Spode

Spode is an English brand of pottery and homewares produced in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Spode was founded by Josiah Spode (1733¹–1797) in 1770, and was responsible for perfecting two important techniques that were crucial to the worldwide success of the English pottery industry in the 19th century: transfer printing on earthenware and bone china. Spode perfected the technique for transfer printing in underglaze blue on fine earthenware in 1783–1784 – a development that led to the launch in 1816 of Spode's Blue Italian range, which has remained in production ever since. The company is credited with developing, around 1790, the formula for bone china. Josiah Spode's son, Josiah Spode II, successfully marketed bone china. In 2008, the Copeland Spode company went through some financial troubles. It was taken over in 2009 by Portmeirion Group, a pottery and homewares company based in Stoke-on-Trent. Many items in Spode's Blue Italian and Woodland ranges are made at Portmeirion Group's factory in Stoke-on-Trent.

Spode is an English brand of pottery and homewares produced in Stoke-on-Trent, England. Spode was founded by Josiah Spode (1733–1797) in 1770, and was responsible for perfecting two important techniques that were crucial to the worldwide success of the English pottery industry in the 19th century: transfer printing on earthenware and bone china. Spode perfected the technique for transfer printing in underglaze blue on fine earthenware in 1783–1784 – a development that led to the launch in 1816 of Spode's Blue Italian range, which has remained in production ever since. The company is credited with developing, around 1790, the formula for bone china. Josiah Spode's son, Josiah Spode II, successfully marketed bone china. In 2008, the Copeland Spode company went through some financial troubles. It was taken over in 2009 by Portmeirion Group, a pottery and homewares company based in Stoke-on-Trent. Many items in Spode's Blue Italian and Woodland ranges are made at Portmeirion Group's factory in Stoke-on-Trent. ==Spode "Stone-China"== After some early trials Spode perfected a stoneware that came closer to porcelain than any previously, and introduced his "Stone-China" in 1813. It was light in body, greyish-white and gritty where it was not glazed and approached translucence in the early wares. Spode pattern books, which record about 75,000 patterns, survive from about 1800. In Spode's similar "Felspar porcelain", introduced on the market in 1821, felspar was an ingredient, substituted for the Cornish stone in his standard bone china body, giving rise to his slightly misleading name "Felspar porcelain", to what is in fact an extremely refined stoneware comparable to the rival "Mason's ironstone", produced by Josiah II's nephew, Charles James Mason, and patented in 1813. Spode's "Felspar porcelain" continued into the Copeland & Garrett phase of the company (1833–1847). Armorial services were provided for the Honourable East India Company, 1823, and the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths, c1824. Some of the ware employed underglaze blue and iron red with touches of gilding in imitation of "Imari porcelain" that had been introduced on Spode's bone china in the first decade of the century: the most familiar "Tobacco-leaf pattern" (2061) continued to be made by Spode's successors, William Taylor Copeland, and then "W.T. Copeland & Sons, late Spode".

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