Some Brilliant Pottery Pieces Come Out of the Blue--From Spode’s

The Blue Room of Spode’s museum in Staffordshire, England, is a china-lover’s version of blue heaven.

The room that holds the blue and white Spode pieces, according to an article in the current issue of Victoria, dates from the late 1700s, when Josiah Spode, the elder, founded a company that still thrives in the same spot.

Spode, in 1784, perfected the process of transferring intricate engravings from copperplate to dinner plate. What followed was an age of wondrous technical and artistic invention in English pottery. Many designs in brilliant blue came from the Spode kilns and other nearby potters.

“We have some 25,000 engraved copperplates in our archives,” said Paul Wood, director of Spode. “We have books and books of historic patterns. And people still turn up with blue Spode patterns we’ve never seen before.”

The story of the period--roughly the first half of the 19th Century--is illustrated in the Blue Room. Platters, tureens, dinner plates, creamers and covered vegetable dishes stand on a Welsh dresser, just as they would have in the home of a country gentleman of the early 1800s. Nothing is later than 1846. Nothing is behind glass. Anyone who takes the escorted tour can bend close to each piece.

“Actually,” Wood said, “the room was originally created for the benefit of scholars and experts. But it’s become extremely popular with our visitors, who can also tour the rest of the museum and the factory. But their eyes always light up at the sight of this blue and white.”

Robert Copeland, Spode’s resident historian and scholar, understands the appeal of blue and white. His forebears took over the company in 1833 after Josiah Spode the younger died--it was then called Copeland and Garrett.

“Blue and white always looks fresh, looks good on almost any sort of furniture,” Copeland said, “and it always enhances the appearance of food. Even a plain piece of bread and butter looks marvelous on it. And when you think of it, there aren’t any blue foods, are there? Except, perhaps, our blue-veined Stilton cheese and your American blueberries.

“Then, of course, there’s the technical reason why cobalt blue became such a favorite. Long ago, the Chinese discovered that cobalt, imported from Persia, was the only glaze color that could withstand the high-temperature firing required for porcelain. And for a time that was just as true of our English earthenware.”

Antique Spode is rare.

“Either you spend your life haunting antique shops or you inherit it,” Wood said. For those who admire the blue and white beauties and don’t insist on antiques, six patterns from the prime period, 1806 to 1833, have been reproduced as display plates. More may follow.

“They’re made just as they were two centuries ago,” Wood said. “When a painter dies, his work ends. But so long as we have the copperplates, the engraver’s art can go on through the ages.”

Pat Halfpenny, one of Staffordshire’s scholars, can read the fashions of the day from a single antique blue and white plate, such as a realistic view of the Boston Statehouse.

“Such scenic pieces,” she told Victoria, “with views of Oxford or stately homes, usually a different one on each plate--were very popular between 1815 and 1830. This one was made for the American market; a very important customer and a major influence, then and now. Staffordshire wares were proudly displayed in the comfortable homes of Boston and Philadelphia and journeyed across the prairies in covered wagons. We have a saying here in Staffordshire: ‘If America sneezes, the Potteries catch cold.’ ”