Plymouth porcelain Plymouth porcelain Plymouth porcelain was the first English hard paste porcelain, made in the county of Devon from 1768 to 1770. After two years in Plymouth the factory moved to Bristol in 1770, where it operated until 1781, when it was sold and moved to Staffordshire as the neucleus of New Hall porcelain, which operated until 1835. The Plymouth factory was founded by William Cookworthy. The porcelain factories at Plymouth and Bristol were among the earliest English manufacturers of porcelain, and the first to produce the hard-paste porcelain produced in China and the German factories led by Meissen porcelain. The
Chinese ceramics "Yangcai" (洋彩), meaning 'foreign colours') was introduced during the reign of the Kangxi Emperor (1654–1722), possibly around 1720. It used mainly pink or purple and remained popular throughout the 18th and the 19th centuries, also being widely adopted by European factories. Famille rose enamel ware allows a greater range of colour and tone than was previously possible, enabling the depiction of more complex images, including flowers, figures and insects. Pottery classified as stoneware in the West is usually regarded as porcelain in Chinese terms, where a stoneware group is not recognised, and so the definition of porcelain is rather different,