Ceramic wares made their way into every Victorian home in the form of odds and ends for the poor and lavishly decorated wares for the rich because of the improved potting techniques of that industrial age. Sparse decoration and second-rate goods also accounted for what was found on many tables. The bone china cake plate on the left was an inexpensive piece from the Davenport factory in Staffordshire. With wares such as this, the British bone china makers countered the threat of cheap continental porcelain (illustration 17). Davenport, in operation from 1794 to 1887, was a heavy exporter to Canada, sending out wares of many types for trade sales which sometimes took place on the wharf where the goods were unloaded from sailing vessels. This cake plate belongs to the end of the Davenport period, nearer to the time when Eaton's was selling sparsely-decorated English bone china tea sets for less than three dollars.
The 1860s jug is ironstone china from another Staffordshire firm, Liddle Elliot & Son, who had a MontrÄal agent at that time. The jug is a "second": the splotch of colour on it was accidental, not intentional. The Canadian market absorbed large quantities of seconds. The annual report of the Toronto Board of Trade for 1862 commented: "We continue to be considerable importers of 'seconds', a description of goods that answers fully as well and is much cheaper than the 'firsts'".
Courtesy: National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada (S81-18)
