish Street,” Boston Evening Post, Nov. 11, 1754; George Francis Dow, The Arts and Crafts in New England, 1704–1775: Gleanings from Boston Newspapers Relating to Painting, Engraving, Silversmiths, Pewterers, Clockmakers, Furniture, Pottery, Old Houses, Costume, Trades and Occupations, &c. . . . (Topsfield, Mass.: Wayside Press, 1927), p. 88. From the same source it can be seen that china figurines were also available in America: “A Variety of Curious Fine China in Statuary: Also Some of the Best Enamel’d China, Sold at Public Auction at the House next to the Orange Tree in Hanover Street,” Boston Gazette, May 17, 1762, quoted in Dow, Arts and Crafts in New England, p. 90.
9. R[obert] C[harles] Moon, The Morris Family of Philadelphia: Descendants of Anthony Morris, 1654–1721 (Philadelphia: The author, 1898), pp. 276, 489. A letter from Joseph Morris to Anthony Shoemaker, May 11, 1772, speaks of “George being in Carolina.” Morris Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia. Notice of Morris’s death was given in the Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), Nov. 17, 1773. Morris was not the only one to provide influential contacts for the factory in Philadelphia, however; Bonnin, an old Etonian, probably would have known other Etonians in Philadelphia, such as Richard Penn, lieutenant governor of the province from 1771 to 1773.
10. The indenture is in the Cadwalader Collection, Book d, iv, 207, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. For many of the details of Bonnin’s life I am indebted to Col. Palmer; in the absence of a specific footnote, Col. Palmer is the authority for any factual statement relating directly to Bonnin’s life.
11. In October 1769 they were living on Water Street (see Appendix 5); by June 1770 they had moved to George Street, between Cedar and Shippen, in the district of Southwark. Philadelphia Contributionship Survey Book 1, June 26, 1770.
12. Chronological Index of Patents of Invention (London, 1854), p. 165, no. 919. The Index refers to Letters Patent of March 5, 1769, but the specification, signed by Bonnin on July 25, refers to the Letters Patent of May 5, 1769. The complete charge for the application and issuance of a patent at that time was about £60.
13. Only three days before Bonnin announced his crucible patent in Philadelphia (see Appendix 5), the American Philosophical Society, meeting of October 6, 1769, agreed on a motion “to publish an advertisement for specimens of the diVerent clays to be sent to this society.” This may have been prompted by, or against, Bonnin. At the society’s meeting of November 3, 1769, it was agreed to defer for some time the publication of any such advertisement. The development from the production of a highly fired ceramic crucible for commercial uses to the manufacture of porcelain for a primarily domestic market is explored more fully in Cyril Staal, “Calenick Crucibles,” 124 Annual Report of the Royal Cornwall Polytechnic Society (Falmouth, 1957), pp. 44–54. It may be that Bonnin did plan to develop the crucible manufacture separately; in the 1773 tax lists for Southwark is the name of “Thomas Jackson, potter,” who appears to have lived near Bonnin and who advertised “Black Lead Crucibles, made in Philadelphia and much better than any imported”; Pennsylvania Gazette (Philadelphia), January 5, 1774.
14. The first land transaction is recorded in Philadelphia City Hall, Deed Book, i, pp. 9, 50–53; the second is in Deed Book, i, pp. 9, 54–57.
15. All the newspaper advertisements pertaining to the factory are given in full in Alfred Coxe Prime, comp., The Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, Maryland and South Carolina, 1721–1785: Gleanings from Newspapers ([Topsfield, Mass.]: Walpole Society, 1929), pp. 114–24. Prime does not indicate that almost all of them appeared in more than one newspaper, more than once; they are not quoted in full here.
16. The mention in this advertisement of Bow and “the clays of America” in the same breath immediately gives rise to speculation about the possible role of Andrew Duché in this enterprise. Duché, who was in Philadelphia about this time, has been named as an entrepreneur previously shipping clays from South Carolina to London for the use of the Bow factory; however, there is no known connection between him and Bonnin and Morris, nor is there any evidence that clays were ever shipped from America to England in any quantity. See Graham Hood, “The Career of Andrew Duché,” Art Quarterly 31 (1968): 168–84.
17. This letter, to be quoted in full later, is in the archives of the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
18. “A Memoir of Thomas Gilpin,” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 49 (1925): 309–10.
19. In reference to this area, Heinrich Ries, Clays: Their Occurrence, Properties, and Uses, with Especial Reference to Those of the United States (New York: J. Wiley & Sons, 1906), p. 296, contains the single statement: “The Potomac beds of the coastal plain area are said to contain stoneware and fireclays, which have been dug at two localities not far from Wilmington.” Neither the extensive state history by Henry C. Conrad, History of the State of Delaware, from the Earliest Settlements to the Year 1907 (Wilmington, 1908), 2:488–500, nor a more intimate account by Francis A. Cooch, Little Known History of Newark, Delaware, and Its Environs (Newark, Del.: Press of Kells, 1936), makes any mention of clay mines among all the extensive references to gristmills, sawmills, etc., in the area.
20. The South Carolina advertisement is given in full in Prime, Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, pp. 115–16; Edward Lightwood, who was apparently acting as agent for Bonnin and Morris, was a successful merchant in Charleston (his will was probated April 10, 1798; courtesy of E. Milby Burton). The Bonnin and Morris advertisement is dated several months before Bartlam’s first recorded advertisement in the South Carolina Gazette (Charleston) of October 4, 1770 (Prime, Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, p. 112), which stated “A China Manufactory and Pottery is soon to be opened in this town (Charleston) . . . by Messrs. Bartlem and Company, the proper Hands, etc., for carrying it on having lately arrived here from England.” Bartlam apparently left England between January 1762 and the middle of the following year (Aqualate Hall Papers, d. 1788, p. 1 [1], d. 1788, vol. 102, William Salt Library, Stafford; courtesy of John Mallet). He thus appears to have established a factory elsewhere in South Carolina between 1763 and 1770. This is confirmed in the famous letter from Josiah Wedgwood to his parliamentary patron, Sir William Meredith, dated March 2, 1765:
This trade to our colonies we are apprehensive of loseing in a few years, as they have set on foot some Potworks there already, and have at this time an agent amonst us hireing a number of our hands for establishing new Pottworks in South Carolina, haveing got one of our insolvent Master Potters [Bartlam] there to conduct them, haveing material there equal, if not superior, to our own for carrying on the Manufactorie; and as the necessaries etc. of life and consequently the price of Labor amongst us are daily upon the advance, I make no question but more will follow them and join their Brother artists and Manufacturers of every class, who are from all quarters Takeing a rapid flight indeed the same way. . . . We cannot help apprehending such consequences from these emigrations as make us very uneasy for our trade and our Posterity.
Ann Finer and George Savage, eds., The Selected Letters of Josiah Wedgwood (London: Cory, Adams and Mackay, 1965), p. 29. Wedgwood was concerned about losing the extremely profitable colonial trade not only because his own workers rejected his strict disciplinary control and were tempted by the higher wages oVered by Bartlam but also because of his knowledge that the South Carolina clays were “equal, if not superior,” to those available in England. Bow had experimented with these clays (“unaker”) during 1744–1749, and Wedgwood himself conducted experiments with it at this time. Hood, “Career of Andrew Duché,” p. 179. Bartlam, however, does not seem to have been able to use these clays with any degree of success: “Having opened his Pottery and China Manufactory . . . Will be much obliged to Gentlemen in the Country, or others, who will be so kind to send him samples of any Kinds of fine Clay upon their Plantations, etc., in order to make them Trials of. He already makes what is called Queen’s Ware, equal to any imported.” South Carolina Gazette (Charleston), January 31, 1771; Prime, Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, p. 112. As this is Bartlam’s last recorded advertisement, Wedgwood need hardly have worried for his vast overseas trade. His frame of mind, however, is reflected in the following quotation from William ChaVers et al., Marks and Monograms on European and Oriental Pottery and Porcelain, with Historical Notices of Each Manufactory; Over 5000 Potters’ Marks and Illustrations, 14th ed. (London: Reeves and Turner, 1932), pertaining to the Bonnin and Morris factory: “In January 1771, a paragraph states: ‘The Philadelphians have established a china manufactory. In time they will serve North America and prevent the exportation of our English China.’” Bartlam was a subject upon which Wedgwood could become overheated with little eVort. Twenty years later, in his Address to the Workmen in the Pottery: On the Subject of Entering into the Service of Foreign Manufacturers (Newcastle, Staffordshire, 1783), Wedgwood vituperated against Bartlam at length, painting an idyllic picture of Staffordshire life, waxing rhetorical on the unmitigated horrors of life in America, and waving the flag with great abandon (see Appendix 12). In this pamphlet Wedgwood mentioned three other workmen who migrated to South Carolina, “Mr. Lymer, Mr. Allen of Great Fenton and William Ellis of Hanley.” The latter, who was the only one to return, found his way to Winston-Salem, N.C., where he helped the Moravians make queensware. James H. Craig, The Arts and Crafts in North Carolina, 1699–1840 (Winston-Salem, N.C.: Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Old Salem, Inc., 1965), p. 88.
21. Prime, Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, p. 117.
22. In November of the same year Bonnin was still promising to send a sample of his porcelain; whether or not he ever did is unknown. The Palmers were then living in a rented house in London; if they received a sample of Bonnin’s porcelain there, it was not apparently taken to Dorney Court. In the same month as this first letter a notice appeared in the Weekly Magazine or Edinburgh Amusement, January 17, 1771, p. 90: “By a letter from Philadelphia we are informed that a large china manufactory is established there, and that better china cups and saucers are made there than at Bow or Stratford.”
23. The advertisements are given in full in Prime, Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, pp. 120–24.
24. Wedgwood never mentioned this factory by name, but there is no doubt that Bonnin and Morris were the culprits. Wedgwood mentioned eight workmen, while the newspaper announcement specified nine, but Wedgwood was writing ten years later. The phrase Wedgwood employed in this context—“our people (for they were chiefly employed in it)”—could mean either English rather than colonial workers or workers from Wedgwood’s own factory. For example, when Wedgwood visited a small pottery in Bovey Tracy, Devon, in 1775, he wrote: “They afterwards made white stoneware, glazed with Salts, and had a fireman, and I believe some other workmen, from our country, but it was still a losing concern to them.” Bernard Watney, “Engravings as the Origin of Designs and Decorations for English Eighteenth-Century Ceramics,” Burlington Magazine 108 (1966): 406–10. However, there is no record of Thomas Gale in connection with Wedgwood, nor is there any record at Barlaston of any of the other potters whose names occur in connection with the site after the closing of the factory (courtesy of William Billington, Wedgwood Factory Records, Wedgwood Museum). These will be listed later. Of course, it is possible that Gale and the others were not master potters at all but rather skilled workmen. Even if the master workmen had not made porcelain at Wedgwood’s factory, it is more than likely that they had migrated there from Derby, Worcester, or Bow, where they had made porcelain. N. McKendrick, “Josiah Wedgwood and Factory Discipline,” Proceedings of the Wedgwood Society, no. 5 (1963): 1–29.
25. However, Byerley, a partner in the Wedgwood firm in the 1790s, informed Gilpin (see note 18 above) that he was first employed in the Bonnin and Morris factory, “which was more of French than English origin.”
26. Prime, Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, p. 117. In April 1770 Lord North repealed all duties except those on tea, thus competition from imported wares became increasingly severe.
27. The quotation is from an advertisement of January 10, 1771 (see ibid.), and the items described were billed to John Cadwalader (Appendix 7). Although American china is not mentioned on the bill, the prices are identical to that on the bill of Thomas Wharton (Appendix 7).
28. Carpenter Wharton’s letter is in Papers of Sir William Johnson, 14 vols. (Albany: University of the State of New York, 1921–1965), 8 (1933): 293–94 (courtesy of Milo Naeve and Lewis Rubenstein). The glass factory mentioned was Stiegel. Archaeologists from New York State excavated the surrounds of Johnson Hall in the early 1960s—the only wasters the author was able to discover that might have had relevance to the Bonnin and Morris factory were too small to be useful.
29. The remainder of the reference to the factory in this letter is as follows: “In the meantime Jenny begs her Acceptance of a Sugar Dish as a specimen of the Philadelphia China, which I shall forward by the first opportunity with one of the same sort which she sends for my sister.” Balch Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The use of zaffler is described in Bernard Watney, English Blue and White Porcelain of the Eighteenth Century (London: Faber and Faber, 1963), pp. 6–9.
30. Prime, Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, p. 119.
31. The partners persistently advertised for apprentices and for painters “either in blue or enamel.” They seem to have built up a stockpile of bones by April 1770—“notwithstanding their declining the reception of any more bones, they are determined to carry on the works upon the most extensive principles. . . .” Ibid., p. 117. In May 1772 they advertised for “good Pot and Pearl Ashes” (pearl ashes being refined potash) for use in the preparation of glaze.
32. A ticket for the lottery was known to Barber, Pottery and Porcelain, p. 95; John Cadwalader paid £135 for 90 tickets in November 1771, Cadwalader Collection, Historical Society of Pennsylvania.
33. Stiegel also had his hopes raised by the Nonimportation Agreement in 1769. In that year he built his second Manheim glasshouse, the “American Flint Glass Works,” the first in America to produce glass presumably equal in quality and content to lead glass. He added to his factory each year for the next three years. But as early as 1770 he was in financial diYculties; in September 1770 he too appealed for a provincial loan. A year later he was given the useless sum of £150. In 1773 he resorted to a lottery, and the following year he closed his factory. At its peak his factory employed 130 men, but Stiegel was only too conscious of the high cost of labor and the unbeatable competition of imported wares.
34. The style of this long letter bears a singular resemblance to Bonnin’s, and the conclusion—an extended peroration on liberty, having previously run the gamut of self-sacrifice, decency, chauvinism, and amour propre—resembles Wedgwood’s Address to the Workmen. Whoever the author was, he might have expressed perhaps justifiable resentment at the widespread local support given to the attempted culture of silkworms, when glass and porcelain factories were allowed to founder. The stress upon £15,000 worth of imported china between April 1771 (when North repealed the duties) and August 1771, and the need to keep such a large sum of money in the provinces, was probably the source for the previously quoted statement in Watson’s Annals (see note 1 above). I am grateful to Dr. James H. Hutson for drawing my attention to the larger implications of this letter.
35. No record of Bonnin’s death has been found nor is there any will. In August 1778 Bonnin’s father died in Antigua; in October 1780 Dorothy Bonnin opened an account with the Bank of England and was described as “Widow of Bristol.” It is possible that Bonnin died at sea on the way to or from Antigua, where he may well have gone to attend his father’s funeral or settle his estate. His widow found it necessary to seek her relatives’ help in educating her five children. One of her sons returned to live and teach in Philadelphia.
36. As can be seen from fig. 10, the site of the factory was immediately divided into small lots. Apart from the aforementioned potter Thomas Jackson (see note 13 above), two other potters later lived near the factory: Jonathan Carr (d. 1784), potter, is listed in the tax records for 1775 and 1779 (Philadelphia City Hall); and James Roberts is mentioned in the latter list as living next door to Carr. A piece of a large jar of brown, salt-glazed stoneware, bearing the incised mark “carr & roberts” (see fig. 33) was found on the site of the factory. A part of the factory was used as a brass foundry for casting cannons during the Revolutionary War; John Adams wrote on March 30, 1777: “I then went to the Foundry of Brass Cannon. It is in Front Street in Southwark, nearly opposite to the Sweedes Church. This Building was formerly a China Manufactory, but is now converted into a Foundery, under the Direction of Mr. Biers [Byers], late of New York.” Lyman H. Butterfield, ed., Adams Family Correspondence, 7 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963), 2 (1776–1778): 190 (courtesy of Paul R. Huey). The main building of the factory, according to deeds and tax records, was “destroyed” about 1801. During the next thirty years or so the site was divided by another large road and heavily developed with residential houses.
37. Nor was Chinese porcelain the only hard paste available in Philadelphia at the time. According to the inventory of his household, taken in 1788, John Penn Jr. owned “a set of elegant Dresden tea china” comprising sixty-three pieces. Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 15 (1891): 374.
38. Finer and Savage, eds., Letters of Wedgwood, p. 28.
39. Wedgwood’s two letters are in Eliza Meteyard, The Life of Wedgwood: From His Private Correspondence and Family Papers (London, 1865–1866), 2:56, 131–32. The Washington reference is in B. A. Born, “Josiah Wedgwood’s Queens Ware,” Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art (May 1964): 294.
40. The range of Worcester prices, circa 1760, is given in Watney, English Blue and White Porcelain, pp. 48–49; Wedgwood prices are in Wolf Mankowitz, Wedgwood (London, 1953), p. 63. A Hessian in Philadelphia (Capt. John Heinrichs) wrote in 1778: “A manufacture was established at Mannheim . . . but it thrives as poorly as the manufacture of china . . . because the price of labor is so high.” Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 1 (1875–1876): 43. Dr. James Mease noted: “Experiments show that ware equal to that of StaVordshire might be manufactured here, if workmen could be procured.” Picture of Philadelphia, p. 75.
41. The list is described in Bernard Rackham and H. J. Plenderleith, “The Material of the English Frit Porcelains,” Burlington Magazine 51 (1927): 134–44. There would be no apparent reason for Bonnin and Morris to add bone ash to an avowedly earthenware body.
42. I am much indebted to Hugh Tait and A. E. Werner for their kind offer and to Calvin Hathaway for his cooperation. On the basis of three spot tests and this author’s judgment that the Bonnin and Morris wares were soft-paste porcelain, Marvin D. Schwartz and Richard Wolfe, in A History of American Art Porcelain (New York: Renaissance Editions, 1967), pp. 16–17 (previewed in Antiques 91 [1967]: 154), and without any appropriate recognition, “reclassified” the Bonnin and Morris pieces as porcelain; the account of the factory contained therein is almost wholly inaccurate.
43. A fragment from the site of the factory with this border is illustrated in W. W. R. Spelman, Lowestoft China (London: Jarrold and Sons, 1905), pl. lii, upper row, third from left.
44. “P” was occasionally used as a mark on early Worcester, but there is little similarity between these products and the two fruit baskets in question. An unpainted Lowestoft figure similar to that formerly in the Watney Collection is shown in the catalogue of the Antique Porcelain Company (June 1951), pl. 23; painted Lowestoft figures in the Victoria and Albert Museum differ in this detail.
45. A Lowestoft basket is shown in Watney, English Blue and White Porcelain, pl. 73b.
46. Ibid., pp. 64–65, pls. 53, 55.
47. Ibid., pl. 55b.
48. Ibid., pls. 16c and 65a.
49. Ibid., pl. 73c.
50. Ibid., pls. 13b and 13c.
51. See note 36 above. For an illustration of the Staffordshire salt-glazed stoneware saucer with scratch decoration in blue, see Graham Hood, Bonnin and Morris of Philadelphia: The First American Porcelain Factory, 1770–1772 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1972), fig. 44; for the small earthenware cup or porringer with a black glaze, see ibid., fig. 45.
52. Watney, English Blue and White Porcelain, pl. 17c.
53. I am very grateful to the General Motors Research Laboratory, in particular to Miss Alberta Harrington, Dr. Nils Muench, and Mr. Albert Ottolini, for the microprobe spectrographic analysis of this waster. The analysis revealed that the red decoration lay beneath the lead glaze and consisted largely of iron.