Collecting
I n the late 1700s, an unusual situation arose in Britain's ceramics industry. Miles Mason and his fellow china dealers ‘contrived to lower the wholesale market auction value of Chinese ceramics usually offered at the East India Company (EIC) auctions of freshly imported goods’, explains ceramics and oriental art specialist Lars
Tharp. Their intention was to buy up a monopoly of the Chinese china intended for the retailers’ market. But, as a result, they eroded the commission enjoyed by the EIC and merely pushed the EIC into stopping Chinese ceramic imports entirely, ‘leaving the china merchants without stock. The merchants had no choice but to turn manufacturers themselves.’ By the early 19th century, some of these savvy merchants had established Staffordshire firms where they sought to create a durable porcelain substitute that could be massproduced and would prove more affordable than imported goods.
The term ‘ironstone’ was coined in July 1813, whenBy the time Mason's patent had expired in 1827, many other potteries were manufacturing their own suspiciously similar ranges. Lars believes Mason deliberately misled his competitors in the ‘cut-throat’ ceramics industry by publishing a ‘bogus’ recipe for ironstone, arguing that Mason's precautions were wellfounded, as ‘the roll-call of no fewer than 172 ironstone manufacturing firms established or merged in Staffordshire since the early 1800s testifies – many using a style of mark intended to suggest a Mason's origin’. As well as pretty transferware pieces, utilitarian white ironstone was also made in vast quantities in England, France and later in America, too.
