Transfer printing

The technique was essential for adding complex decoration such as the Willow pattern to relatively cheap pottery.

In particular, transfer printing brought the price of a matching dinner service low enough for large numbers of people to afford.

The plate is used to print the pattern on tissue paper, using mixes of special pigments that stand up to firing as the "ink".

Transfer printing enabled the high quality of representation that had been developed in painting on porcelain to be done far more cheaply, in the process making large numbers of painters redundant.

Initially cobalt blue, black and brown were probably the only colour options for underglaze transfer printing.

Large numbers of designs celebrated the new republic and in particular George Washington, with elaborate decorations around the central image as the century came to an end.

One particularly distinctive type of transferware, with an all-over floral pattern, is called chintz pottery, or chintzware.

[8] In the 1750s three men made significant advances in the application of printed decoration to ceramic surfaces; it does not seem likely that they were aware of the Italian precedents.

A Swiss enamel artist also records seeing printing being done at an unidentified factory near to (but different from) the Chelsea works, during a visit to London that ended in late 1752.

[9] In 1751 John Brooks, an Irish engraver then based in Birmingham, petitioned for a patent for “printing, impressing, and reversing upon enamel and china from engraved, etched and mezzotinted plates and from cuttings on wood and metal...” He was primarily concerned with printed decoration on enamels; boxes, plaques, medallions, etc.

[11] Five years after Brooks's first patent attempt, in 1756,[12] John Sadler (in partnership with Guy Green) claimed in a patent affidavit that they had spent the past seven years perfecting a process for printing on tiles and that they could "print upwards of Twelve hundred Earthen Ware Tiles of different patterns " within a period of 6 hours.

[14] Some printed pieces were in complicated shapes and included gilding, showing that the technique was at this point regarded as suitable for luxury products.

[15] From 1842 the United Kingdom Patent Office introduced a system of registered marks, usually impressed or printed on the underside of pieces.

Kawana ware in Japan developed in the late Edo period and was a type of blue-and-white porcelain.