THE CHATEAU'S COLLECTION OF SPODE CHINA!

hello and welcome to Sundays at the Chateau where today I would like to tell you all about my collection of Spode blue and white porcelain for those of you who don't know me I'm Stephanie the Chatelain of the 16th century chateau in the heart of France and if you love all things Chateau then please subscribe to this channel because every Sunday I talk about a different aspect of chateau life most of the porcelaine in the kitchen is blue-and-white and we use it for everyday use I really like blue and white because you can mix different styles different eras different companies and it doesn't matter it all marries really well together and that's super useful in a huge house that often has 20 people eating in it because we get a lot of breakages so trying to keep one perfect set of everything matching is really difficult so this is a tip if you have a very big family or lots of friends who love breaking things blue and whites a great way to go my collection had a huge kickstart because just after I'd bought the Chateau back in 2006 my parents and I went to stoke-on-trent to visit the factory shops my father absolutely loved the decorative arts he was an amazing artist himself and so he would love going to auctions with me and visiting factory shops he really liked porcelaine anything artistic he was interested in anything beautiful so when we went to the factory shops we were just running rampant and my mother was quite shocked and felt that we should be calming ourselves down and not buying so much but now I'm so grateful that my father was like that because 16 years later I still haven't had to buy anymore plates for the kitchen and also because every single time I take a plate out of the cupboard it reminds me of my father and Factory shops were very important because I was on a very strict budget we'd only just brought that on and I knew that enormous works were ahead of us we needed to redo all of the electrics all of the plumbing put in about 12 bathrooms change the kitchen everything needed redoing so I didn't have a budget for porcelain but I did need plates to run the Chateau and often factory shops can be a very good way of finding things I understand if people want everything to be absolutely perfect in their dining sets but it's not what I was going for for everyday kitchen use here because I knew that things would get chipped and broken and I wanted them to be fairly inexpensive but still beautiful so that I could replace them when needed what we didn't realize at the time in 2006 is that Spode was on the edge of bankruptcy and about to end it 230 year run of continuous operation which is extraordinarily sad though luckily it's now been bought by the Port Marion group who are only 200 yards down the road so it stayed in stoke-on-trent but it did mean that the factory shop was unusually full of bargains we didn't know why but we absolutely made the most of it and afterwards I started to get interested in where these designs had come from what was the history behind the plates and what was the history behind the company so that's what I would like to tell you a little bit about today English China is famous throughout the world and that is largely because of people like Spode and Wedgwood Wedgwood and Spode both grew up in the area of stoke-on-trent and actually knew each other and apprenticed under the same potter thomas Wheeldon who at the time was considered to be one of the most successful potters in england and i would love to tell you more about Wedgwood and his innovations and his life story another time if you'd like to hear about that let me know but today I'm going to focus on Spode whilst history is full of stories of people who achieved extraordinary things after being born into wealth and luxury I think I'm most attracted to the stories of people who were born with nothing in life and who managed to make something of themselves against all the odds that to me is the most incredibly impressive thing jeziah Spode was born in 1733 to parents who were paupers and not only that by the age of 6 both of them had died and he was left an orphan at the age of 16 he started working for Thomas Wheeldon who at the time was famous for Staffordshire figures and tortoiseshell ware which was very fashionable in the 18th century tortoiseshell in general was fashionable and so plates that imitated it were very much sought after Spode quickly showed extraordinary promise and by 1776 he was to buy his own pottery works in stoke-on-trent and it was then that he became famous for developing and affecting two aspects of the art of porcelain in 1784 he perfected the technique of underglaze transfer printing which enabled beautiful images to be faithfully reproduced onto various different shapes of porcelain it was an extremely arduous process because each image needed to be hand engraved onto copper plate and each copper plate took about six man weeks to create and required extraordinary skill and for each image there needed to be many different copper plates because each of the bits of China would be a different size so for a tiny milk jug and a plate to have the same image you obviously needed in different scales and because of this development in the same year 1784 he was able to launch spode's first willow pattern this was that original famous willow pattern and a little piece of it is to be found in many many houses around the globe it's been especially popular in England and in America there was a whole series of willow pattern plates some of which like this one have been reproduced for the Blue Room collection this is temple with panel from 1798 and this one is temple landscape introduced in 1813 I use these two a lot especially to serve breakfast to our BMB guests and the company was still adding to the willow series that they'd started in 1790 in 1884 which is when this one Newbridge was introduced and those of you who have seen the video about the decoration of the dining room here at LaLanne will know that we have a willow pattern inspired wallpaper in there and the willow pattern has become extremely famous around the world at that time he was still using earthenware and putting his transfers onto that but he then started to perfect a form of finer porcelain and he shifted to porcelaine he called it Stoke China but its name changed eventually to bone china because he had discovered a new formula adding far more ash bone to china than the and it's that that made it so strong and that's the formula of bone china that's still used in england today after josiah spode's unexpected death in 1797 his son Josiah Spode ii took over the farm and he was the perfect man for the job because he had spent a lot of time in london and understood how to market his wares to the fashionable London market of the 18th century he was a brilliant salesman who transformed Spode into the largest pottery in stoke-on-trent at the height of the Golden Age of English ceramics and he himself went on to be named Potter to the Prince of Wales and the pattern books from those days show that Spode offered five thousand standard patterns not including special orders that they would happily take on commission Spode launched a staggering amount of new patterns in botanical themes oriental themes various landscapes often using new books of engravings that had been published at the time for example the karamanian series shows over 12 different views which all taken from luigi Mayer's 1803 views in the Ottoman Empire I've just realised that I don't have any examples of the karamanian series so now I feel as though I need to go on eBay as soon as I finished making this video there blue and white China ware was considered the finest in production and the most famous pattern within it was the Italian pattern that was launched in 1816 and this pattern is still being produced today launched in 1816 still going strong in 2020 it shows an adil ik italian landscape with roman ruins in the background little figures in the foreground and some sheep scattered here and there this is a modern version of the Italian plate you can see the ruins there's always a castle in the background and it always appears to be a man I think it looks as though he's pushing a woman into the river maybe he's trying to pull her out who knows and sometimes there a three sheep sometimes there are two sheep there's a few cattle going into the river and somebody I think reading in a grotto and the landscape is framed with an 18th century in mari oriental border and you can see that lovely 18th century in Mari border giving rather an exotic touch here's a little jog of the same design again this one is modern but it just shows you how many different sizes they need to make the same image in to be able to produce every different type of China ware and if you look at Italian patterns from different periods there are little idiosyncrasies the number of sheep change the style of the castles in the background change and here is an older version of the same design because this one is from the Copeland factory so sometime between 1846 and 1966 and you can see that it's quite different from the modern one the castle in the background is very different it actually looks much more like a church spire than in this one it's an Arcadian idyll which has been speaking to people for centuries Josiah Spode the second had been in partnership with William Copeland and on his death and the death of Copeland the factory was bought by William Copeland son and his business partner Garrett so from 1833 Spode was actually marked Copeland and Garrett in the Copeland and Garrett period yet more patterns were added to the books for example between 1832 and 1834 finden published his landscape and portrait illustrations to the life and works of Lord Byron and the company used a lot of these images on more of its transferware here you can see an image called the Italian city of Bologna at the foot of the Apennines because this is one of the places that was important in Lord Byron's life in 1846 Copeland bought the company outright and from then on and for for subsequent generations until 1966 the pieces were marked Copland which is why it can be confusing sometimes because you can find a piece that looks like Spode but it might be marked Spode it might be marked Copeland and Garrett we may simply be marked Copeland but it's all the same factory running continuously from 1733 Copeland made spectacular pieces of porcelain of the Victorian era they exhibited in the great exhibitions of London and of Paris and between 1833 and 1935 thousand new patterns were introduced which is a rate of 10 per week I can't imagine any company today being quite that prolific in 1958 a room called the Blue Room had been established at the SPO Factory in stoke-on-trent as a kind of Museum of all of the extraordinary blue and white transfer patterns that they had been making there for centuries and because of the beauty of that Blue Room museum within the factory in the 1990s that then managing director of Spode decided to relaunch a lot of those classic transferware designs under the new name the Blue Room collection and that's the collection that I was buying with my father back in 2006 in Spode you can see that on the back they say the Blue Room collection and this one is the image room which was introduced in 1811 and actually this is my favorite plate in the house this is the one I usually choose to eat off I really like the way that the image goes beyond the lip almost to the very edge the patterns come in all shapes and sizes I have some lovely little spice holders this one is from 1812 and is called grasshopper and took me a while to find him there is and this one is girl Atwell which was a pattern first introduced in 1822 and you can see from this house tiles changed very quickly the last one was 1822 and this is 1833 and the style of the arts completely different it's based on the works of watt oh this one is Portland bars introduced in 1832 and this is the verse that was so important to Wedgwood and that inspired so many English ceramics I really really enjoy this plate because it's so sparse and elegant spare but when you look closer you see how incredibly the loved us it is it's really quite naughty for the time this darker blue one is another favorite of mine it contrasts very well when there's lots of different types of blue around the table and this is botanical first introduced in 1820 one of my favorite shapes are the modern jumbo mugs that the company produce again in the old patterns but a new shape this is fantastic for breakfast and I'd like to have a lot of tea this is the Indian sporting pattern that was first introduced in 1807 it's just wonderful people on an elephant I think they must be Thai you're hunting not that poor antelope looks as though it's just being caught the hunting itself I don't like but the prints I very much do so exotic look at this little creature does not look happy to be found this jumbo mug is from the Aesop's fables collection and this is the leopard and the Fox but there were a lot of prints issued in the Aesop's fable collection and there's one of a lion that I really really want to get hold of this one was first introduced in 1830 but the late 20th century was a very hard time for Spode because advances in computerised printing meant that the skills needed for transfer were were no longer that important and things could be done far more cheaply they tried to outsource some of their printing to China to reduce costs but that just angered their clients and in 2008 the factory closed after 230 years of continuous operation but luckily lottery funding enabled the Spode Museum Trust Heritage Center to open on the site of the original factory this will say that the people of England could remember a very important part of their heritage but funds were very low and not that much was able to be done there and the museum even now is entirely staffed by volunteers but the great news is it in 2016 entirely because of donations from the American Friends of the Spode Museum the Blue Room was able to be opened again back in the Heritage Museum in stoke-on-trent everything was unpacked from the crêpes that they've been languishing in for nearly ten years and they're back on display if you're ever in stoke-on-trent you can see these glorious works of art that have been created in England for decades and that reflect changing tastes through the centuries different influences from various countries things that people considered fashionable at the time they're a wonderful part of our heritage in our history so I don't know who you are the American Friends of the Spode museum but thank you next time I'm in stoke-on-trent I'm definitely going to go thankfully in 2009 it was bought by the put Maron group who are a British company also producing porcelain and who continued to produce many of spode's most famous works and also introducing new pieces to the range and their Factory is only 200 yards from Josiah's both original Factory once again Spode is being made in England I hope you enjoyed our little exploration into the world of Spode and beautiful China if you did it would be great if you could subscribe to this channel they'll be lots more like this in future now I think I'm going to lay the table for lunch with some really beautiful blue and white China and I made some napkins in the same fabric as our curtains in the kitchen which came from another room in the Chateau and we had to change the wool fabric and when we washed it we couldn't put it back so I turned it into things for the kitchen so that it would stay in the chateau and again it's the great thing about blue-and-white it doesn't matter if it's not matching doesn't even matter if it's not quite the same blue everything come makes perfectly harmoniously together now there's one thing missing we need some flowers and not much in the garden at the moment but I think I saw that there were daffodils starting in the woods there aren't many yet but they'll make a world of difference to the table there we go and in this way a very simple meal of just bread cheese or they have some leftover quiche turns into something special and it doesn't require any more effort than just taking the things out of the fridge and putting them onto the table the only difference is a couple of flowers beautiful blue and white China this really is French life at its finest I can hear everyone chatting in the room next door I think they're getting hungry I better go and call them I really hope you enjoyed this video our exploration into the world of Spode if you did it will be great if you subscribe to this channel because every new subscriber really helps us in our restorations here and I want to give a heartfelt thank you to all of our patrons who make this vlog and the renovation of this Chateau possible thank you to our Mackay and Marquis of Leland's Brian Woodward and Caroline Foster and to all our counts and countesses of La Land whose names you'll see here thank you thank you to all of our patrons see you next week [Music] you

Channel: The Chateau Diaries

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Keywords: chateau de lalande, chateau diaries, chateau life, chateaux in france, chatelaine, dream chateau, escape to the chateau, escape to the chateau diy, french castles, french country home, french country house, french country living, historic house, life in a chateau, living in a castle today, living in a chateau, living in a french chateau, stately home, stephanie chateau, stephanie jarvis, stephanie jarvis chateau de la lande, the chateau diaries, spode, spode china

Id: F-Ko8tHEaE4

Length: 19min 13sec (1153 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 23 2020