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Cultural Heritage Science

Howell G. M. Edwards

Porcelain Analysis
and Its Role in the
Forensic Attribution
of Ceramic Specimens
Cultural Heritage Science

Series Editors
Klaas Jan van den Berg, Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands, Amsterdam,
The Netherlands
Aviva Burnstock, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK
Koen Janssens, Department of Chemistry, University of Antwerp, Antwerp,
Belgium
Robert van Langh, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Jennifer Mass, Bard Graduate Center, New York, NY, USA
Austin Nevin, Head of Conservation, Courtauld Institute of Art, London, UK
Bertrand Lavedrine, Centre de Recherche sur la Conservation des Collections,
Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France
Bronwyn Ormsby, Conservation Science & Preventive Conservation, Tate Britain,
London, UK
Matija Strlic, Institute for Sustainable Heritage, University College London,
London, UK
The preservation and interpretation of our cultural heritage is one of the major
challenges of today’s society. Cultural Heritage Science is a highly interdisciplinary
book series covering all aspects of conservation, analysis and interpretation of
artworks, objects and materials from our collective cultural heritage. The series
focuses on science and conservation in three main fields
• Art technology
• Active conservation and restoration
• Preventive conservation and risk management
The series addresses conservators and conservation scientists at museums, insti-
tutes, universities and heritage organizations. It also provides valuable information
for curators and decision makers at museums and heritage organizations. Cultural
Heritage Science comprises two subseries, one focusing on advanced methods and
technology for conservation experts, the second presenting the latest developments
in conservation science. All titles in the book series will be peer reviewed. Titles will
be published as printed books and as eBooks, opening up the opportunity to include
electronic supplementary material (videos, high-resolution figures, special data
formats, and access to databases).

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/13104


Howell G. M. Edwards

Porcelain Analysis and Its


Role in the Forensic
Attribution of Ceramic
Specimens
Howell G. M. Edwards
Emeritus Professor of Molecular Spectroscopy,
Chemistry and Biosciences, Faculty of Life Sciences
University of Bradford
Bradford, UK

ISSN 2366-6226 ISSN 2366-6234 (electronic)


Cultural Heritage Science
ISBN 978-3-030-80951-5 ISBN 978-3-030-80952-2 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80952-2

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland
AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of
illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and
transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by
similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this
book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Cover illustration: Dinner plate from the Barry-Barry (Pendock-Barry) armorial service supplied from the
Derby China Works to Pendock Barry Neale of Tollerton Hall, Nottinghamshire, in 1806/7. It is a
beautiful example of William Billingsley’s superb rose painting on porcelain and was executed
externally for the Derby China Works when he was resident in Brampton-in-Torksey. This armorial
exhibits only the escutcheon contained within a wreath of oak leaves and acorns and detailed genealogical,
analytical and heraldic research was critical for the determination of its correct attribution and chronology.

This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the
shoulders of giants”.
Sir Isaac Newton FRS (1642–1727), Letter to
Robert Hooke FRS (1635–1703), 5th
February 1675.
Preface

“To whom shall I give this beautiful book just printed, polished and perfect . . .
You used to think that my trifles were worth something.
Now please take this book, the labour of a life, such as it is, and see that it remains for all
ages”.
Gaius Valerius Catullus (84–54 BCE), Carmina I.1.

“Arts and science should be mines where the noise of new works and further advances is
heard on every side”.
Sir Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, Novum Organum, Book I, XC, 1620 (The New
Instrument of Science): proposing that the search for truth and the verification of facts
through inductive reasoning should be mandatory before proceeding further, forming the
basis of the Scientific Method.

The material for this book arose from research into porcelains which has been
carried out by the author over many years, as a collector in appreciation of their
artistic beauty, as an analytical chemist in the scientific interrogation of their body
paste, enamel pigments and glaze compositions and as a ceramic historian in the
assessment of the manufactory foundations and of their appropriate correlation with
available documentation, literature and opinions that have been expressed relating to
their recipes, formulations and business survival against intense competition from
home and abroad. Generally, the attribution of the origin of a porcelain artefact from
earliest times has been achieved through the application of several parameters,
including its provenance, associated documentation relating to its manufacture,
factory marks and upon a stylistic evaluation, whereby the shape, texture and design
of the item, its applied enamelling and decorative artistry have been accepted as an
exemplary standard and established as such by experts and connoisseurs of the
genre. In common with other artworks, the forging or faking of porcelains has
been prevalent through the ages and, whereas some of these are manifestly poor
reflections of the antique artefacts, others have been well executed and have then
proved rather difficult to differentiate from the genuine article. It is then quite
difficult for the definitive declaration of the authenticity of an unmarked and
potentially rare piece of porcelain to be satisfactorily and unequivocally

vii
viii Preface

accomplished by expert opinion alone, especially when other supporting evidential


information such as chemical analysis and documentary provenance are totally
absent. This leaves a void in which science can make a contribution with hard
experimental data derived from the chemical analysis of an artefact, especially of
the body paste, pigments and glaze compositions and also of the molecular miner-
alogy, from which a measured interpretation can be forthcoming as to whether or not
these data are consistent with an assignment or attribution of the artefact to a
particular factory, and correlating with its recorded recipes and production pro-
cesses. The vexed question of factory marks also arises here, in that these too have
often been imitated profusely through the ages and cleverly transcribed by unscru-
pulous fakers in an attempt to convince potential purchasers of the authenticity of a
seemingly rare and valuable porcelain artwork. In some cases, the presence of a
factory mark on a particular artefact has been incorrectly placed or improperly
executed and this can be a good indicator of a potential forgery, whereas in others
this is not so clearly defined and care should then be taken regarding the acceptance
or rejection of factory marks per se at face value.
The advantage of the forensic holistic approach to the identification of unknown
specimens of an artwork is seen to be manifest in other applications at the arts/
science interface, whereby the final objective evaluation is made on the basis of a
weighed consideration of all evidential material pertaining to the investigation,
especially in three mutually independent and identified areas of analytical chemical
data, historical documentation and expert opinion or connoisseurship. A potentially
troublesome area, which might not be appreciated at first sight, is the establishment
of unimpeachably correct exemplars of an artist’s work or of a particular factory’s
production, upon which reliance can be sought as to the characteristic traits, com-
positions and mannerisms of stylistic decoration instituted thereon. In the past, these
artistic works or factory exemplars have been selected perhaps rather arbitrarily on
the basis of expert opinion alone, or worse, because they were obtained from the
collection of a noted collector and connoisseur in that area and have thereby been
assumed to be truly representative of the genre belonging to that manufactory.
Unfortunately, in some cases these identifications were made for the best of reasons
at the time but are now perceived to be clearly misplaced or at least open to further
question and a wider analytical debate. Therefore, there is also now a need to
re-evaluate several standard pieces of exemplary ceramic artwork from which
other subsequent comparative assessments may have been undertaken which has
perhaps resulted in the summary rejection of otherwise perfectly good examples of a
factory’s output and thereby condemning their assignment to the category of being
either fakes or unknown specimens of dubious authenticity, when in reality they
could be rare and genuine exemplars of perhaps an experimental phase in the factory
production.
In the holistic approach to the forensic evaluation of unknown porcelains, the
three categories of information which should be given an equal and measured
consideration for the final assessment of the attribution for an unknown ceramic
specimen are:
Preface ix

• Analytical chemical data on the elemental oxide and mineralogical composition


of the porcelain body and glaze and also perhaps the enamel pigments used in the
decoration where appropriate.
• Historical documentation, including letters and commissions in support of a
provenance of a particular item and reports of a factory’s operation and produc-
tion from personnel who worked there. An excellent example of this would be the
documented order for the original creation of a service in porcelain from a
particular factory for a named client and the discovery that surviving pieces of
this commission may still exist in the possession of that client’s family heirs or
descendants, so establishing an unimpeachable forensic and chronological audit
trail for the identification of exemplars!
• Expert opinion and connoisseurship, a stylistic evaluation, which has been
achieved after many years’ study of a particular factory’s production by an
individual: the potential underlying problem here is that unique or very rare,
non-standard examples of porcelain artefacts from a factory may not be
recognised for what they are superficially and therefore belonging properly to
the accepted genre, so they may quite reasonably have been rejected hitherto on
the basis of expert opinion alone as atypical porcelain factory exemplars. This
would clearly necessitate a review of the factual basis for their original attribution
and perhaps the potential re-classification of a specimen in the light of new
evidential material.
It is appropriate that we commence this text on what constitutes porcelain, which
comprises hard paste, soft paste, phosphatic, glassy, bone china and magnesian
bodies, and also the rather strangely termed “hybrid” bodies, its growth from its
beginnings in China to its importation into Europe and the establishment of the
European hard-paste and soft-paste manufactories to compete with the hard-paste
Chinese porcelain imports. The distinction of what is, or what is not, porcelain is not
itself a facile one and demands some careful interdisciplinary investigation. This will
then establish a scientific baseline for the comparison of the types of porcelain that
have been manufactured in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries until
the early nineteenth century. A survey of the early English and Continental European
porcelain manufactories in the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is
followed by a description of the raw materials, minerals and recipes for porcelain
manufacture and details of the chemistry of the high-temperature firing processes
involved therein, upon which the successful production outcome materially
depended. English and Welsh porcelain manufactories that were founded and
operating during the first quarter of the nineteenth century are included in this survey
as in most cases they maintained the established synthetic procedures and expertise
gained in the earlier foundations of the eighteenth century. The historical back-
grounds of several important manufactories are then considered, highlighting the
imperfections in the written record that have been perpetuated through the ages
which can materially affect one’s current understanding of their operation and the
appreciation of their factory output. The type of analytical chemical information that
has been derived from the earlier and modern interrogation of specimens, be these
x Preface

derived from fragments, shards or from perfect, finished items of china, is reviewed
and operational protocols are established for the satisfactory identification of the type
of porcelain comprising a factory’s output from the analytical data presented. Two
analytical protocols of this type for the identification of porcelain body types are
proposed: the first based upon the elemental oxide percentages and the second upon
the spectroscopic interpretation of the molecular mineralogy which pertains to the
high kiln firing temperatures used in porcelain manufacture.
The influence of the importation of Chinese porcelains into Europe on the local
growth of the European manufactories in the seventeenth and eightennth centuries is
considered alongside their marine transportation from China to Europe which was
carried out mainly by the British Honourable East India Company and the Dutch
East India Company, along with their Portuguese and Swedish marine associates.
Several case studies are examined in detail for porcelain specimens to indicate the
forensic role that is adopted by modern analytical science, with information provided
at the quantitative elemental oxide and qualitative molecular spectroscopic levels
where applicable, towards the holistic attribution of a specimen to a particular
factory and followed by discussion as to whether this is in support of the established
convention or against the accepted conclusions that have been expressed hitherto. In
several instances, the situation is a clear mandate for a status quo being maintained
regarding the attribution of a porcelain specimen, whereas in others some potential
reassessment of an earlier attribution is now indicated definitively. Overall, the
information provided by the analytical chemical data is seen to be extremely useful
and desirable for porcelain artefact identification and for its potential attribution in
the context of a holistic evaluation of porcelains. The case is made for the establish-
ment of this procedure to be adopted more widely in its proper place in ceramics
research and to assist in the future identification of hitherto unknown porcelain
artefact exemplars of questionable factory origins. In some specific cases, the
adoption of this holistic approach to the attribution of porcelain specimens still
does not result in a definitive conclusion that is universally acceptable and more
detailed studies are then advocated.
Perhaps it is not generally realised that although porcelain types can now be
defined quite precisely, the historical situation has not always been so: hence, a
mis-nomenclature or mis- attribution of fired ceramics has arisen in the past through
the use of rather careless descriptors and the logical baseline adage should be applied
as a starting point – all porcelains are ceramic but not all ceramics are porcelain!
Several ceramic historians have attempted to circumvent this difficult issue hitherto
by referring to certain ceramics as “porcellaneous”, a rather indefinite descriptor
which does nothing to clarify the situation as to whether a particular artefact is a
genuine porcelain type or not – although clearly the term does indicate that the
ceramic in question should merit its potential inclusion for consideration as a
porcelain.
The provision of analytical chemical information relating to the glaze, to the
applied pigments used in the decoration and to the presence of trace elements in
these components is now finding novel applications in the area of porcelain artefact
attribution to complement the existing analytical studies of porcelain body
Preface xi

compositions, and in several cases, this has resulted in a necessary re-evaluation of


our ideas about manufactory production processes. This has been especially infor-
mative about the use made by manufactories in the alternative sourcing of raw
materials and their pre-processing for incorporation into body pastes, enamelling
pigments and glazes during their production lifetime. In particular, trace element
analysis has been effectively applied to the exposure of modern fakes, even when
materials of apparently identical composition to those used originally have been used
in modern times in simulation of the ancient recipes.
Finally, one should not simply dismiss as a secondary consideration the person-
alities involved in any study which addresses the synthetic creation of their porce-
lains. Their drive, ambitions, hopes, trial experiments, failures and achievements
often in the face of extreme adversity and competition are as central to the history of
porcelain manufacture as are the artefacts themselves which were produced. The
rationale of the scientific analyses of porcelains is as intricately involved with the
people who created them as are the compositional details of the raw materials, both
of which can have a positive input to an understanding of the artefacts, their
production and eventually to their holistic analytical appreciation. A leading forensic
scientist has commented recently that it is usual for the forensic interrogation of a
specimen presented for chemical analysis to reveal its material composition and
perhaps its source origin, i.e. the what, but it is not usual to be able to deduce
forensically why that situation occurs – and to address this issue here a study of the
people involved in the production of the ceramic artefact can be illuminating.
Among the first mystery novels of detection in the Victorian era, with Walter
Hartright featuring as a teacher turned detective character in a pivotal role, The
Woman in White was a major work of William Wilkie Collins (1824–1889) and was
published some 28 years before the advent of Sherlock Holmes was announced in A
Study in Scarlet, which appeared in Beeton’s Christmas Annual in November 1887,
prior to its publication by Ward, Lock & Co. of London in book form in July 1888.
The Woman in White was first published in a serial form by Charles Dickens’ All The
Year Round Publishing magazine, based at No.11 Wellington Street North, London,
in 1859/1860 and then as a book by Harper Bros., Franklin Square, New York, in
1860. It was quickly hailed as a great public success, and this prompted Wilkie
Collins to make the following statement in his Preamble to the Second Edition in
1861, which is very apposite to the holistic forensic approach of this current book for
the consideration of the personalities involved in porcelain manufacture as well as
the porcelain artefacts themselves:
“I have always held the opinion that the primary object of a work should be to tell a story
and I have never believed that the effect produced by any narrative of events is essentially
dependent not on the events themselves but on the human interest which is directly connected
to them. It is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters . . . being
the sole condition upon which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can
hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers is a narrative which interests them
about men and women for the perfectly obvious reason that they are men and women
themselves. The reception accorded to The Woman in White has confirmed these opinions
and has satisfied me that I may trust to them in the future”.
xii Preface

In this book, therefore, an approach has been adopted in which the stories of the
people involved or associated with early porcelains, and their manufacture is neither
discounted nor marginalised but has been fed into the background information for
appraisal. This has been found to relate materially to artefact provenancing issues
and compositional variation and especially to the reliability of the historical docu-
mentation that has been presented hitherto on porcelain manufactories.
Keywords Chemical analysis  Minerals  Ceramics  Porcelain  Stonewares 
Analytical techniques  Historical documentation  Porcelain manufactories  Case
studies  Forensic holistic interpretation  Connoisseurship  Forgeries  Fakes 
Enamel decoration  Chinese porcelains  Early European porcelains  Glazes 
Pigments

Bradford, UK Howell G. M. Edwards


Acknowledgements

In his background research for the current text, the author acknowledges the efforts
of previous writers on the ceramic history of porcelain manufactories, many of the
earliest having to rely upon only a limited access to documentation but nevertheless
containing information from eyewitness accounts. These sources often could not be
verified independently against evidential material in the absence of chemical anal-
ysis and records, yet these historians made significant and highly important advances
in their subject which stimulated those who followed later. The establishment of
modern analytical scientific hypotheses from chemical data interpretation is
catalysed by debate and discussion, and the author wishes to acknowledge the
assistance and time given freely by the following colleagues, friends and museum
curators for their informed discussions, which have encompassed many years’
experience in ceramics and documentary research. Several have kindly provided
specimens for the studies described in this book, whilst others have facilitated access
to archives and papers or have given their permission for the reproduction of the
appropriate photographs from the porcelain and ceramic specimens in their
collections:
Professor Philippe Colomban, Sorbonne University, Paris; Dr Morgan and Mrs
Rachel Denyer, Penrose Antiques, Thornton, West Yorkshire; Bryan Bowden
Antiques, Harrogate, North Yorkshire; Charles Fountain, Director, Nantgarw
China Works Museum Trust, Tyla Gwyn, Nantgarw, Glamorganshire; Lady
Miranda Rock, Director of the Burghley House Preservation Trust, Burghley
House, Stamford, Lincolnshire; Rev. James Dickinson, Chesterfield, South York-
shire; Stuart Brown, Builth Wells, Powys; Guy Fawkes, Farnley Hall, Otley, North
Yorkshire; the late Dr Peter Bradshaw, Sheffield, South Yorkshire; Dr Alexander
Surtees, University of Bradford; Professor Jan Jehlicka, Charles University, Prague,
Czech Republic; Dr Elizabeth Carter, University of Sydney, Australia; Dr Danita de
Waal, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Professor Ian Freestone, University
College, London; Dr W. Ross Ramsay, Invercargill, New Zealand; Professor Chris
Brooke, University of Nottingham; Andrew Renton, Keeper of Art Amgueddfa

xiii
xiv Acknowledgements

Cymru, National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, Glamorganshire; the late Dr John


Twitchett, Burford, Gloucestershire; Dr Valerie Esterhuizen, Curator, J.A. van Til-
burg Collection, University of Pretoria, South Africa; Stephen Hibberts, St Martin de
Lerm, France; Clare Griffiths, Brampton Museum and Art Gallery, Newcastle-
under-Lyme, Staffordshire; Dr Francesca Casadio, Art Institute Chicago, Illinois,
USA; Peter Frost-Pennington, Muncaster Castle, Ravenglass, Cumbria; the late Dr
William John, Newport, Gwent; Professor Peter Vandenabeele, University of Ghent,
Belgium; Jenna Moughton, Clifton Park Museum, Rotherham, South Yorkshire;
Denisonde Simbol, Asian Civilisations Museum, Singapore; Sarah George,
Co-Faculty Librarian for Life Sciences and Subject Librarian for Archaeology,
Chemistry and Forensic Science, University of Bradford; Gwyn Jones, Director,
John Andrews Charitable Trust, Oriel Plas Glyn-y-Weddw, Llanbedrog, Gwynedd;
Clare McNamara, Decorative Arts & History, National Museum of Ireland, Collins
Barracks, Dublin; Guest and Gray Antiques, Mayfair, London; Kingschina
Antiques, Mayfair, London; Jonathan Gray, Swansea.
In grateful appreciation to you all!
Finally, the author wishes to acknowledge the lifelong support and joint interest
in so much of this research effort of his wife Gill, who sadly passed away at the end
of 2019 – she is sorely missed – and the ongoing support of our daughter, Kate.

Saltaire, West Yorkshire Howell G. M. Edwards


June 2021
Contents

1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Setting the Scene: Analytical Data and Connoisseurship
for Attribution in Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Application to Ceramics and Porcelains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.3 The Growth of English and European Porcelains
in the Eighteenth Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
1.4 Body Compositions of Early Porcelains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
1.5 Key Analytical Markers for Porcelain Identification . . . . . . . . . . 33
1.6 Raw Material Composition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
1.7 The Requirement for an Analytical Protocol for Porcelain
Attribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
1.8 Is There a Need for Analytical Data Input for the Definitive
Porcelain Attribution for Unknown Specimens? . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
2 Chinese Porcelains and their Early European Competitors . . . . . . . 65
2.1 Early Porcelain Manufacture in China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
2.2 The European Challenge to Imported Chinese Porcelains . . . . . . 71
2.2.1 Straits Chinese Porcelain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
2.3 The Export of Chinese Porcelain to Europe Through
Canton and Nanking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
2.4 Portuguese Shipments of Chinese Porcelain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
2.5 The Early European Response . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
2.6 Aristocratic Financial Support for European Manufactories . . . . 92
2.7 Early French Soft Paste Porcelain Compositions . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95

xv
xvi Contents

3 Establishing the Historical Baseline Chronology for European


Porcelains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3.1 The Earliest European Porcelain Manufactory: The Medici
Manufactory at Florence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
3.2 The First English Porcelain Manufactory at Fulham? . . . . . . . . . 109
3.3 The First French Porcelain Manufactory at Rouen . . . . . . . . . . . 120
3.4 St Cloud Porcelain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
3.5 Meissen Porcelain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
3.6 Pomona, Chelsea, Limehouse and Bow . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
3.6.1 Pomona, Newcastle-Under Lyme . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
3.6.2 Bow, Stratford, London . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
3.6.3 Chelsea Porcelain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
3.6.4 Limehouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
3.7 Other Selected Porcelain Manufactories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
3.7.1 Austria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
3.7.2 Italy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 146
3.7.3 Spain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
3.7.4 Bohemia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
3.7.5 Russia, St Petersburg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
3.7.6 The Netherlands . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
3.7.7 Switzerland . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
3.7.8 Other Porcelain Manufactories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
3.8 Summary and Conclusions from a Background Comparison
of Early Porcelain Manufactories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 154
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
4 Types of Porcelain and Their Elemental Oxide Compositions . . . . . 165
4.1 Types of Porcelain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
4.2 Compositional Differentiation of Porcelains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
4.3 The Role of the External Decorating Workshop . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
4.4 An Analytical Mantra . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
4.5 The Concept of Accuracy, Error, Detection Limits
and Precision in Analytical Measurements and Their
Importance for Porcelain Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188
4.6 The Concept of Ratios of Analytical Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
5 Analytical Science and Case Studies of Porcelains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
5.1 The Groundwork for Debate in a Holistic Study . . . . . . . . . . . . 198
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 205
Contents xvii

6 Case Studies I. Analytical Data Which Have Materially


Contributed Towards the Factory Attribution of Porcelain
Specimens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 207
6.1 The Burghley House Jars: The Earliest English Porcelain
Survivors? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
6.1.1 The Burghley House Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
6.1.2 Background to the Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
6.1.3 The Burghley House Jars: The Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . 217
6.1.4 The Arnhold Teabowl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
6.1.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
6.2 A Unique Rockingham Porcelain Table . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 233
6.2.1 Wentworth Castle and Wentworth Woodhouse . . . . . . . 233
6.2.2 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 239
6.3 A Rare Nantgarw Porcelain Trumpet Spill Vase? . . . . . . . . . . . 240
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
References for Section 6.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
References for Section 6.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
References for Section 6.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
7 Case Studies II: Analytical Data Which Have Revealed that
Significant Revision Is Required to the Perceived Historical
Knowledge of Porcelain Factories (Part A) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
7.1 Nantgarw Porcelain: An Exclusively Soft Paste Phosphatic
Body? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
7.1.1 Soft Paste Nantgarw China: The Historical
Belief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
7.1.2 The Curious Case of Hard Paste Nantgarw China . . . . . 256
7.1.3 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
7.2 An Analytical Conundrum: Anatase in Ming Porcelain
Shards. What Surprises Lie in Wait for an Unsuspecting
Analyst? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
7.2.1 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271
7.3 The Strange Case and Ongoing Saga of Bow and
Factory-A Marked Porcelains: Can these Actually
be One and the Same Manufactory? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
7.3.1 The “Factory A” Marked Porcelains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 273
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
References for Section 7.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 278
References for Section 7.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 279
References for Section 7.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 280
xviii Contents

8 Case Studies III: Analytical Data Which Have Revealed That a


Significant Revision Is Required to the Historical Knowledge of
Porcelain Manufactories (Part B) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 283
8.1 Analysis of a Rare Pendock-Barry, Barry- Barry Derby
Porcelain Plate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 284
8.1.1 Genealogy of the Pendock Family . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
8.1.2 Estimated Date of Manufacture of the Barry Barry
Service from Genealogical and Heraldic Evidence . . . . 292
8.1.3 Analytical Studies of the Barry-Barry Service
Porcelain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 295
8.2 Ballerina on Porcelain: A Rara Avis, But Where Did It Come
From? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
8.2.1 Setting the Scene . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
8.2.2 A History of Ballet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
8.2.3 Dancers Depicted on Porcelain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303
8.2.4 Porcelain Spill Vase: Potential Factories . . . . . . . . . . . 307
8.2.5 Analytical Information from Raman Spectroscopic
Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 310
8.2.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 313
8.3 Meissen Hard Paste Porcelain: A Similar Composition
Vis-a-Vis the Vienna Du Paquier Factory and Can Analytical
Science Differentiate Between Them? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 315
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
References for Section 8.1.4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
References for Section 8.2.6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
References for Section 8.3.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 319
9 Challenges for Analytical Science (Case Studies IV) . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
9.1 The Amarna Princess: An Authenticity Problem? . . . . . . . . . . . 322
9.1.1 The Amarna Princess Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 324
9.1.2 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
9.2 A Swansea Porcelain Mug with an Unusual Handle:
A Rare Specimen Which Only Partially Satisfies
the Standard Exemplars? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 327
9.3 Rockingham Porcelain: Is It Bone China or Phosphatic
Soft Paste Porcelain? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
9.3.1 Rockingham Porcelain Exemplars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331
9.3.2 Analytical Raman Spectroscopic Analysis of
Rockingham Porcelains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
9.3.3 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 336
9.4 Is All Blue Cobalt Blue? Hidden Gems in Porcelain Decoration
Revealed by Combinatorial Analytical Techniques . . . . . . . . . . 336
9.4.1 Glass Frit and Cullet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
9.4.2 Smalt, Cobalt Blue, Egyptian Blue, Han Blue
and Bristol Blue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 338
Contents xix

9.4.3 The Presence of Arsenic in Blue Glass Colourants


for Porcelain Decoration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 341
9.4.4 Smalt or Lapis Lazuli? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 344
9.4.5 Analyses of Pigments on Porcelains and Their Input
to the Attribution Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 346
9.4.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
9.5 Did They or Did They Not Manufacture Nantgarw Porcelain
at the Swansea China Works in 1815? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
9.5.1 The Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 350
9.5.2 Can Analytical Science Differentiate Between Nantgarw
Porcelain Made in the Nantgarw China Works and a
Nantgarw-Bodied China Made in the Swansea China
Works? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
References for Section 9.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
References for Section 9.2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
References for Section 9.3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 358
References for Section 9.4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 359
References for Section 9.5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361
10 A Forensic Holistic Conundrum – An Ongoing Controversy . . . . . . 363
10.1 The King George II Porcelain Busts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 364
10.2 Chronology and Life of King George II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 365
10.3 Candidates for the Manufactory of the King George II Busts . . . 367
10.4 Description of the King George II Bust and Its Purpose . . . . . . . 371
10.5 Analysis of the King George II Porcelain Busts . . . . . . . . . . . . . 373
10.5.1 The Surviving King George II Busts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 374
10.5.2 A Summary of the Analytical Data and Its
Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 377
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
11 The Answer Lies in the Glaze! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 381
11.1 The Nantgarw Glaze Recipes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 382
11.2 Analysis of Nantgarw Porcelain Glazed Shards . . . . . . . . . . . . . 384
11.3 Glaze Analyses Undertaken on Finished Nantgarw
Porcelains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 388
11.4 The Use of Analytical Raman Spectroscopy to Estimate
the Kiln Firing Temperatures from Glaze Analyses . . . . . . . . . . 391
11.4.1 An Estimation of Glaze Firing Temperatures
from Raman Band Intensities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 392
11.5 The Parallel Manufacture of Glass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 393
11.5.1 The Composition of Early Glass . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 395
11.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 396
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 397
xx Contents

12 Assessment of the Role of Chemical Analysis in the Holistic


Attribution of Porcelains to Factory Sources, Their
Characterisation and the Evaluation of Their Chronology . . . . . . . 399
12.1 The Assessment of a Porcelain Type and the Need for
Compositional Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 400
12.2 Analytical Achievements and Failures: Early Versus Modern
Analyses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 403
12.3 The Strength of Analytical Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 407
12.4 Holistic Attributions Made With or Without the Inclusion of
Analytical Evidence or Another Component . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 412

Appendices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 415
Appendix I: Lady Charlotte Guest/Schreiber (1812–1895) . . . . . . . . . . 415
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 422
Appendix II: The “Bearded Tulip”: Who Was “De Junic” and Can
Analysis Help to Unravel the Mystery Surrounding this Artist? . . . . . . 423
What Is Known About “de Junic”? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 425
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 433
Appendix III: Retailers of Porcelain: A Source of Uncertainty for
Analytical Attribution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 434
Did the Swansea China Works Ever Produce Nantgarw
Porcelain? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
Appendix IV: The Importance of Establishing the Correct Chronology
for Factory Operations in a Holistic Forensic Analytical Approach.
Example: The Swansea and Nantgarw Manufactories, 1814–1820 . . . . 443
Transcript of an Interview given by Henry Morris, formerly
of the Swansea China Works, to Colonel Grant Francis
on the 14th August 1850. Reproduced in the Cambrian
newspaper on the 3rd January, 1896 and then quoted by
William Turner in his book The Ceramics of Swansea and
Nantgarw, published in 1897 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 443
Chronology of Activities and Landmark Dates at the
Swansea and Nantgarw China Works . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 447
Details of the Auction Sales of Swansea and Nantgarw
Porcelains . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 454
Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 458
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 460
Appendix V: Angela Georgina Burdett-Coutts, 1st Baroness
Burdett – Coutts of Highgate, 1814–1906 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461
Contents xxi

Appendix VI: American Porcelain Manufacture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463


John Bartlam’s Cain Hoy China Manufactory, Charleston,
1765–1770; The Bonnin & Morris Manufactory, the American
China Manufactory, Philadelphia, 1770–1773 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 463
Nineteenth Century Porcelains in the United States of America:
The Role of the Presidency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 469
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 472
Appendix VII: Curiosities in Ceramics Composition Exposed by
Chemical Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 473
Ancient Ceramics that Contain Asbestos . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 474
Analysis of Corsican Ceramics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 475
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
Coade Stone – An Eighteenth Century Architectural
Ceramic . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 476
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481
White Earthenwares . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 482
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 487
Appendix VIII: Knowledge Transfer in the Age of Enlightenment . . . . 488
The Rise of the Coffee Shop in European Culture . . . . . . . . . . . 491
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 495
Appendix IX: Ancient Pigments Nomenclature Confusion:
An Analytical Challenge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 496
Pigments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 498
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 503
Appendix X: The Tek Sing Treasure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 506
Analysis of Porcelains Related to the Tek Sing Treasure . . . . . . 510
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
Appendix XI: The Ehrenfriede von Tschirnhaus (1651–1708)
and Johann Bottger (1682–1717) Controversy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 513
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 518
Appendix XII: The Re-Creation of Nantgarw Porcelain . . . . . . . . . . . . 519
Joseph William Mellor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 520
Summary of the First Attempt to Re-Create the Nantgarw
Porcelain Body by Ernest Morton Nance and Joseph Mellor
in the 1930s . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 522
The Nantgarw Glazes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 525
The Modern Re-Creation of Nantgarw Porcelain . . . . . . . . . . . . 528
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 532
Appendix XIII: Armorial Services in English and Welsh Porcelains . . . 533
Heraldic Achievements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 534
English Porcelain Armorial Services of the Eighteenth and
Nineteenth Centuries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 535
Welsh Porcelain Armorial Services . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 538
xxii Contents

The Scientific Study of Armorial Porcelain Services . . . . . . . . . 544


Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 546
Glossary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 549
Selected Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 561
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 565
About the Author

Howell G. M. Edwards M.A., B.Sc., D. Phil., C.Chem., FRSC, born in Skewen,


South Wales, is Professor Emeritus of Molecular Spectroscopy at the University of
Bradford. He read Chemistry at Jesus College in the University of Oxford, and after
completing his BA and BSc degrees, he studied for his doctorate in Raman spectros-
copy at Oxford with Dr Leonard Woodward and then became a Research Fellow at
Jesus College, University of Cambridge, where he worked with Dr Jeremy Jones. He
joined the University of Bradford as a Lecturer in Structural and Inorganic Chemistry,
becoming Head of the Department of Chemical and Forensic Sciences, and he was
awarded a Personal Chair in Molecular Spectroscopy in 1996. He has received several
international awards (Sir Harold Thompson Award; Charles Mann Award; Emanuel
Boricky Medal; Norman Sheppard Award) in a spectroscopic career which has resulted
in the publication of over 1320 research papers in Raman spectroscopy and the
characterisation of materials, along with six books on the application of this analytical
technique to art, archaeology and forensic science. He has had a lifelong interest in the
porcelains of William Billingsley, especially those from the Derby, Nantgarw and
Swansea china factories. He has authored four major books on Nantgarw and Swansea
Porcelains: Swansea and Nantgarw Porcelains: A Scientific Reappraisal, Nantgarw
and Swansea Porcelains: An Analytical Perspective, Porcelain to Silica Bricks: The
Extreme Ceramics of William Weston Young, 1776–1847 and 18th and 19th Century
Porcelain Analysis: A Forensic Provenancing Assessment, published by Springer
Publishing, Dordrecht, The Netherlands. He has also produced several monographs
on these manufactories: William Billingsley: The Enigmatic Porcelain Artist, Decora-
tor and Manufacturer; Nantgarw Porcelain: The Pursuit of Perfection; Swansea
Porcelain: The Duck-Egg Translucent Vision of Lewis Dillwyn and Derby Porcelain:
The Golden Years,1780–1830. He is currently preparing a research text for publication
in 2021 on Raman Spectroscopy in the Preservation of Cultural Heritage, for which
porcelain artefacts will feature as artworks and a vital part of a nation’s heritage, as does
the industrial archaeology, excavation and the preservation of early porcelain manu-
factory sites. Howell Edwards is Honorary Scientific Adviser to the de Brecy Trust on
the scientific evaluation of their artworks and paintings.

xxiii
Chapter 1
Introduction

“To develop a complete mind study the science of art and the
art of science”.
Leonardo da Vinci, 1452–1519.
“My name is Sherlock Holmes. It is my business to know what
other people do not know”.
Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1892.
“If the fresh facts which come to our knowledge all fit
themselves into the scheme then our hypothesis may gradually
become a solution”.
Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1908.

Abstract Hard and soft science and the holistic evaluation of evidence for the
attribution of a porcelain artefact to a particular manufactory. The comparison of
analytical chemical data, historical documents and provenancing and stylistic appre-
ciation by connoisseurs. The need for an objective appraisal of all three components
in the attribution of porcelain is explored and advanced to the ability to differentiate
fakes and forgeries from genuine, rare and non-standard pieces. The potential pitfalls
of associating a painter with a particular factory are highlighted. The role of shards
and porcelain fragments recovered from the archaeological excavation of manufac-
tory sites and their correlation with finished and perfect porcelain artefacts from the
same source origin is considered, The composition of the raw materials of early
European porcelains prior to the revelation of the primary components of kaolin and
petuntse in imported Chinese porcelains in the second decade of the eighteenth
century showed the need for analytical chemical science which was not available at
that time.

Keywords Hard and soft science · Connoisseurship · Raw materials · Porcelain


body compositions · Shards · Porcelain fragments · Biscuit porcelain · Glazed
porcelain · Kaolin · Petuntse · Foundations of chemical analysis

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1


H. G. M. Edwards, Porcelain Analysis and Its Role in the Forensic Attribution
of Ceramic Specimens, Cultural Heritage Science,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-80952-2_1
2 1 Introduction

1.1 Setting the Scene: Analytical Data and Connoisseurship


for Attribution in Art

The role of analytical science in the determination of the chemical composition of


ancient porcelains is clearly defined in its provision of factual data relevant to the
bodies, glazes and pigments of porcelain ceramic artworks at the elemental and
molecular species level which may then be used in the determination of the source
attribution for unknown pieces, shards and fragments. However, in practice, there
are several issues which need to be addressed before meaningful conclusions can be
made from these data and how these are used thereafter which are acceptable
unequivocally to the wider community of collectors, connoisseurs and museum
curators, who until relatively recently may have had little in the way of analytical
data relating to the porcelains in their possession to evaluate in comparison with their
colleagues in the parallel field of fine art and oil paintings (Edwards, 18th and 19th
Century Porcelain Analysis: A Forensic Provenancing Assessment, 2020). The
interpretation of the analytical results from porcelain bodies can be controversial,
as in most cases these scientific data have been acquired from porcelain specimens,
such as shards or fragments, which may not seem to be completely transposable at
first sight into the bona fide finished products of the particular factory output that
have been accepted by the porcelain connoisseurs and wider community which has
hitherto based their attributions upon purely historical, stylistic and documentary
grounds. Also, the analytical conclusions regarding the chemical porcelain compo-
sition of a particular piece may well prove to be unexpected or unacceptable to many
historians and connoisseurs who may have based their current understanding of a
manufactory upon a misunderstood recipe or assumed historical precedent. This then
translates into a perceived difference of opinion arising between the scientific and the
arts/humanities disciplines which renders their synergy in the collaborative forensic
holistic approach to the solution of interdisciplinary problems of mutual interest
involving analytical data at the arts/science interface a potential issue.
Charles Percy Snow (1905–1980), a research chemist, a senior civil servant in the
UK government and an esteemed novelist, delivered the annual Rede Lecture in the
Senate House of the University of Cambridge on the 7th May, 1959, entitled “The
Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution”, in which he described the gulf of
mutual incomprehension and lack of appreciation that he perceived to exist between
arts-educated colleagues on the one hand and natural scientists on the other. This
gulf he termed perhaps rather disparagingly as “ignorance” and he saw it as a major
obstacle to progress in the mutual appreciation of scientific work by those who were
formally trained in the arts/humanities disciplines and whose opinions he then
declared to be incompatible with their proper appreciation of the realistic impact
of scientific discoveries. This was echoed almost 40 years later on the 12th
November, 1996, by the evolutionary biologist, Professor Richard Dawkins, in the
21st Annual Richard Dimbleby Lecture for the BBC entitled “Science, Delusion and
the Appetite for Wonder”, in which he stated that:
1.1 Setting the Scene: Analytical Data and Connoisseurship for Attribution in Art 3

“It is almost a cliché to remark that nobody boasts of an ignorance of literature but it is still
socially acceptable to boast of an ignorance of science and to proudly claim an incompe-
tence in mathematics”.

Twelve years later in 2008, the science writer, Philip Ball, in an article in Nature
(2008) explored the abstract surreal art of Salvador Dali, which he correlated with
the Two Cultures address of C.P. Snow some 50 years earlier and deduced somewhat
controversially that the conclusions of science and art would not be able to inform
each other satisfactorily. Therefore, he argued that the two disciplines should
probably best be kept well apart! Whatever one may feel personally about these
individual statements made over the space of 50 years, the succinct message being
relayed over many decades of interdisciplinary investigation and research at the arts/
science interface is that there is an awareness by some of a mutual lack of appreci-
ation of the science involved by the arts and humanities community and vice versa
and that the common ground between the two is often rather murky, even if this does
not fully merit Snow’s rather derisive epithet of “ignorance”.
This is surely then not a good basis for the adoption of forensic scientific analysis
for an art work, which in its truest form requires a holistic and determinental
approach, advocating thereby the equal consideration and merited evaluation of
scientific data, the assessment of available historical documentation, the evidence
of an historical provenance if available and also the definitive pronouncement of an
expert opinion or connoisseurship in its input to arrive at a measured judgemental
decision relating to the art work in question. In other words, a mutually collaborative
appraisal based upon both an appreciation of analytical science and the fine arts
(Edwards, Porcelain to Silica Bricks: The Extreme Ceramics of William Weston
Young, 1776–1847, 2019) is necessary for the synergistic assimilation of the scien-
tific data input, stylistic assessment and historical documentation for the evaluation
of art works, which in our specific case is exemplified by porcelains. It is apposite to
consider here the classification of porcelain as an art work and/or an artefact: the
name artefact derives from the Latin arte (by skill) and facere (to make) and is
defined as a man-made object of historical interest, which clearly embraces ceramics,
which can be both functional and artistic. Peter Hupfauf (2019) has urged curators of
art exhibitions to be aware that primarily functional objects can often simultaneously
express artistic interpretations. There is no doubt, therefore, that ceramics generally
and porcelain specifically can be considered works of art, whether they are func-
tional or otherwise, and as such they are an integral part of a national cultural
heritage.
There could indeed be a major perceived stumbling block for the input of
scientific data to the artistic context arising from a mutual lack of understanding in
the two disciplines of art works and science; however, the real impasse to the
apparent acceptance of scientific data obtained from an art work by a community
which is composed primarily of art experts is really centred upon the interpretation
that has been given to the analytical data and that this is where the perceived conflict
of emotion and opinion sits between the two spectral extremes of analytical scientist
and art connoisseur. There is no doubt that analytical science inherently deals with
4 1 Introduction

factual information – the hard science – and it is also true that the technical
interpretation of those data which emanate from an analytical experiment does not
generally lend itself to an immediate appreciation by someone who has not been
trained scientifically. Likewise, the opinion expressed by an art expert or connois-
seur on the origin or attribution of an art work—the soft science – is based upon a
weighted judgemental assessment of several factors, which may be intuitive, but
nevertheless has been based upon many years’ experience of their studying similar
works of art, such as oil paintings or china, and this would include stylistic
considerations along with the summary appreciation of key evidential artistic factors
which for oil paintings would be the pentimenti, brush work, pigment usage, period
fashion awareness and artistic composition. For porcelains, such expert evaluation
would naturally involve the consideration of the texture, the potting characteristics,
translucency, the glaze, the type of porcelain body, the shapes, mouldings, structure
and the applied decoration – these would generally be grouped together under the
term of “stylistic evaluation”.
Occasionally, an art expert sitting in judgement on a disputed oil painting, for
example, may make a comment such as “This oil painting does not exhibit the
chemistry shown between the artist and the sitter as is evident in other works by this
artist” or perhaps, “This work of art does not feel right and it is just not good enough
to be the work of X, as can be seen when it is placed alongside another unequivocally
accepted work of art by the artist X”. Both of these remarks have been made by
international art experts recently in their appraisal of two oil paintings which have
been claimed to have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci, namely, Salvator Mundi
and La Principessa. Whilst the general feeling amongst some art experts is that both
of these paintings are on balance genuine works by Leonardo, others, in contrast,
vigorously take the opposite view and have declared that they are patently either
fakes or studio copies. In both cases, these were judgemental decisions made on the
basis of perceived artistic impressions only and scientific analysis was apparently not
involved for a variety of reasons in these overall appraisals. An analogous situation
certainly applies for ceramic artworks, where a difference of opinion expressed by
connoisseurs could result in a disputed attribution of a particular artefact to a
manufactory and the provision of scientific analytical information about its potential
source could be invaluable potentially in the attainment of a definitive assessment.
However, the final judgement is not always as clear cut as may have been expected
from an initial appraisal and there are several cogent reasons for that as will be
apparent in some of the relevant case studies that are discussed in detail later in
this book.
The input of novel scientific analytical data to an original attribution of an artwork
which had been previously made on the basis of expert opinion alone can then either
support or bring into question the factual basis of that original attribution. The access
to scientific analytical or documentary data that results in the potential reversal of an
expert opinion that may have been expressed many years hitherto may well advise a
revision of the status of the artwork to its proper place and standing in the genre and
could imply that the artwork strictly belongs to another category. The situation may
occur whereby the original artwork attribution should now be rescinded in the light
1.1 Setting the Scene: Analytical Data and Connoisseurship for Attribution in Art 5

of later scientific evidence and/or documentary data which suggests that the contrary
opinion should apply and that the artwork should now be re-affirmed as genuine or
perhaps relegated to the status of being a copy, a mis-assignment or perhaps even a
fake. This dichotomous situation has been highlighted in an exhibition at the
National Gallery, London, staged between June and September 2010, entitled “A
Closer Look: Deceptions and Discoveries”, which was accompanied by a brochure
called “The Science of Painting: Your Guide to Close Examination – Fakes, Mis-
takes and Discoveries”. Dr. Marjorie Wieseman, Curator of Dutch Painting at the
National Gallery, gave the opening lecture at this event entitled “Connoisseurship
under Fire”, in which she recounted the challenge made by scientific analysis to the
attribution of several pictures in the custodianship of the National Gallery and the
subsequent overturning of several earlier expert opinions and assumptions relating to
those paintings in the light of recently acquired objective scientific knowledge about
the works themselves and their creators which was not available when the original
expert assessments and judgements were made. It is interesting that for the 16 case
studies described therein and detailed in the accompanying monograph written by
Dr. Wieseman (A Closer Look: Deceptions & Discoveries, 2010) (Fig. 1.1), which
elegantly brings together the modern science and the older connoisseurship opinions
in a holistic forensic approach, the scientific evidence resulted in somewhat over half
the paintings being confirmed as being truly original (nine in number) and the
remaining seven being categorised as requiring a downgrade in status to that of
workshop copies or even fakes. This surely puts into perspective the scale of the
problem facing artwork attribution nowadays and the proliferation of fakes, copies
and forgeries that can appear and indeed have appeared in the marketplace, which is
engendered and driven by significant financial gains accruing to the faker or forger.
For the National Gallery Exhibition, a glossary of terms used in painting descrip-
tors was compiled which briefly sets the scene for those who are unfamiliar with the
specific terminology frequently used in the attribution of an artwork by art experts.
In descending order of certainty, this is, namely, “attributed to” meaning very likely
but not absolutely certain, “studio or workshop of ” meaning painted by a pupil of an
artist and most likely accomplished in his atelier and under his/her direction,
“follower or circle of ” meaning someone who admired the artist’s work but who
was not necessarily a pupil in his or her workshop, and finally “imitator of” meaning
one who has created a work in the original artist’s style but possibly at a much later
date. The definition of connoisseurship is put simply as “A stylistic attribution of a
painting usually made in conjunction with technical or historical research”. Hence,
a connoisseur is required to embrace the quality or relative aesthetic merit in an
artwork, which is generally based upon the acquisition of an extensive practical
knowledge acquired from years of study of original works of art by a particular artist
and his or her contemporaries. In addition, connoisseurship has the mandate
according to this definition to consider technical and scientific information, as well
as documentary evidence, which must sit alongside the clause for art appreciation
based superficially on visual style and artistic composition. Several important
corollaries now emerge from these definitions which illuminate the perceived gulf
between science and the arts alluded to by C.P. Snow in his Rede Lecture:
6 1 Introduction

Fig. 1.1 A Closer Look: Deceptions and Discoveries by Dr M.E Wieseman, National Gallery Co.,
London and Yale University Press, New Haven Connecticut, USA, 2010. Cover detail from Winter
Landscape, Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840), oil on canvas, 32.5  45 cm, acquired by the
National Gallery in 1897. This National Gallery painting appears identical to that in the Museum fur
Kunst und Kulturgeschichte in Dortmund which was acquired in 1940, but there is only one version
of the painting mentioned in associated nineteenth century documents. The London version has
several details which do not appear in the Dortmund version. Infrared imaging studies show the
presence of an underdrawing in the London painting characteristic of Friedrich’s work, which are
absent from the Dortmund version. It is now believed that the London painting is the original and
that the Dortmund version is a studio copy made probably from the original whilst it was still in
place in the artist’s atelier
1.1 Setting the Scene: Analytical Data and Connoisseurship for Attribution in Art 7

• Firstly, a connoisseur should necessarily have the requisite detailed knowledge


about the artworks (s)he is assessing in terms of the style of the artist, the
composition of the painting, the particular way the pigments were applied, the
use of light and dark contrast (chiaroscuro), the utilisation of specific materials
(canvas, panel) and the portrayed dress and accompanying objects which were
deemed to be in vogue at the alleged time of execution of the painting. However,
it is also recognised by historians that many artists of the Renaissance and
afterwards were experimentalists and they occasionally departed from their
standard and perhaps conventional scheme of portrayal of a person or an event.
Although a connoisseur would be expected to be naturally most familiar with the
standard milieu of an artist, the question is now raised: would such a departure
from the normal style and composition of that artist be recognised for what it is
artistically, or might it be condemned as being outside the standard portrayal
acceptable for such an artist with several “inconsistencies” being present when
compared with the standard works or exemplars which are accepted as defining
the work of that particular artist? In other words, a rare and perhaps experimental
work of art, be that an oil painting or a piece of porcelain, may not be within the
bounds of acceptability for the immediate recognition of the artist’s genre or
manufactory product to connoisseurs who have based their practical experience
upon the well-known and perhaps more conventional examples produced by that
artist or manufactory of production in the case of porcelain. This is extremely
important when potentially rare historical exemplars are being considered for
adoption into collections for the preservation of our cultural heritage.
• Secondly, it could be argued that modern connoisseurs would certainly take
advantage of any ancillary information, be this scientific or historical documen-
tation or provenancing, from which they would be able to derive a correct
appreciation and a better attribution for the artwork specimens they are assessing.
Indeed, they would be ill-advised to ignore this nowadays, but it is equally clear
that this was not the situation that has pertained in the past, when perhaps the
scientific data or indeed the documentary evidence, was not as widely available or
understood as it is now. Hence, we will be faced realistically with some attribu-
tions for art works that have been made historically which may not now be
sustainable forensically – and the problem is exacerbated further when “standard”
examples of an artist’s work, which might actually have been incorrectly attrib-
uted in the past but which are now accepted as “model exemplars” by the wider
artistic community, are then adopted as the benchmark exemplars for future
comparative assessments being made analytically for questionable or unknown
art works ostensibly arising from the same source, be that a workshop or
manufactory. The scale of these potential mis-attributions can be gauged from
the previously cited National Gallery Exhibition, in which no fewer than 7 out of
the 16 case studies were shown unequivocally and scientifically to be
mis-attributed copies or fakes, representing some 42% of the total number of
paintings surveyed in the batch of 16 case studies being considered there.
• Thirdly, and this is the most intriguing corollary to be made thus far: if scientific
information or analytical data has been incorporated into the holistic assessment
8 1 Introduction

of an artwork then what is the material standing of this information and how is it
valued against the other factors which must also have been considered in parallel
for that evaluation? In other words, if the scientific data indicate that something is
potentially incorrect or non-standard in some of the aspects being addressed in the
case of a specific artwork and perhaps, in contrast, all the other factors are positive
for an artwork attribution, what is the resultant judgement going to imply for that
artwork? Some specific examples of this scenario, which highlights the differ-
ences of opinion between analytical scientists working in the broader area of
cultural heritage artefacts and connoisseurs, will be provided in the literature
(Edwards et al., Raman Spectroscopy in Cultural Heritage Preservation, 2021).
The judgemental analysis and appreciation of the merit of a particular artwork
should be made accounting for the weighted opinion of a panel of experts and
connoisseurs, whereby all the available information will have been considered
appropriately in their arriving at an objective conclusion, although, of course, a
difference in expert opinion might still be recorded as noted earlier for the two oil
paintings attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.
• “The craving for authenticity is widespread”, a quotation by Lowenthal (Authen-
ticity: Rock of Faith or Quicksand?, 1999), echoes many an opinion relating to
artworks that do not have an indisputably firm provenance but which is never-
theless desirable for their unequivocal acceptance in the art world, whether this be
oil paintings or porcelains. The presence of some potentially questionable attri-
butes, which are perhaps characterised by lacunae, should thus drive an assess-
ment even more towards an appreciation of the value of a scientific input to the
evaluation of art works (Fleming, Authenticity in Art: The Scientific Detection of
Forgery, 1975). The opinion of Keith Pinn (Paktong: The Chinese Alloy in
Europe, 1680–1820, 1999), a respected expert in antique metalwork, summarises
the potential feeling experienced by art connoisseurs quite appropriately in this
context:

“Unless one happens to be lucky enough to be blessed with some kind of divining skill, it is
impossible to judge the composition of an alloy by sight and feel alone. If it served no other
purpose, scientific investigation at least stopped me from making a fool of myself and saved
others from reading a lot of irrelevant nonsense based on a false premiss”.

Although he was clearly referring to the analysis of antique metals and alloys, in
which his international connoisseurship and expertise was highly respected, this
connoisseur immediately recognised the consequences of the faux-pas arising from a
potential mis-attribution or challenge being made regarding a specific artwork to an
expert’s reputation. This has been echoed briefly in a parallel statement by Indictor
(1998) as “. . .in order to avoid the embarrassment of a misattribution”. These
statements made by connoisseurs actually imply that the scientific data should be
regarded as a critical factor in the eventual acceptance or otherwise of the originality
and authenticity of an artwork. The key question here, of course, is whether or not
the scientific interpretation of the experimental data provides a unique solution for
taking forward the assessment to a positive attribution or whether the information
delivered from a scientific analysis is itself generating some further discrepancies
1.1 Setting the Scene: Analytical Data and Connoisseurship for Attribution in Art 9

that need to be reassessed or considered further and perhaps even raises some wider
issues in the field of porcelains concerning the accepted products of a particular
manufactory.
Paul Craddock in his seminal text on fakes, forgeries and copies of artworks
exposed by scientific analysis (Craddock, Scientific Investigation of Copies, Fakes
and Forgeries, 2009), which was based upon his analytical research work at the
Department of Conservation and Scientific Research at the British Museum,
London, covers a wide field of artefacts in our cultural heritage comprising metal,
coinage, ceramics, glass, enamels, stone and sculpture, paintings, paper, prints,
documents, gemstones, jades and textiles. The unifying theme is the role of scientific
analysis in determining evidence of forgery or unrecorded restoration that has been
made over a wide range of materials and the confirmation or otherwise of their
authenticity, which in many cases required a re-evaluation of the expert opinions
made historically without the benefit of analytical data provision being made
available or considered at that time. The overriding message emerging from this
text is that scientific analysis should be an essential component for the determination
of the authenticity or attribution of an artefact or artwork for cultural heritage
preservation.
A comment should also be made here about historiography, that is, the writing of
history based solely upon sources and documentation and its independent role for
consideration in the porcelain artefact attribution process. A summary of its standing
is provided by Gabriele Boccaccini (Beyond the Essene Hypothesis, 1998) who has
concluded that:
“Historiographic analysis is limited by the quantity of surviving records, by their state of
preservation and by the historical probability or accident of their survival”.

Although this statement was made specifically for the investigation of ancient
manuscripts such as the Dead Sea Scrolls, it is equally applicable to porcelain
manufactory records, which are sometimes no longer existent and which, where
they have survived, can provide a source of inestimable value for the attribution and
evaluation of specimens from that source factory. However, it should also be
remembered that the survival of such useful documentation may only be partial
and that some important and potentially vital manuscripts may no longer exist in the
historical record for our adoption into the attribution process. In some cases, the
original notes made by manufacturers on the experimental trials they have under-
taken on the recipes for novel porcelain bodies exist in an only sketchy form, or even
in a code, and these now require some dexterity in interpretation; for example, Lewis
Dillwyn’s diaries and notebooks of his experimental trials undertaken at the Swansea
China Works with his kiln manager Samuel Walker between 1815 and 1817
(Dillwyn, Notes and Workbooks of Recipes at the Swansea China Works,
1815–1817, reproduced in H. Eccles & B. Rackham, Analysed Specimens of English
Porcelain in the Victoria & Albert Museum Collection, 1922) wherein he was
attempting to create a more robust china body to replace his esteemed duck-egg
porcelain.
10 1 Introduction

1.2 Application to Ceramics and Porcelains

Whilst working on a companion volume on eighteenth and nineteenth century


porcelains (Edwards, 18th and 19th Century Porcelain Analysis: A Forensic
Provenancing Assessment, 2020), the author realised that the area of ceramic art
works is particularly fraught with mis-attributions, fakes, forgeries and with incor-
rect assignments and attributions possibly having been made hitherto for many
items, in an analogous scenario to that which we have just identified is apparent
for oil paintings. Unlike the situation with oil paintings, however, the attribution of
porcelain artefacts to particular factories or to prescribed periods of their factory
production, has some specific problems associated with their precise definition and
judgement. The most significant difference involved in the practical assessment of
porcelains and of oil paintings, of course, is the restoration procedure which is
deemed to be acceptable for the conservation of oil paintings before their public
display or auction for which analytical science provides a critical aid to the restora-
tion process, but this is the same area that is rather less favoured for porcelains,
especially where the ceramic artefact is otherwise complete and undamaged. Hence,
whereas it is perfectly acceptable to take microspecimens of pigment selectively
from an oil painting that is undergoing contemporary restoration in a museum studio
or in an art gallery conservation workshop prior to its public display, this is certainly
not the case for analogous porcelain sampling, where it is generally not acceptable at
all now to remove small slivers of a ceramic body or of a pigmented decoration from
an otherwise and perhaps unique and perfect piece of china. The most obvious
reason for this contraposition is that a piece of porcelain which has been “nibbled” or
which has had some small piece or drill core removed for analytical sampling will
always bear that visibly damaging defect, thereby potentially decreasing its value
significantly, unlike an oil painting where the excised area providing the basis for the
microsampling is to be then painted over and restored using compatible pigments,
ultimately enhancing its visual perception to observers and to collectors. A rather
more subtle distinction perhaps is the practical means of acquisition of the specimen
by the analyst for subsequent testing and analysis: micro samples of oil paint
pigments can be flaked off or scalpel-excised quite easily with little damage being
caused to the surrounding picture areas, especially where these are removed from
those normally hidden areas of the artwork, such as those masked by a large and
ornate frame, whereas porcelain as a material is very hard as a consequence of its
high -temperature firing manufacturing history and the specimen then requires an
aggressive mechanical abrasion or drilling to acquire a sample. The attendant
vibrational shock in the acquisition of a drill core from a piece of fired china, even
if it is being taken from a less obvious location, such as the base of a plate footrim or
the interior of a vase, has been known to compromise the integrity of a sensitive
ceramic object which has been under significant mechanical stress since its emer-
gence from the firing kiln perhaps two or three centuries or more hitherto. Similarly,
the analytical determination of the pigments used in historiated mediaeval manu-
scripts can often be accomplished by reference to the very small particles that have
1.2 Application to Ceramics and Porcelains 11

flaked off and have become trapped in the detritus found between the bound leaves
of vellum or parchment in books or codices.
What is really needed for the input of scientific interpretation to the attribution
and evaluation of the origins of porcelain artwork through analytical data provision
is a key analytical or spectral signature which can appear during the analytical
interrogation and which will immediately prove it to be an unequivocal indicator
of the type of porcelain body and perhaps even its precise factory of origin. In the oil
painting scenario this would be equivalent to an Old Master painting of the Renais-
sance displaying a unique pigment signature, which conclusively proved that it was
from the workshops of say, Raphael, Titian, Michelangelo, Botticelli or Leonardo da
Vinci. Of course, although these great artists did have their favourite pigments,
which they perhaps mixed in their own favoured ways to achieve the requisite
different tonal qualities, the range of natural dyes and mineral pigments available
to them was still rather limited in scope and therefore these are essentially analyti-
cally the same or very similar natural and mineral pigments which are to be found
over a range of palettes offered by several artists (Delamere and Guineau, Colour:
Making and Using Dyes and Pigments, 2000; Merrifield, Original Treatises dating
from the XIIth to the XVIIIth Centuries on the Arts of Painting, 1849). However, it
now appears from the meticulous microscopic scientific analysis undertaken on
several famous oil paintings that certain additives were occasionally used to achieve
spectacular effects, such as the incorporation of fine-grained metallic bismuth
particles in some of Raphael’s work. In the Ansidei Madonna, painted by Raphael
in 1505 (otherwise known as the Madonna and Child with St John the Baptist and St
Nicholas of Bari) in addition to the use of pulverised silver and gold on the mantle of
the Madonna, Raphael incorporated metallic bismuth into the grey pigment for his
architecture (Roy 2012). The use of powdered glass mixed with pigments as an aid to
the drying of lakes was adopted by Thomas Gainsborough (Jones, Gainsborough’s
Materials and Methods, 1997). Both additives were intended to increase the reflec-
tive powers of the pigments in the areas in which they were used. Certain artists were
known to favour particular mineral and natural pigments, which have been discov-
ered in their works by analytical chemistry, such as turnsole, Naples yellow, chrome
yellow and ultramarine, which were used preferentially by Raphael Sanz, Antonio
Palomino, Sir Thomas Lawrence and John Constable, respectively. One thing is
clear, every great artist was an experimentalist; they certainly did not always adopt
identical procedures for every work of art they created and they were always striving
for the improvement of the finished product or for the achievement of a particular
effect in their masterpieces.
This is precisely the case also with porcelain manufacturers who, whilst they may
have been unaware of the precise chemistry and the reactions occurring between the
complex mixtures of the raw materials employed in their porcelain biscuit body at
the high temperatures adopted in their porcelain firing kilns, nevertheless, were
generally intent on improving the quality of their china as they were operating in
an intensely competitive market, where competitors with perceived inferior products
were unable to attract a purchasing clientele and thereby suffered financially, often
resulting in the bankruptcy and closure of their factory. Achieving an initially
12 1 Introduction

successful porcelain body formulation was, of course, essential to the end purpose
commercially but maintaining the market edge against a competitor’s product was
vital, especially where moves may have been taken elsewhere to further improve the
competitor’s product quality through consequent recipe improvisation and experi-
mentation. Needless to say, the artistic accomplishments of an oil painting compared
with a porcelain dinner service, both of which would have been produced according
to a precise order or commission, differ in one obvious respect: an oil painting would
literally be a unique example of the artist’s work on a commissioned topic whereas
the analogous commissioned porcelain dinner service would comprise perhaps up to
fifty or a hundred pieces of artwork or more of different shapes and sizes which have
been decorated and gilded individually, although modelled from a defined range of
mouldings and shapes, and for that reason each one was somewhat different in
subject accomplishment. Unlike the oil painting, the porcelain dinner service items
were functional and designed for daily use, thereby they would be potentially subject
to greater physical damage, loss and deterioration from careless handling. A good
example of this is provided by the Marino Ballroom dinner-dessert service of
Swansea porcelain ordered in 1817 by Henry Vivian for supper entertaining at his
Marino mansion: by the 1860s it was noted that some 60–70 pieces had already been
broken and discarded from about 200 originally which comprised this large service.
Other examples are the Farnley Hall service of Nantgarw porcelain, a large dinner-
dessert service of about 106 pieces, originally commissioned in 1817–1818 by
William Ramsden Hawkesworth Fawkes, of which now only 37 remain in Farnley
Hall, North Yorkshire, and the sumptuous Lord Ongley dessert service of Derby
porcelain commissioned by Lord Ongley in about 1820 of which from an original
42 pieces only 7 now remain on display in Muncaster Castle, Cumbria. An exception
to this scenario is the particular area of cabinet porcelains, which were never
designed for functional use but were intended primarily for decorative display in
glass cases, and as such were often individual examples and demonstrators of the
porcelain manufacturer’s and decorator’s supreme artistic accomplishments and
skills. These might, therefore, be expected to have a preferential survival rate,
even though they were relatively rarer items initially, over and above the analogous
functional wares being produced from the same factory. Even porcelain figures,
which appear to have no functional use whatsoever, unless they have also been
constructed as candle sconces, vases or spill holders, for example, were brought out
to decorate Georgian dinner tables in the eighteenth century and to serve as conver-
sation pieces and focal points for discussion during the meal, and any careless
handling would have invariably exposed these delicate pieces of porcelain artwork
to superficial damage. The development of unglazed and undecorated biscuit por-
celain figures in simulation of polished marble statuary by the Sevres manufactory in
the 1760s, and closely followed by Meissen and Chelsea in response to the demand
for these porcelain figurines, accentuated the perfection of the modeller’s ceramic art
and the requirement for a porcelain body that was visually free from blemishes and
faults. Here, the associated terminology is interesting: the modeller was the designer
or sculptor of the figurine and the repairer was the assembler of the individual pieces
into the final figure and does not refer to the reconstruction of broken pieces of
porcelain. As an illustration (see later, Fig. 8.16), the beautiful Derby China Works
1.2 Application to Ceramics and Porcelains 13

biscuit porcelain figure of A Paris Opera Girl in the Role of Flora, ca. 1795, was
modelled by Jean-Jacques Spangler and repaired by Joseph “Jockey” Hill.
Another relevant comparison which can be made between oil paintings and
porcelains is that the perceived value in the former is exclusively painter-oriented,
whereas for porcelains, although the artistic decorator, such as William Billingsley,
James Giles, William “Quaker” Pegg, John Wager Brameld, Jefferys Hammett
O’Neale and Moses Webster, does command an enhanced premium on their ceramic
art work, the prime analytical and forensic objective in porcelain analysis is not the
identification of the painter but where the “canvas” or porcelain body was made and
when it was manufactured – although it is realised that it is sometimes the case that
the subject of the decoration on a porcelain plate commands a special premium
especially if it was related to a diplomatic gift or designed to commemorate an
historical event. A prime example of this was provided recently by the achievement
at auction of an unsurpassed amount for a lidless and damaged porcelain teapot
dating to about 1765–1770 and decorated in a cobalt blue underglaze enamel which
sold for £575,000 ($806, 000) at auction in 2018 against a pre-sale estimate of
£10,000. Bought for £15 by an astute porcelain collector on the basis of its being
attributed initially to the Isleworth factory, later stylistic and irrefutable analytical
evidence pointed firmly to its definitive re- attribution to the factory of John Bartlam
(see Appendix VI). The main factors in the attribution of this teapot to John
Bartlam’s manufactory at Cain Hoy in Charleston, South Carolina, was its unusual
chinoiserie decoration depicting palmetto trees and cranes and its analytical compo-
sition which precisely matched those of some shards excavated at the factory site and
which therefore made this the earliest piece of porcelain yet found that was made in
the pre-Revolutionary American Colonies. It was purchased by the Metropolitan
Museum of Art in New York, who appreciated the historical importance of this
particular item of teaware, which preceded by just a few years the famous “Boston
Tea Party” that ignited the American Revolutionary War of Independence and
generated the cry of “No taxation without representation” from the disaffected
American colonists against the mother country of Great Britain. In comparison
with an oil painting, the artistic enameller of this teapot is unknown but it could be
described analogously as “from the workshop of John Bartlam in Cain Hoy” and
indeed it may well have been decorated by John Bartlam himself!
This rather subtle distinction between an identifiable painter and a factory product
actually holds the key to what can be perceived as the imbalance between the three
major components of the holistic appreciation of an art work as applied to oil
paintings and to porcelains, namely, the historical provenancing of the former is
held to be of greater significance in contrast to the analogous situation for porcelains,
except of course for the case we have outlined above for the Bartlam teapot, which
represents the oldest piece of American Colonial porcelain known historically. In the
case of porcelains, it is extremely rare to find in practice that a significant porcelain
service that was commissioned by an aristocratic family in the eighteenth or nine-
teenth centuries is still retained by descendants from that same source: rather rare
exemplars of familial porcelain retention include the Royal Rockingham dinner
service commissioned by King William IV in 1832, which is still in the possession
of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Windsor Castle, the Swansea Garden Scenery
14 1 Introduction

dessert service of 1817 which is still in the possession of Sir Michael Dillwyn
Venables-Llewellyn at Llysdinam, and the Nantgarw Farnley Hall dinner service
commissioned by William Ramsden Hawkesworth Fawkes in 1818 which is still in
the possession of Guy Fawkes Esq. of Farnley Hall, Otley (Edwards, Swansea and
Nantgarw Porcelains A Scientific Reappraisal, 2017). Two examples of the Farnley
Hall porcelain service, namely, porcelain tureen or sauce-boat stands, are shown in
Fig. 1.2. In contrast, named porcelain services which have potentially lost their
original although recorded commissioned placements and have been dispersed
through auction sales over the past 200 years, thereby potentially losing their firm
provenancing audit trail from what may have been an impeccably strong and
recorded initial commissioning from the factory or “chinaman” agent, are almost
too numerous to mention but exemplars are:
• The Earl Camden (Fig. 1.3), Viscount Cremorne (Fig. 1.4), Lord Ongley
(Fig. 1.5) and Prince of Wales (Fig. 1.6) services of Derby porcelain;
• The Thomas Coutts (Burdett-Coutts) (Fig. 1.7), Lord Biddulph, Lysaght (Fig. 1.8)
and Marquess of Anglesey services of Swansea porcelain;

Fig. 1.2 Two tureen or sauce – bowl stands from the large Farnley Hall dinner and dessert service
ordered from the Nantgarw China Works agents, John Mortlock’s of Oxford Street, London, in
1817 by William Ramsden Hawksworth Fawkes, MP for North Yorkshire, and lifelong friend of
James Mallord William Turner, the celebrated watercolourist and painter who spent much of his
time at Farnley Hall as an annual visitor. It is very probable that Turner and Hawksworth Fawkes
dined off this service whilst at Farnley Hall in the second and third decades of the nineteenth
century. The porcelain is impressed with the mark NANT-GARW C.W. and is beautifully decorated
with floral groups birds and insects with characteristic dentil gilded edging at the London atelier of
Robins and Randall, who undertook the decorating commission for most of Mortlock’s London-
based commissions and assignments. The decoration is in the manner of the generic Nantgarw
Brace service, with fruit, flowers and birds in vignettes and the typical Nantgarw moulding at the
edge. This service is still in the possession of Guy Fawkes Esq., Farnley Hall, Otley, North
Yorkshire, a descendant of William Ramsden Hawkesworth Fawkes. (Reproduced with permission
of Guy Fawkes Esq., Farnley Hall, North Yorkshire)
1.2 Application to Ceramics and Porcelains 15

Fig. 1.3 Dessert plate from the Earl Camden service of Derby porcelain, ordered from Joseph
Lygo, Derby agent, in London, April 1795. Puce marked with crown and crossed batons and the
pattern number 185. Decorated by William Billingsley with a border of full- blown roses linked to
rosebuds with an apple green ground colour and central vignette of a posy of pink roses. One of the
best documented of the Derby services, the Earl Camden service was a large service of over
100 items originally, including ice cups and trays and ice pails, and cost 160 guineas at that time,
almost ten times that of a standard dessert service. John Twitchett regarded this as the finest example
of Billingsley’s rose painting and it was completed just before William Billingsley left the factory to
join John Rose at the Pinxton China Works in 1795. (Private Collection)

• The Duke of Cambridge (Fig. 1.10), Marquess of Bute, Earl Spencer, Macintosh,
Lord Vernon and Baron Phippes (Fig. 1.10) services of Nantgarw porcelain;
• The Duke of Clarence, Earl of Coventry (Blind Earl) and the Lady Mary Wortley
Montagu services of Worcester porcelain.
The magnificence of these original porcelain services can be seen from the
selection illustrated here in Figs. 1.2, 1.3, 1.4, 1.5, 1.6, 1.7, 1.8, 1.9, and 1.10. The
purchase of other porcelain services of esteemed quality at auction sales has thereby
acquired a novel source attribution and provenance based on their new owners and
this is often unrelated to their original commissioning, which in some cases is
unknown: examples of these are the Lady Seaton (Nantgarw) (Fig. 1.11), Rothschild
(Derby) (Fig. 1.12), Sir John Williams (Nantgarw) (Fig. 1.13) and Brace (Nantgarw)
services, all of which are admired today by collectors and connoisseurs for their
exceptionally fine quality of porcelain substrate and the applied decoration rather
than for their original historical provenance, which in many cases is not known.
Having said that, where special porcelain services are named and have a known
16 1 Introduction

Fig. 1.4 Small kidney shaped, oval scalloped comport from the Viscount Cremorne service of
Derby porcelain, decorated simply with random Chantilly sprigs of blue forget-me-nots and gold
leaf for which the order commission has extensive supporting documentation as described by John
Twitchett ( Derby Porcelain 1748-1848: An Illustrated Guide, 2002). Puce mark with crossed
swords and batons and gilder’s numeral 1 at footrim being that of Thomas Soar. The dessert service
has the baronial coronet and cypher PHC, signifying Philadelphia Hannah Cremorne, a grand-
daughter of William Penn the founder of the colony of Pennsylvania, who married her grandmother
Margaret Hannah Callowhill in 1695 and whose daughter was Margaret Penn, Philadelphia’s
mother. Thomas Dawson, born 1725, was created Lord Dartrey and Viscount Cremorne in 1785.
Lady Philadelphia Cremorne was lady-in-waiting to Queen Charlotte, wife of King George III. The
Cremorne service was commissioned on the 9th December, 1788 and this oval comport is one of
only two made to the special design of Lady Cremorne at a cost of £2 7s (£2.35). Two ice pails from
this service costing originally £5 5s (£5.25 ) are now in the Royal Crown Derby Museum. (Private
Collection)

historical provenance with current relevance and interest since their original dis-
persal, they do command high premiums – such as the Hafod service (Derby),
Macintosh service (Nantgarw), Blind Earl service (Worcester) and the Barry-
Barry (Pendock Barry) service (Derby).

1.3 The Growth of English and European Porcelains


in the Eighteenth Century

In a previous publication, the author has surveyed English porcelain manufacture in


the eighteenth century and the growth of new factories in England and Wales in the
early nineteenth century (Edwards, 18th and 19th Century Porcelain Analysis: A
1.3 The Growth of English and European Porcelains in the Eighteenth Century 17

Fig. 1.5 Dessert plate from the Lord Ongley service of Derby porcelain, Robert Bloor period, ca.
1820, with Nantgarw-style moulded C-scroll border and inspired by James Plant’s Nantgarw
porcelain decoration at John Sims’ atelier, London, ca. 1817–1819, showing children playing at
snowball centrally and vignettes of birds, fruit, flowers and butterflies. Robert Bloor, proprietor of
the Derby China Works purchased several examples of James Plant’s work on Nantgarw porcelain
from this atelier on his visit there and used these as models for his Lord Ongley service at Derby.
(From the Private Collection at Muncaster Castle, Cumbria. Reproduced with permission of Peter
Frost-Pennington Esq)

Forensic Provenancing Assessment, 2020). A remarkable feature to emerge from


this study was both the number and range of the manufactories that were active in
this time period, although many of these only lasted for only a few years duration in
their porcelain production. A comprehensive list of 31, eighteenth century English
porcelain factories is shown in Table 1.1 (the list includes Fulham and Wedgwood
despite their being strictly outside the timeline, being 1670 and 1805, respectively,
as both these manufactories were in operation in the eighteenth century), along with
the dates of their foundation. The range of porcelain bodies manufactured by the
18 1 Introduction

Fig. 1.6 Dessert plate from the Prince of Wales service of Derby porcelain, 1786, pattern 65, puce
painted factory mark of crown and crossed batons with a gilder’s mark “8” in puce ascribed to
William Longden. Ordered by HRH George, Prince of Wales and painted by William Billingsley
with a small central rose in a circlet of gold dots, fine gilding and with dawn pink edging. Illustrated
in W.D. John, William Billingsley, Plate 28, and described in J. Twitchett (Derby Porcelain 1748-
1848, pp. 254–255) who quoted a letter from Joseph Lygo to William Duesbury II on May 21st,
1787, for the order of this complete dessert service costing £26-5-0. (Private Collection)

factories in this group is noteworthy and this will be a critical factor for historical
consideration later – namely, hard paste, soft paste, magnesian, bone china, phos-
phatic, glassy and hybrid bodies are all well recognised now and have been classified
for each source factory specified. Several factories manufactured different types of
porcelain, but not necessarily at the same time: for example, Caughley started as a
soft paste porcelain manufactory in 1772 but moved on to hard paste porcelain
production around 1790 and Limehouse started as a soft paste porcelain manufactory
in 1744/45 but made magnesian porcelain during its last year’s production in 1747.
Only four of these listed English porcelain factories which were founded in the
eighteenth century have survived today into the twenty-first century, these being
Worcester, Derby, Aynsley and Coalport, and, except for Aynsley, in all cases their
survival depended initially upon their takeover of smaller china factories, along with
their associated invaluable staff expertise and knowledge acquisition to achieve a
better or more varied production at their own sites. Later, these factories were all
themselves absorbed into larger consortia, which nevertheless preserved their trade
names and reputations for their successful ongoing product marketing. More than
30 or more English and Welsh factories fell by the wayside in the eighteenth and the
early nineteenth centuries, it must be said not necessarily because their products
were markedly inferior to those of their competitors but rather on account of their
1.3 The Growth of English and European Porcelains in the Eighteenth Century 19

Fig. 1.7 Dessert plate from the prestigious Burdett-Coutts large ( probably in excess of 300 pieces)
dinner and dessert service of Swansea porcelain, ca. 1818, commissioned by Thomas Coutts,
banker to King George III, from John Mortlock, agent for Swansea porcelain in Oxford Street,
London, to celebrate his marriage to the actress Harriet Mellon in 1818. It was enamelled in John
Sims’ atelier in Pimlico, London. The service passed through inheritance to Thomas Coutts’ grand –
daughter Angela Burdett-Coutts, and the service then numbering 249 pieces of porcelain eventually
was dispersed in a Christie’s auction sale in May 1922 after the death of her husband and heir
William Burdett – Coutts (for further details see Appendix V). (Private Collection)

experiencing cash flow financial problems and of their unacceptably large produc-
tion losses experienced through kiln wastages upon firing, these sometimes signif-
icantly exceeding 50%, which threatened their commercial viability. Very
frequently, they experienced premature closure upon the death of their owners and
founders, who normally had devised the idea of manufacturing porcelain in that
particular location in the first place and had the dynamism, vision, drive and initial
financial wherewithal to initiate it and see it through to full manufacturing produc-
tion. Succession to the factory ownership and management by the founder’s partners
and family members was not always carried on with the same degree of enthusiasm,
vigour or ability as was manifest by the original owner or founder. Sometimes, small
factories were very successful initially but ran into short term financial or raw
materials supply problems, these factories then being taken over and subsumed
into larger factories and china works, which were also often practising in their
same geographical vicinity as local competitors, but not always so. Classic examples
of the incorporation of English porcelain manufactories in the eighteenth century
include Bow and Chelsea, Plymouth and Bristol, Plymouth and Worcester, Derby
20 1 Introduction

Fig. 1.8 Dinner plate from the Lysaght service of Swansea porcelain, ca. 1815–1817, decorated
locally by Henry Morris and depicting a wicker basket of garden flowers centrally located in a
cobalt blue-edged ground reserve. Notice the similarity in the theme of the floral wicker basket
which also occurs in the Burdett-Coutts service shown in Fig. 1.7. This topic will feature in
Appendix IV. (Private Collection)

and Chelsea and Coalport and Caughley. All of these mergers occurred in the mid-to
late eighteenth century. Invariably, the taking over of one enterprise by another to
carry on with the manufacture of a similar product involved the acquisition of key
workforce personnel and an implied transfer of their specialist practical knowledge
about their former production processes and information about the sourcing of raw
materials and formulation recipes for the porcelain bodies, their glazes and pigments
used in the decoration to their new employers. The English porcelain factories which
became established in the eighteenth century and shown in Table 1.1 in chronolog-
ical order of their foundation number 31 in all, from Pomona in 1744 (Bemrose
1975) to Pinxton in 1796 (Sheppard, Pinxton Porcelain, 1795–1813, 1996; Gent,
The Patterns and Shapes of Pinxton Porcelain, 1796–1813, 1996). Most of these
made soft paste porcelain either mainly or exclusively. Plymouth has been
recognised historically as the first hard paste porcelain manufactory to set up in
England, having been established in 1768, however, some correction of the historical
record is required in this instance as Plymouth is clearly preceded chronologically as
1.3 The Growth of English and European Porcelains in the Eighteenth Century 21

Fig. 1.9 Dinner plate from the Duke of Cambridge service of Nantgarw porcelain, 1818, commis-
sioned by HRH The Prince Regent, Prince George, for his younger brother, Adolphus, Duke of
Cambridge, upon the occasion of his marriage in July 1818 at Buckingham Palace to the Princess
Augusta, Landgravine of Hesse-Cassel. This plate depicts the original order specification in the
commission of four landscapes, two of fruit and two of birds in the eight vignettes: similar copies
were created later by the Nantgarw China Works which had a rather different composition. The
service was decorated by Thomas Randall in the atelier of Robins & Randall, Islington, and retailed
through John Mortlock’s, Oxford Street, London. This plate was selected for display of the finest
Nantgarw porcelain in the “Coming Home” (Gartre’n Ol) Exhibition to celebrate the 200th
Anniversary of the Foundation of the Nantgarw China Works at Tyla Gwyn, Nantgarw, June-
September 2019. Marked impressed NANT-GARW C.W. Illustrated in W.D. John et al., Nantgarw
Porcelain Album, 1975, Colour Plate 58. (Private Collection)

a hard paste porcelain manufactory in this list by both Bristol and by Bovey Tracey
in 1749 and 1750, respectively.
The range and types of porcelains being manufactured in England in the eigh-
teenth century was quite diverse, encompassing hard paste, soft paste, magnesian,
glassy, phosphatic and hybrid bodies. This is an interesting fact which needs to be
considered historically further in the context of a comparison with the contemporary
European continental porcelain factories, which invariably manufactured hard paste
and soft paste, and possibly a hybrid glassy, porcelain body only, and to the tenet
being maintained even now by many historians that the English porcelain industry
must have grown from the prior practical experience in porcelain synthesis being
practised in Europe and emanating in a significant knowledge transfer taking place
from colleagues and contemporaries in France and Germany, who had started up
their manufactories some 20 or 30 years earlier. This allegation just does not match
22 1 Introduction

Fig. 1.10 Nantgarw dinner plate, Baron Phippes, Viscount Normanby, service, ca. 1817–1819,
demonstrating the beauty of Nantgarw porcelain at its best with a simple gilt armorial crest
decoration at the verge between two moulded scrolls of foliage, flowers and stars and otherwise
undecorated. Only two Nantgarw services are known of this type with just a crest and completely
undecorated otherwise with no enamelling, the other being the plain, unmoulded Homfray service
of Penllyn Castle (crest: an otter, pierced by an arrow in gold) (now in the National Museum of
Wales Amgueddfa Cymru, Cardiff). Henry Phippes was Lord Chief Justice of Ireland, created
Baron Mulgrave of York in 1794 and Viscount Normanby, Earl of Mulgrave in 1812. Marked
impressed NANT-GARW C.W. His crest comprises a demi-lion rampant or holding in both paws a
palm branch vert. (Private Collection)

with the hard evidence that we now have from the analytical data about the
manufacture of contemporary porcelains in England and on the Continent which
conclusively indicates that the indigenous porcelain industry in England developed
along a totally different synthetic pathway to its Continental contemporaries. It is
intriguing to speculate on how the supposition that the English porcelain industry
was initiated by a transfer of knowledge derived from its French and German
equivalents originated and can still be sustained. Perhaps, there are some historical
documents in existence which allude to the idea that there was indeed information
filtering through from the Continental European factories to interested parties
engaged in porcelain synthesis in England in the 1740s, but the range and diversity
of the indigenous English porcelain being manufactured and exemplified as shown
in Table 1.1 indicates that other factors and considerations must also have been
present which initiated and sustained the birth and growth of English porcelain as a
separate entity which was independent of any implied knowledge transfer that was
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PRESERVATION OF FOODS
All food for preservation should be kept in a clean, cool, dry, dark
place. Reduction in temperature to near freezing, and removal of
moisture and air stop bacterial development.
Drying, cooking, and sealing from the air will preserve some meats
and fruits, while others require such preservatives as sugar, vinegar
and salt. The preservative in vinegar is acetic acid.
All preservatives which are actual foods, such as sugar, salt and
vinegar, are to be recommended, but the use of antiseptic
preservatives, such as salicylic acid, formaldehyd, boracic acid,
alum, sulphur and benzonate of soda, all of which have been used
by many canning merchants, is frought with danger. The United
States Department of Agriculture holds, that by the use of such
preservatives, unscrupulous dealers may use fruits and vegetables
not in good condition.
There can be no doubt that, wherever possible, the best method
for the housewife to preserve food is to do her own drying, canning,
preserving and pickling of fruits and vegetables, which she knows
are fresh, putting up her own preserves, jams, jellies, pickles, syrups,
grape juice, etc.
Since economy in food lies in the least amount of money for the
greatest amount of nutriment, the preparation of simple foods in the
home, with a care that no more is furnished for consumption than the
system requires, is the truest economy in health and in doctor’s bills.
It is not more brands of prepared food which are needed, but
purity of elements in their natural state. A dish of wholesome, clean
oat meal has more nourishment and more fuel value than the
average prepared food.
In the effort to emphasize the importance of pure food in
amount and quality, pure air and pure water must not be
overlooked. Much infection is carried by these two
elements. Pure air, containing a normal amount of oxygen,
is absolutely necessary that the system may digest and
assimilate the foods consumed.
COOKING
The cooking of food is as important as its selection, because the
manner of cooking makes it easier or more difficult of digestion. The
question of the proper selection and cooking of food is so vital to the
health and resultant happiness of every family, and to the strength
and well being of a nation, that every woman, to whom the cooking
for a family is entrusted, should have special preparation for her
work, and every girl should be given practical and theoretical training
in Dietetics in our public schools. The study is as dignified as the
study of music and art. Indeed it can be made an art in the highest
conception of the term. Surely the education of every girl in the
vocation, in which she sooner or later must engage, either actively or
by directing others, means more than education in music and
drawing. We must all eat two and three times every day; there are
few things which we do so regularly and which are so vital; yet in the
past we have given this subject less study than any common branch
in our schools. When the dignity of the profession of dietetics is
realized, the servant problem will be largely solved.
In cooking any food, heat and moisture are necessary, the time
varying from thirty minutes to several hours, according to different
foods. Baked beans and meats containing much connective tissue,
as boiling and roasting cuts, require the longest time.
The purposes in the cooking of foods are: the development of the
flavor, which makes the food appetizing, thus encouraging the flow of
gastric juice; the sterilization, thereby killing all parasites and micro-
organisms, such as the tape worm in beef, pork, and mutton, and the
trichinae in pork; the conversion of the nutrients into a more
digestible form, by partially or wholly converting the connective
tissue into gelatin.
The fundamental principle to be observed in the
cooking of meat concerns the retention of the
Cooking of
Meats
juices, since these contain a large part of the
nutrition. The heat develops the flavor, and the
moisture, together with the heat, dissolves the connective tissue and
makes it tender.
A choice piece of meat may be toughened and made difficult of
digestion, or a tough piece may be made tender and easy to digest,
by the manner of cooking.

Soups. To make meat soups, the connective tissue, bone and


muscle should be put into cold water, brought slowly to the boiling
point and allowed to simmer for hours. It must be remembered that
the gelatin from this connective tissue does not contain the tissue
building elements of the albuminoids. These are retained in what
meat may be about the bones of the boiling piece and in the blood.
The albumin of meat is largely in the blood and it is the coagulated
blood which forms the scum on soup, if heated above a certain point;
the cook should boil the soup slowly, or much of the nutrition is lost
in the coagulated blood, or skum.

Roasting. The flavor and juice of the meat is best retained by


roasting. If it is put into a hot oven, with a little suet over the top, so
as to sear the meat with hot fat, and no water is put in the pan, it will
retain the juice and the flavor. Water draws out the extractives.
It is important to remember that the smaller the cut to be roasted,
the hotter should be the fire. An intensely hot fire coagulates the
exterior and prevents the drying up of the meat juice. After the
surface is coagulated and seared it should cook slowly.
Unless the oven is sufficiently hot to sear the surface, the
moisture, or juice, will escape into the roasting pan and the
connective tissue will be toughened. A roast should be cooked in a
covered roaster to retain the moisture.
The roast should be turned as soon as one side is seared and just
sufficient water put into the pan to keep it from burning.
Frequent basting of a roast, with the fat, juice, and water in the
roasting pan, still further sears the surface, so that the juices do not
seep through and keeps the air in the pan moist; the heated moisture
materially assists in gelatinizing the connective tissue,—roasting
pans are now made which are self-basting.

Broiling. The same principle applies to broiling as to roasting. The


meat is put over a very hot flame and turned so as to quickly sear
both sides, to prevent the juice from oozing out. In fact, the best
broiled steaks are turned just as soon as the juice begins to drip, so
as to retain all juice in the meat.
Meat containing much connective tissue is not adapted to broiling,
because it takes too long for this tissue to become gelatinized.
Steak broiled in a skillet, especially round steak which has been
pounded to assist in breaking the connective tissue, is often first
dipped in seasoned flour, which is rubbed well into it. The flour
absorbs the meat juices so that none of them are lost. All meats
broiled in skillets should be put into a very hot skillet and one surface
seared, then should be turned so as to sear the other side. The
skillet should be kept covered so as to retain the moisture.

Boiling. In boiling meat, where the object is to eat the tissue itself,
it should be put into hot water, that the albumin on the surface may
be immediately coagulated and prevent the escape of the nutrients
into the water. It is impossible to make a rich broth and to have a
juicy, highly flavored piece of boiled meat at the same time. Meat is
best roasted or broiled when the meat tissue is to be eaten.
The boiling cuts contain more connective tissue, therefore they
require a much longer time to cook in order to gelatinize this tissue.
They are not as rich in protein as the steaks.
Meat soups, bouillons and broths contain very little nutriment, but
they do contain the extractives, and the flavors increase the flow of
digestive juices and stimulate the appetite. It is for this reason that
soups are served before a meal rather than for a dessert; they insure
a copious flow of gastric juice and saliva to act upon the crackers or
toast eaten with the soup. Many mistake the extractives and flavor
for nourishment, feeling that the soups are an easy method of taking
food, but the best part of the nutriment remains in the meat or
vegetables making the soup.

Pot Roasts. In the case of a pot roast, or roast in a kettle, where it


is desirable to use both the fibre of the meat and the juice, or gravy,
it should be put into a little cold water and raised to about 180
degrees F., where it should be kept for some hours. The juices of the
meat seep out in the gravy. The extractives are simmered down and
are again poured over the meat in the rich gravy.

Frying. This is the least desirable method of cooking. Food


cooked by putting a little grease into a frying pan, such as fried
potatoes, mush, eggs, french toast, and griddle cakes, are more
difficult of digestion than foods cooked by any other means,
particularly where the fat is allowed to smoke. The fat is
superheated; if a lighted match is placed near the smoke it will catch
fire, showing that it is volatilizing, or being reduced to a vapor.
The extreme heat liberates fatty acids. This acrid fat soaks into the
food and renders it difficult of digestion. It is wise not to employ this
method of cooking.
The objection to frying does not hold so strongly in the case of
vegetables, such as potatoes, if fried slowly in fat, that is not over
heated, or to griddle cakes cooked slowly without smoke, or to foods
immersed in grease (such as saratoga chips, doughnuts, french fried
potatoes, etc.), as the large amount of fat does not permit it to get so
heated. It does apply, however, if the fat is sufficiently heated to
smoke.
The coating of vegetables and cereals with the hot fat prevents the
necessary action of saliva upon the starch globules. As previously
stated, most of the starches are digested in the mouth and the
stomach, while the fats are not emulsified until they reach the
intestines.
The starch globules in cereals and vegetables are in the form of
cells, the covering of these cells being composed largely of
nitrogenous matter. The protein is not acted upon by the saliva, and
the nitrogenous matter is largely digested in the stomach. It is more
easily dissolved if it is broken or softened by cooking, so that the
carbohydrates can come in contact with the saliva, but if encased in
fried fat, the gastric juices cannot digest the protein covering and the
saliva cannot reach the starch until the fat is emulsified in the
intestines. This means that wherever starch globules are surrounded
with fat, the digestive ferments reach these globules with difficulty
and fried foods must be digested mostly in the intestines.
Fats are readily absorbed in their natural condition, but when
subject to extreme heat, as in frying, they are irritants. For this
reason, eggs, poached, boiled or baked are more easily digested
than fried.
Boiling, broiling and roasting are preferable to foods cooked in
fats.
One safe rule for the cook is, that it is better to
Cooking of cook most foods too much than too little;
Cereals overcooking is uncommon and harmless, while
undercooked foods are common and difficult of
digestion.
In partially cooked cereals, one does not know how much of the
cooking has been done, but it is safe to cook all such foods at least
as long as specified in the directions.
One reason why breakfast foods, such as rolled oats, are partially
cooked, is because they keep longer.
As has been stated, the nutrients of the grain are found inside the
starch-bearing and other cells, and the walls of these cells are made
of crude fiber, on which the digestive juices have little effect. Unless
the cell walls are broken down, the nutrients can not come under the
influence of the digestive juices until the digestive organs have
expended material and energy in trying to get at them. Crushing the
grain in mills, and making it still finer by thorough mastication breaks
many of the cell walls, and the action of the saliva and other
digestive juices also disintegrates them more or less, but the heat of
cooking accomplishes the object much more thoroughly. The
invisible moisture in the cells expands under the action of heat, and
the cell walls burst. The water added in cooking also plays an
important part in softening and rupturing them. Then, too, the
cellulose itself may be changed by heat to more soluble form. Heat
also makes the starch in the cells at least partially soluble, especially
when water is present. The solubility of the protein is probably, as a
rule, somewhat lessened by cooking, especially at higher
temperatures. Long, slow cooking is therefore better, as it breaks
down the crude fiber and changes the starch to soluble form without
materially decreasing the solubility of the protein.
“In experiments made with rolled oats at the Minnesota
Experiment Station, it appeared that cooking (four hours) did not
make the starch much more soluble. However, it so changed the
physical structure of the grains that a given amount of digestive
ferment could render much more of it soluble in a given time than
when it was cooked for only half an hour.
“On the basis of the results obtained, the difficulty commonly
experienced in digesting imperfectly cooked oatmeal was attributed
to the large amounts of glutinous material which surrounds the
starch grains and prevent their disintegration. When thoroughly
cooked the protecting action of the mucilaginous protein is
overcome, and the compound starch granules are sufficiently
disintegrated to allow the digestive juices to act. In other words, the
increased digestibility of the thoroughly cooked cereal is supposed to
be largely due to a physical change in the carbohydrates, which
renders them more susceptible to the action of digestive juices.”

Pastry. Pastry owes its harmful character to the interference of fat


as shown on page 198, with the proper solution of the starch,—at
least such pastry as requires the mixing of flour with fat; the coating
of these granules with fat prevents them from coming in contact with
liquids; the cells cannot absorb water, swell and burst so that they
may dissolve. The fat does not furnish sufficient water for this and so
coats the starch granules as to prevent the absorption of water in
mixing, or of the saliva in mastication. This coating of fat is not
relieved until late in the process of digestion, or until the food
reaches the intestines. This same objection applies to rich gravies,
unless the flour be dissolved in water and heated before being mixed
with the fats. The objection, therefore, is to such pastry as is made
by mixing flour with fat, as in pie crust; it does not apply to most
puddings.
Heat, in cooking, causes a combustion of the carbonic acid gas
and the effort of this gas to escape, as well as the steam occasioned
by the water in the food, causes the bubbles. When beaten eggs are
used, the albuminoids in the bubbles expand the walls, which stiffen
with the heat and cause the substances containing eggs to be
porous.
Since the root vegetables contain a large
Cooking of proportion of carbohydrates, they should be well
Vegetables cooked, in order that the cells may be fully
dissolved, and the crude fibre broken.
Vegetables are best cooked in soft water, as lime or magnesia, the
chemical ingredients which make water “hard”, make the vegetables
less soluble.
Vegetables and fruits become contaminated with the eggs of
numerous parasites from the fertilizers used; hence they should be
thoroughly washed.
The objection to frying meats are equally strong in regard to
vegetables. The coating of vegetables with the hot fat retards
digestion, as shown on page 198.

“In different countries opinions differ markedly


Cooking of Fruit regarding the relative wholesomeness of raw and
cooked fruit. The Germans use comparatively little
raw fruit and consider it far less wholesome than cooked fruit. On the
other hand, in the United States raw fruit of good quality is
considered extremely wholesome, and is used in very large
quantities, being as much relished as cooked fruit, if indeed it is not
preferred to it. It has been suggested that the European prejudice
against raw fruit may be an unconscious protest against unsanitary
methods of marketing or handling and the recognition of cooking as
a practical method of preventing the spread of disease by fruit,
accidentally soiled with fertilizers in the fields or with street dust.
“As in the case with all vegetable foods, the heat of cooking
breaks down the carbohydrate walls of the cells which make up the
fruit flesh, either because the moisture or other cell contents expand
and rupture the walls or because the cell wall is itself softened or
dissolved. Texture, appearance, and flavor of fruit are materially
modified by cooking, and, if thorough, it insures sterilization, as in the
case of all other foods. The change in texture often has a practical
advantage, since it implies the softening of the fruit flesh so that it is
more palatable and may be more readily acted upon by the digestive
juices. This is obviously of more importance with the fruits like the
quince, which is so hard that it is unpalatable raw, than it is with soft
fruits like strawberries. When fruits are cooked without the addition of
water or other material, as is often the case in baking apples, there is
a loss of weight, owing to the evaporation of water, and the juice as it
runs out carries some carbohydrates and other soluble constituents
with it, but under ordinary household conditions this does not imply
waste, as the juice which cooks out from fruits is usually eaten as
well as the pulp. Cooking in water extracts so little of the nutritive
material present that such removal of nutrition is of no practical
importance.
“The idea is quite generally held that cooking fruit changes its acid
content, acid being sometimes increased and sometimes decreased
by the cooking process. Kelhofer showed that when gooseberries
were cooked with sugar, the acid content was not materially
changed, these results being in accord with his conclusions reached
in earlier studies with other fruits. The sweeter taste of the cooked
product he believed to be simply due to the fact that sugar masks the
flavor of the acid.
“It is often noted that cooked fruits, such as plums, seem much
sourer than the raw fruit, and it has been suggested that either the
acid was increased or the sugar was decreased by the cooking
process. This problem was studied by Sutherst, and, in his opinion,
the increased acid flavor is due to the fact that cooked fruit
(gooseberries, currants, plums, etc.) usually contains the skin, which
is commonly rejected if the fruit is eaten raw. The skin is more acid
than the simpler carbohydrates united to form a complex
carbohydrate. In some fruits, like the apple, where the jelly-yielding
material must be extracted with hot water, the pectin is apparently
united with cellulose as a part of the solid pulp. As shown by the
investigations of Bigelow and Gore at the Bureau of Chemistry, 40
per cent of the solid material of apple pulp may be thus extracted
with hot water, and consists of two carbohydrates, one of which is
closely related to gum arabic. That such carbohydrates as these
should yield a jelly is not surprising when we remember that they are
similar to starch in their chemical nature, and, as every one knows,
starch, though insoluble in cold water, yields when cooked with hot
water a large proportion of paste, which jellies on cooling.
“When fruits are used for making pies, puddings, etc., the nutritive
value of the dish is, of course, increased by the addition of flour,
sugar, etc., and the dish as a whole may constitute a better balanced
food than the fruit alone.”[8]

FOOTNOTES:
[8] C. F. Langworthy, Ph. D.—In charge of Nutritive
Investigations of the United States Experiment Station.
DIETS
As previously stated, the object of foods is to supply the needs of
the body in building new tissue in the growing child; in repairing
tissue which the catabolic activity of the body is constantly tearing
down and eliminating; and in supplying heat and energy. This heat
and energy is not alone for muscular activity in exercise or
movement; it must be borne in mind that the body is a busy work-
shop, or chemical laboratory, and heat and energy are needed in the
constant metabolism of tearing down and rebuilding tissue and in the
work of digestion and elimination.
In this chapter, a few points given in the preceding pages are
repeated for emphasis. The proteins, represented in purest form in
lean meat, build tissue and the carbonaceous foods, starches,
sugars and fats, supply the heat and energy. An excess of proteins,
that is more than is needed for building and repair, is also used for
heat and energy; the waste products of the nitrogenous foods are
broken down into carbon dioxid, sulphates, phosphates, and other
nitrogenous compounds and excreted through the kidneys, skin, and
the bile, while the waste product of carbonaceous foods is carbon
dioxid alone and is excreted mostly through the lungs.
Since the foods richest in protein are the most expensive, those
who wish to keep down the cost of living, should provide, at most, no
more protein than the system requires. The expensive meat may be
eliminated and proteins be supplied by eggs, milk, legumes, nuts
and cereals.
The most fundamental thing is to decide upon the amount of
protein—two to four ounces, nearly a quarter of a pound a day—and
then select a dietary which shall provide this and also supply heat
and energy sufficient for the day. If the diet is to include meat, a
goodly proportion of protein will be furnished in the lean meat. This
will vary greatly with the different cuts of meat as shown on Table IV,
page 128. If, as often happens, one does not care for fats, then the
starches and sugars must provide the heat. If one craves sweets,
less starches and fats are needed.
The normally healthy individual is more liable to supply too much
protein than too little, even though he abstain from meat. Yet, as will
be shown later, our strongest races, who have lent most to the
progress of the world, live upon a mixed diet.
If the diet is to include meat, it will consist of less bulk, because
the protein is more condensed; for the same reason, if it includes
animal products of eggs and milk and a fair proportion of legumes, it
will be less bulky than a vegetable diet. This point is important for
busy people, who eat their meals in a hurry and proceed at once to
active, mental work. Those who engage in physical labor are much
more likely to take a complete rest for a half hour, to an hour, after
eating. The thinkers seldom rest, at least after a midday meal, and
those who worry seldom relax the mental force during any waking
hours.
Where the system shows an excess of uric acid, the chances are
that the individual has not been living on a diet with too large a
proportion of protein, but that he has been eating more than he
requires of all kinds of foodstuffs. His system thus becomes
weakened and he does not breathe deeply nor exercise sufficiently
to oxidize and throw off the waste. Let it be recalled here that the
theory that rheumatism is caused by an excess of uric acid is
disputed by the highest authorities. It is accompanied by uric acid,
but not supposed to be caused by it.
Every housewife, to intelligently select the daily menus for her
family, needs a thorough knowledge of dietetics. She must
understand the chemistry of food that she may know food values.
The difficulty which confronts the housewife, is to provide one meal
suited to the needs, tastes, or idiosyncracies of various members of
her household. Peculiarities of taste, unless these peculiarities have
been intelligently acquired, may result in digestive disturbances. As
an illustration: one may cultivate a dislike for meat, milk, or eggs, as
is often the case, and the proteins for the family being largely
supplied by these, the individual is eating too much of starches and
sugars and not sufficient protein,—legumes, nuts, etc., not being
provided for one member. Such an one’s blood becomes
impoverished and she becomes anaemic.
The relief lies in cultivating a taste for blood building foods. Foods
which are forced down, with a mind arrayed against them, do not
digest as readily, because the displeasure does not incite the flow of
gastric juices. One fortunate provision of nature lies in the ability to
cultivate a taste for any food. Likes and dislikes are largely mental.
There are certain foods which continuously disagree and they should
be avoided; but many abstain from wholesome food because it has
disagreed a few times. It may be that it was not the particular food
but the weakness of the stomach at this time. Any food fails of
prompt digestion when the nerves controlling the stomach are weak.
Many foods disagree at certain times because of the particular
conditions regulating the secretion of digestive juices. Where this
condition has continued for some time it becomes chronic and a
special diet is required, together with special exercises to bring a
better blood supply to stomach and intestines and to regulate the
nerves controlling them.
Dr. W. S. Hall estimates that the average man at light work
requires, each day,
106.8 grams of protein[9]
57.97 grams of fat
398.84 grams of carbohydrates
These elements, in proper proportions, may be gained through
many food combinations. He gives the following:
Bread 1 lb.
Lean Meat ½ lb.
Oysters ½ lb.
Cocoa 1 oz.
Milk 4 oz.
Sugar 1 oz.
Butter ½ oz.
A medium sized man at out of door work, fully oxidizes all waste of
the system and he requires a higher protein diet,—125 grams. In
such event he does not require so much starch and sugar. If on the
other hand he were to take but 106.8 grams of protein, as above, he
would require more carbohydrates. One working, or exercising in the
fresh air, breathes more deeply and oxidizes and eliminates more
waste, hence he has a better appetite, which is simply the call of
nature for a re-supply of the waste.
In active work, one also liberates more heat, thus more fat,
starches, and sugar are required for the re-supply. If one has an
excess of starch (glycogen) stored in the liver, or an excess of fat
about the tissues, this excess is called upon to supply the heat and
energy when the fats and carbohydrates daily consumed are not
sufficient for the day’s demand. This is the principle of reduction of
flesh.
It is interesting to note that habits of combining foods are
unconsciously based upon dietetic principles. Meats rich in protein
are served with potatoes, or with rice, both of which are rich in
starch. Bread, containing little fat, is served with butter. Beans,
containing little fat, are cooked with pork. Starchy foods of all kinds
are served with butter or cream. Macaroni, which is rich in starch,
makes a well balanced food cooked with cheese.
Pork and beans,
bread and butter,
bread and milk,
chicken and rice,
macaroni and cheese,
poached eggs on toast, and
custards, form balanced dishes.
A knowledge of such combinations is important when one must
eat a hasty luncheon and wishes to supply the demands of the body
in the least time, giving the least thought to the selection; but hasty
luncheons, with the mind concentrated upon other things, are to be
strongly condemned. The mind must be relaxed and directed to
pleasant themes during a meal or the nerves to the vital organs will
be held too tense to permit a free secretion of digestive juices.
Chronic indigestion is sure to result from this practice. Dinner, or the
hearty meal at night, rather than at noon, is preferable for the
business or professional man or woman, because the cares of the
day are over and the brain force relaxes. The vital forces are not
detracted from the work of digestion.
Experiments in the quantity of food actually required for body
needs, made by Prof. R. H. Chittenden of the Sheffield Scientific
School, Yale University, have established, beyond doubt, the fact
that the average individual consumes very much more food than the
system requires. In fact, most tables of food requirements, in
previous books on dietetics, have been heavy.
Prof. Chittenden especially established the fact that the average
person consumes more protein than is necessary to maintain a
nitrogenous balance. It was formerly held that the average daily
metabolism and excretion of nitrogen through the kidneys was 16
grams, or about 100 grams of protein or albuminoid food. Prof.
Chittenden’s tests, covering a period of six months, show an average
daily excretion of 5.86 grams of nitrogen, or a little less than one-
third of that formerly accepted as necessary; 5.86 grams of nitrogen
corresponds to 36.62 grams of protein or albuminoid food.
Prof. Chittenden’s experiments of the foodstuffs actually required
by three groups of men, one group of United States soldiers, a group
from the Yale College athletic team, and a group of college
professors, all showed that the men retained full strength, with a
higher degree of physical and mental efficiency, when the body was
not supplied with more protein than was liberated by metabolic
activity, and when the quantity of carbonaceous food was regulated
to the actual requirement to retain body heat and furnish energy.
It may be well to call attention here to the fact that the food
elements, called upon for work, are not from those foods just
consumed or digested, but from those eaten a day or two previous,
which have been assimilated in the muscular tissues.
In selecting a diet, the individual must be considered as to age,
sex and physical condition, also whether active in indoor or outdoor
work, and whether he or she breathes deeply, so as to take plenty of
fresh air into the lungs.
The following tables, published through the courtesy of Dr. W. S.
Hall, give the rations for different conditions.
TABLE XI.
Rations for Different Conditions.
Proteins Carbohydrates
Energy in
Conditions Low High Fats Low High
Calories
Man at light indoor work 60 100 60 390 450 2764
Man at light outdoor work 60 100 100 400 460 2940
Man at moderate outdoor work 75 125 125 450 500 3475
Man at hard outdoor work 100 150 150 500 550 4000
Man at very hard outdoor winter
125 180 200 600 650 4592
work
U. S. Army rations 64 106 280 460 540 4896-5032
U. S. Navy rations 143 292 557 5545
Football team (old regime) 181 292 557 5697
College football team (new) 125 125 125 500 3675

TABLE XII.
Rations Varied for Sex and Age.
Proteins Carbohydrates
Variations of Sex and Age Low High Fats Low High Energy in Calories
Children, two to six 36 70 40 250 325 1520-1956
Children, six to fifteen 50 75 45 325 350 1923-2123
Women, with light exercise 50 80 80 300 330 2272
Women, at moderate work 60 92 80 400 432 2720
Aged women 50 80 50 270 300 1870
Aged men 50 100 400 300 350 2258

The unit of measurement for the calories of energy is the amount


of heat required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of energy
to 1° centigrade.
In estimating the number of calories of energy given off by the
different foods, Dr. Hall represents
1 gram of carbohydrates as 4.0 calories
” ” ” fats ” 9.4 ”
” ” ” proteins ” 4.0 ”
To determine the relative energy which a food represents, it is only
necessary to multiply the number of grams of protein in that food by
4, the fat by 9.4 and the carbohydrates by 4, and add the results.
Thus according to the food required for the average man at light
work given on page 211.
106.8 grams of proteins × 4 = 427.20 calories of energy
57.97 ” ” fat × 9.4 = 544.94 ” ” ”
398.84 ” ” carbohydrates × 4 = 1595.36 ” ” ”
= the calories of energy required
2567.51
for the average man at light work.

Dr. Chittenden’s experiments show that a man leading a very


active life, and above the average in body weight, can maintain his
body in equilibrium indefinitely with a daily intake of 36 to 40 grams
of protein, or albuminoid food, and with a total fuel value of 1600
calories. Authorities, however differ upon the amount of food
required.
Dr. Hall suggests 106 grams of protein
Ranke suggests 100 grams of protein
Hultgren and Landergren suggests 134 grams of protein
Schmidt suggests 105 grams of protein
Forster and Moleschott suggests 130 grams of protein
Atwater suggests 125 grams of protein

In order to bring oneself to as limited a diet as Prof. Chittenden’s


men followed, however, it would be necessary to have all food
weighed so as to be sure of the correct proportions; otherwise the
actual needs would not be supplied and the body would suffer. A
wise provision of nature enables the body to throw off an excess of
food above the body needs without injury, within limitations; but, as
stated, there is no doubt that the average person exceeds these
limits, exhausting the digestive organs and loading the system with
more than it can eliminate; the capacity for mental work is restricted,
and the whole system suffers.
Prof. Chittenden’s experiments have been a wonderful revelation
to dietitians and scientists. They have demonstrated beyond doubt
that the average person eats much more than the system requires
and thus overworks the digestive organs.
From the fact that only from two to four ounces
Mixed Diet of nitrogenous food is required to rebuild daily
versus a tissue waste, it is apparent that this amount can
Vegetable Diet readily be supplied from the vegetable kingdom,
since nuts, legumes, and cereals are rich in
proteins; yet there is a question whether a purely vegetable diet is
productive of the highest physical and mental development. Natives
of tropical climates live upon vegetables, fruits, and nuts, and it may
be purely accidental or be due to climatic or other conditions, that
these nations have not been those who have made the greatest
progress in the world. Neither have the Eskimos, who live almost
entirely upon meat, attained the highest development. The greatest
progress and development, both as nations and as individuals, have
been made by inhabitants of temperate climates, who have lived
upon a mixed diet of meat, eggs, milk, grains, vegetables, fruits, and
nuts. They have shown more creative force, which means reserve
strength.
The Eskimo has demonstrated, however, that an entire meat diet
supplies all physical needs; the meat tissue providing growth and
repair and the fat supplying all of the carbonaceous elements. The
fat, as previously stated, yields more heat than starches and sugars,
and Nature provides this heat for climates where most warmth is
required. It may be the natural reason why natives of warm climates
have formed the habit of using vegetables and grains for their heat
and energy rather than meat. It is also a natural reason why man, in
temperate climates, eats more meat in winter than in summer.
An unperverted, natural instinct will always be found to have a
sound physiological basis. For example,—if, by reason of some
digestive disturbance, one has become emaciated, all of the fat
having been consumed, and the cause of the disturbance is
removed by an operation or otherwise, one is seized with an almost
insatiable desire for fat, often eating large chunks of the fat of meat

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