Transferware
Josiah Wedgwood, "Darwin Water Lily," 1806.
Transfer Printing
Transfer printing is a method of decorating pottery using an engraved copper or steel plate from which a print on paper is taken and then transferred by pressing onto the ceramic piece. Pottery decorated using this technique is known as transferware. The transfer-printing technique was essential for adding complex decoration to relatively cheap pottery.
It was developed in Staffordshire, England beginning in the 1750s and in the 19th century became enormously popular. The bulk of production was from the dominant Staffordshire pottery industry. America was a major market for English transfer-printed wares, whose imagery was adapted to the American market.
Process
The process starts with an engraved metal printing plate similar to those used for making engravings or etchings on paper. The plate is used to print the pattern on tissue paper, using mixes of special pigments that stand up to firing as the "ink". The transfer is then put pigment-side down onto the piece of pottery, so that then sticky ink transfers to the ceramic surface. Usually several different transfer sections were needed for each piece if the design covered the whole object.
The paper is either floated off by soaking the piece in water, or left to burn off during the firing. The transfer print can be applied over or under the ceramic glaze, but the underglaze method gives much more durable decoration. The ceramic is then glazed (if this had not been done already) and fired in a kiln to fix the pattern. With overglaze printing only a low temperature firing was needed.
Transfer pottery printing steel roller, V&A Museum, England.
Josiah Wedgwood, "The Ape and the Fox," c. 1775, creamware.
Before transfer printing, ceramics were hand painted, a labor-intensive and expensive process. Transfer printing enabled the high quality of representation that had been developed in painting on porcelain to be done far more cheaply, in the process making decorated ceramics much more affordable for consumers. Initially, it was also mostly used on porcelain, but after a few years it was also used on the new high-quality earthenwares that English potters had been developing, such as creamware.
Watch this video for a demonstration of the transfer printing process!
Color
Early transfer printing produced a single color, which was most often in black or brown. Later, cobalt oxide blue, inspired by Chinese porcelain, was used. Color was restricted to these three because they were the only ones that could withstand the heat of the glaze firing.
In the early-19th century, the introduction of new metals and new color-making processes allowed a greater range of underglaze-printing colors to develop. Known as 'fancy colors,' potteries like Spode began producing wares in green, pink, and lilac.
Multi-color designs could be produced using multiple transfer tissue prints, usually the border in one color and the well in another.
Thomas Mayer, "Mogul Scenery," 1826-38, underglaze printed earthenware.
Copeland & Garrett, Unnamed Pattern, 1833-47, underglaze printed earthenware with overglaze clobbering.
Another method of embellishment was that a single color transfer item may be hand painted inside the confines of the design (like petals and leaves) and then glazed. This was called "clobbering". It is speculated that clobbering was developed in response to the cry by unemployed artisans who had been replaced by transfer printing.
Later a process called polychroming was used. This produced very bright almost enameled looking colors with a high glaze.
Polychrome was created using multiple plates and four colors: yellow, blue, red, and black. An image would be separated in four parts, one for each color. Each image would be applied to the ware in layers, thereby building up the full-color design.
F. & R. Pratt & Co., "The Battle of the Nile," c. 1818-1920, polychrome earthenware.
Early Design
The source for the earliest transferware designs was 18th-century blue-and-white Chinese porcelain, which was very popular in England at the time. Italian scenes were also replicated in blue on white. During this early period in transferware, patterns such as ‘Willow’ were introduced and quickly became entrenched in the form’s visual vocabulary.
Spode Ceramic Works, Unnamed Pattern, c. 1820-30.
Wedgwood & Co., "California," 1849.
Pattern Names
Transferware pattern names run the gamut from descriptive to puzzling. Many patterns have no name at all. One commonality in the majority of all transferware patterns, however, is that names often have no connection to the pattern.
For instance, Wedgwood & Co. of the Unicorn Pottery and Pinnox Works in Tunstall, Staffordshire registered a pattern called "California" in 1849. This is perhaps not surprising, considering the California Gold Rush in the United States began in 1848 and was widely reported in Great Britain.
In typical fashion though, the "California" pattern bears no connection to the actual California. Instead, it depicts a large colonnaded castle at the foot of mountains in the right background with Classical statue-flanked stairs in the foreground and boaters on the water in the middle ground.
Dating
Dating and identifying items can be easy if the items are registered under the English system. The registration process was similar to the copyright system used today in the USA. From 1842-1883 English items carried a diamond-shaped mark which could be read to decipher the actual day a pattern was registered. After 1884 the registry went to a single number series, for example, ‘Rd. No. 12342,’ which can be used to determine the pattern registration date to within approximately one year. Registration numbers greater than 360,000 indicate 20th century manufacture. Keep in mind that the registration date and production date are not synonymous. A transferware piece registered in 1888 could easily have been produced ten years later. Potteries reproduced their popular patterns for years and when a pottery changed hands, the patterns were passed on as well and could be reproduced with the new potter's mark. When dating a piece, study the style of the maker's mark, impressed/painted numbers, and other marks beyond the Rd. No. to determine a production date.
Minton & Co., "Belmont Japan," registered 22 June 1860.
William Alsager Adderley & Co., "Anglais," registered 20 October 1883.
Whittaker & Co., "Paris," registered 1889.
Chasing Dates
The word ‘Limited’ or an abbreviation like ‘Ld.’ or ‘Ltd.’ in the pottery firm's name indicates a date after 1860 and was not generally used until the 1880s.
Any piece having the word ‘Trade Mark’ was manufactured after the Trade Mark Act of 1862 and the words generally denote manufacture after 1875.
The word ‘England’ may appear on an item after 1891 to comply with the McKinley Tariff Act. ‘Made in England’ indicates an item was produced after 1921.
Unmarked items, as you might imagine, can be more difficult to trace in terms of their origin. The type of body, glaze, styling, and decoration technique will be your most important clues to identification when there is no mark or the mark was a commonly used device, such as the anchor or royal arms.