CIRCA 1800, ONE SMALLER EXAMPLE INCISED 2

The subject matter and quality of the flower painting on this garniture would suggest an attribution to William Billingsley while the form of the bough pots is identifiable as a shape that was made at the Pinxton porcelain manufactory. However, with the dissolution of Billingsley's partnership with John Coke at Pinxton in April 1799 it remains unclear whether this garniture was decorated at Pinxton at the very end of the 18th century, or alternatively slightly later by Billingsley at the decorating establishment that he set up in Belvedere Street, Mansfield almost immediately after leaving Pinxton. There is documentary evidence that Billingsley was at Mansfield in 1800 as W. Harrod states in his History of Mansfield and Its Environs of 1801 'China/Mr. Billingsley, Belvedere Street, Mansfield has lately introduced the painting of this article, in a very elegant style'. Billingsley obtained porcelain in the white for decoration at his Mansfield studio, mostly from factories in Staffordshire but also from France. For a pair of yellow-ground bough-pots of the same form, attributed to William Billingsley see C. Barry Sheppard, Pinxton Porcelain 1795-1813, and the porcelain of Mansfield and Brampton-in-Torksey, Barry Sheppard, 1996, p. 194, col. pl. 4, and p. 213, pl. 212 for a Pinxton yellow-ground teapot and cover painted with landscape panels, titled, and signed on the underside of the cover 'Billingsley Mansfeild'.