
Cornish china clay holds a very specific place in Worcester’s history. It is a key ingredient in the production of Worcester’s porcelain and was a driver of the city’s economic health for many years.
The great demand and fashion for Chinese porcelain in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries inspired enterprising Europeans to experiment with the production of porcelain themselves including at the early Worcester factories.
John Flight, one of the early factory owners, kept a diary between 1785 and 1791 (now in the Museum of Royal Worcester’s collection) which includes reports of his experimentation to find the right mix of ingredients to make a stable porcelain. Early pieces made by the factories have a distinctive white surface, perfect for decorating, the colour coming from the china clay.
The Museum of Royal Worcester has the most important Worcester Porcelain collection in the world and so the City and County collections have very few examples. The exception is Worcester City’s archaeology collections, which include excavated factory sites. These unglazed, fragmentary ceramics were found during archaeological excavations at Warmstry House, Worcester’s earliest porcelain manufactory, established in 1751, and tell us much about the times the ingredients didn’t go right.