All you need is love

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London has been coming to terms with a hateful act in the last number of hours, so we need some love! This is a beautiful little figure of mother love, made by the Bow factory in about 1765.

The Bow Porcelain Factory, just down the river of my stock room in East London, was one of the first potteries in Britain to make soft paste porcelain, and most probably the very first to use bone ash, which later got perfected by Josiah Spode to what is now the universally used "bone china". Bow was the main competitor of the Chelsea Porcelain Factory, but where Chelsea made very fine slip cast porcelain, Bow made a different soft paste porcelain that tended to be softer and could be pressed into moulds. Bow served a larger public, generally at lower prices. The factory was only in operation between 1743 and 1774, after which the tradition got incorporated into some of the later famous potteries such as Worcester and Derby. As the factory didn't exist for that long, items are now very rare.

This figure of a goat and her kid is probably from around 1765, which was at the height of Bow's ability to make beautiful figurines often copied from Chelsea or Meissen. The porcelain is relatively translucent with a milky greyish glaze. The two goats are placed in front of a bocage of bright green foliage with flowers in red, pink, pule, yellow and blue. The mother goat looks probing, the kid seems to be bleating at her - probably hungry for some milk! I adore this little figure for its simplicity and the very real, emotional character of the goats. I think Bow excelled in making their figures emotional - they weren't as perfect as some other makers', but they had that extra love in them.

You can find these sweeties in my shop (they would make a perfect and very special Christmas gift!), as well as many other items, and if you always want to see the latest, follow my instagram feed... I post pictures and stories every single day 🐐🍼❤️

Enjoy your weekend!