A NANTGARW (LONDON-DECORATED) ORNITHOLOGICAL SOUP-PLATE

The present plate has a similar border design to the service presented to the Rt. Hon. William Brace, P.C. which offers valuable clues to the London workshop responsible for the decoration. W.D. John attributed the decoration to Robins and Randall, see W.D. John and Katherine Coombes, Nantgarw Porcelain, Supplement Number Two, The Mackintosh Services with Exotic Bird Decoration, Newport, 1969, illustration no. 5 for four plates from this service, all marked in red for Bradley & Co., Pall-Mall, London. However, Oliver Fairclough convincingly re-attributes them to the Bradley workshop on the strength of a plate decorated in a similar style with a central bird, signed 'J Bradley & Co. 47 Pall-Mall London'. See Oliver Fairclough, 'The London China Trade 1800-1830', English Ceramic Circle Transactions, Vol. 16, pt. 2, 1997, pp. 206-8. The author discusses the Bradley workshop, a firm of china and glass retailers and decorators. The ornithological designs for the Brace service and the current plate were based on George Edwards's Natural History of Uncommon Birds, published between 1743-1751. See also 'Sir Leslie Joseph Loan Exhibition of Swansea Porcelain', Exhibition Catalogue, Swansea 1969, no. 217, p. 30 for a plate painted with an ornithological subject with the same moulded border, named in iron-red script and marked for J. Bradley & Co. 47 Pall-Mall, London.