Limoges Porcelain

The generic term porcelain refers to a ceramic material that is made by mixing various raw materials, including clay and kaolinite, together with water to create a paste. Forming the resulting mass into a desired shape and then firing the shape at between 1200 degrees C (2192 F) and 1400 degrees C (2552 F) produces porcelain. At these very elevated temperatures glass and the mineral mullite form, giving the body great strength and translucence. There are many significant properties associated with porcelain. Among them are: great strength, brittleness, low elasticity, and permeability, translucence, a ringing resonance, high resistance to thermal shock and resistance to chemical attack.

Porcelain is used to make decorative objects, table and kitchenwares, fine art objects, tiles, laboratory ware, dental forms and electrical insulators. Decorative porcelain was made in two ways; under glaze decoration and over glaze decoration. The under glaze decoration was accomplished by bisque firing the form, applying metal containing decorative pigments (frequently gold, cobalt or copper), then applying the top glaze and finish firing the form. The over glaze decoration consisted of applying various colored enamels over glazed and fired forms.

Examples of so-called hard paste porcelain wares are Limoges and Meissen in Europe and Tucker in the United States. It is widely thought that porcelain originated in China, flourished in the Islamic world and gradually made its way to Europe in approximately 1708 from which it evolved to the United States.

The subject of today’s video is Limoges Porcelain, hard paste porcelain that was produced in factories in and around Limoges, France beginning in the late 1700’s. Limoges does not refer to a specific manufacturer but rather to the general location in which it was made. The discovery of economically mineable quantities of the mineral kaolinite near Limoges made manufacturing of beautiful high quality ware possible. Haviland and Company, a major manufacturer of Limoges porcelain was established and flourished after the French revolution. Production from the approximately 45 factories that produced Limoges porcelain at one time or another, continued until 1930 or so.

Much of the production from these factories was sold and exported as undecorated “white wares” or blanks. The blanks were subsequently decorated. To a certain extent they were decorated by professional artists but many of the blanks were used in popular crafts activities in the late 19th century. Although some pieces of Limoges are decorated and signed by known artists many are not. Therefore Limoges ware must be judged on its merits with particular attention paid to the quality of the decoration and the level of detail depicted. Obviously, those pieces of Limoges that bear factory and studio marks represent greater value than those which cannot be authenticated.

To view the video please click on the link below.

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