tiny figures

This month's lecture at the newly renamed Art Society, Colchester (not to be confused with The Colchester Art Society) was about eighteenth century porcelain figures.  I set off to the talk in a cheerful spirit of open minded inquiry, knowing practically nothing about porcelain figures and having no desire to possess any.  We looked at what seemed like rooms and rooms of them at the splendid Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle, and I was left simultaneously charmed, and appalled at how on earth you would dust them, and how much generations of housemaids had probably hated and feared them, with all their little hands and frilly cuffs and tiny flutes just waiting to break off.

My spirit of open minded inquiry was put to the test before I ever made it to the hall, since I found my normal route through central Colchester blocked and diversion signs in place.  Thinking about it there was something in the local paper a couple of days ago about a burst water main.  Fortunately, following the diversion signs I spotted the name of a road I recognized, turned into it, and found there was legal on-street parking for non-residents as long as I was gone by half past twelve, and that a footpath led through to where I wanted to be.  That will be useful to know for future reference, since parking in the road I've always used in the past is quite tight and I have wondered what I should do on the day when I finally couldn't find a space at all, or at least not one accessible to anybody as bad at parallel parking as I am.

Eighteenth century porcelain figures turned out to be thoroughly entertaining, as odd subjects often are if you just go with the flow.  The first ones appeared at the start of the century, and were used as table decorations on grand occasions, replacing the confectioners' sugar sculptures that used to be placed down the middle of the table.  Thanks to BBC documentaries about the English renaissance and the history of confectionery, I was aware of the fashion for decorative and inedible sugar items, but never grasped that they were the precursors to the first china table decorations.  It's nice when the dots join up.

Meissen was the first and for decades the sharpest manufacturer, who managed to keep the technical secrets of making hard porcelain under wraps for years before a worker escaped (almost literally) and sold the knowledge to other makers around Germany.  England had the Bow works, the Chelsea works, the Derby works and presumably eventually lots of other works, but they dealt for years in soft porcelain, which didn't allow the same crisp detail, although much of it had a sort of naive charm.  Eventually porcelain figures found their way off the dining table to the mantelpiece and china cabinet, became larger, and frequently flat backed because they were no longer designed to be seen in the round.

It was fun.  I'd rather like to go back to the Bowes Museum for another look, now I know a little more about it, or there's always the V&A, which is closer to home.