English pictorial enamels: Battersea and Bilston enamels and their successors.

The manufacture of English pictorial enamels began in about 1750 in a factory on the premises of York House, in Battersea, then still a rural area outside London's boundaries. In 1756 the Battersea operation closed, but by the end of the decade production methods developed there had been dispersed to workshops in Bilston, Birmingham, and other towns in the Midlands region of England that had acquired the remaining materials and working stocks from the closed business. Some of these later firms copied the original Battersea wares very closely, but stylistic changes emerged over the next decades. The name Battersea enamels is often used to describe the entire production, ...