Real Fábrica del Buen Retiro

He took the equipment and about 40 key workers, including Giuseppe Gricci (c. 1700–1770), the main modeller, and nearly five tons of porcelain paste.

The building was damaged in the Napoleonic Wars, and in 1817 production was moved a short distance across Madrid, the enterprise becoming the Royal Factory of La Moncloa, again taking such moulds and equipment as survived, and the employees.

[2] Both these had walls largely of plain white plaques, over which lay a network of coloured elements in a medium to high relief, made up of plant motifs and figures.

These were applied as sprigs, meaning that they made separately as thin pieces, and stuck to the main blue body before firing.

[3] The factory was founded in 1760 on a site in the Buen Retiro park which at that time was the private gardens of a royal palace on the outskirts of Madrid.

Buen Retiro porcelain was one of the products that drove mercantilist royal policy during the Spanish Age of Enlightenment.

The year 1803 marked a transition in the factory management from the Italian board of directors to the Spanish-born Bartolome Sureda y Miserol.

[6] The occupying French forces were driven out of Madrid in 1812, during the Peninsular War, and the park became the scene of intense fighting.