Location unknown.
Summary of operating dates and proprietors
| c1749-52 | Benjamin Lund and William Miller. |
The pottery was sold in 1752 and appears not to have operated after that date.
The first reference to Benjamin Lund in connection with the production of porcelain in Bristol was in March 1749 when he was granted a licence for a term of twenty one years to quarry soap rock from Gewcrease in the parish of Mullion, Cornwall. He was to begin operations within three months of that date, to pay dues of 10s a ton to the landowner and to draw at least 20 tons of the rock a year.
Considerable research has been carried out into the quarrying of soap rock by Robert Felce and was published in 2011 in his book, Soaprock Coast. The origins of English porcelain (ISBN 978-0-9569895-0-5). He quotes the licence issued to Lund by the landowner John West which allowed him ‘to break up, take and carry away such parts and parcells as he and they shall think proper of all that soft rock commonly called or known by the name of the soaprock lying in Gewgreaze Cove within the tenement or Great Inclosure called or known by the name of Kinance [Kynance] in the parish of Mullion in the county of Cornwall … and also to dig or search for ye same or ye like clays or rocks in and throughout those parts of the said tenement or inclosure which now or late were in ye tenure or occupation of Barnard Richards Richard Sampson and James and John Harry or any or either of them their or any of their undertenant or undertenants and to raise and break up and take and carry away ye same to and for his and their own use and uses and at his or their own wills and pleasures (provided and so as ye said Benjamin Lund … and all workmen and labourers and others to be employed by or under him do as little damage as possible to ye said tenement …’.
In November 1750 Dr Richard Pococke, an Irish traveller, wrote to his mother about a visit he had made to a Bristol porcelain factory in 1750: ‘I went to see a manufacture lately established here by one of the principal manufacturers at Limehouse which failed. It is at a glasshouse & is called Loudn’s Glass-house. They have two sorts of ware, one called Stone china which has a yellow cast, both in the ware & the glazing, that I suppose is made of pipe-clay & calcin’d flint. The other they call Old China, that is whiter & I suppose this is made of calcin’d flint & the soapy rock at Lizard point which ‘tis known they use, this is painted blue & somewhat like old white china of a yellowish cast; another kind is white with a blewish cast; & both called fine ornamental white china; they make very beautiful white sauce boats adorned with reliefs of festoons which sell for sixteen shillings a pair’. It is not known who Pococke was referring to as ‘one of the principal manufacturers at Limehouse’. There is no record of either Benjamin Lund or William Miller having been connected with the Limehouse porcelain works in London.
In November and December 1750 Lund’s name was associated with an advertisement concerning the introduction into Bristol of a manufactory for producing imitation China Ware and the request for parents and guardians to place children over the age of fourteen with the business to learn the ‘Art of Pottery, as practised in Staffordshire’ and to be taught to draw and paint on the ware ‘either in the India or Roman taste’.
In July 1751 and January 1752 advertisements appeared giving notice of sales of ware made in imitation of foreign china or porcelain at the proprietors’ warehouses in Castle Green and next to the Bell Inn in Temple Street.
In February 1752 Richard Holdship of Worcester, a glover, purchased from Benjamin Lund a ‘mine of clay or soft rock called or known by the name of Kinance in the parish of Mullion, in the County of Cornwall, which earth or clay was used in making of certain earthen ware in imitation of China Ware commonly called Bristol Porcelain Ware’ and also from Benjamin Lund and William Miller ‘their stock, utensils and effects and the process of the said Bristol Manufactory’. Advertisements in July and August 1752 notified the public that the proprietors of the manufactory in Bristol were now united with the Worcester Porcelain Company and were selling off their remaining stock at their warehouse in Castle Green.
In his bankruptcy hearing in February 1753 Benjamin Lund was described as ‘late of parish of Saint Philip & Jacob … dealer in copper and brass but now of the City of Worcester, china maker’ (PRO ASSI 45/25/1/89-90 Bankruptcy Order Book).
Wares produced
Porcelain.