Rare Antique (1920s) King George V Period Copeland Spode “India Tree” 8”/2”cm Ironstone Plate (305g).

Marvellous plate. In excellent condition and beautifully hand painted & 24ct gold gilded. Please browse all 12 photographs for size, weight and condition as they are self explanatory. The markings on the back of this plate date it back to the 1920s around 100 years ago.

This plate was made by Copeland Spode in England and is an item produced by Spode in the potteries in Stoke on trend UK around 100years before production moved to the Far East some years ago. A very rare and sought after item hand made and hand decorated in the UK.

Spode is one of the greatest names of the Industrial Revolution. Josiah Spode I was born in 1733 and after several years working for other local potters, established his own company in 1776 in Church Street, (then known as High Street) Stoke and, like his neighbour and friend Josiah Wedgwood, concentrating on the production of ceramic wares of the finest quality in a variety of bodies.

He is particularly recognised as having developed the technique for underglaze transfer printing on earthenware c.1784 and to have produced the first printed “Willow” patterns 1784-90s. He focused his attention on the manufacture of porcelain, a technically more difficult but much finer material than he had previously made, introducing in 1796 a new type of porcelain which he first called “Stoke China” but shortly afterwards renamed “Bone China”, because of the high proportion of calcined ox-bone in its formula.

Josiah Spode I died suddenly in 1797 and it fell to his son Josiah Spode II to continue and perfect his father’s developments. In partnership with William Copeland, Josiah II continued the business for the next thirty years Under their management in the early 19th century, considered by many to be the “Golden Age” of English ceramics, the company grew to be the largest pottery in Stoke and a pre-eminent manufacturer of fine ceramics of every kind. Spode II was appointed “Potter to the Prince of Wales” when the Prince Regent visited the factory in 1806.

Josiah II’s china bodies, first Bone China and, from 1822, its derivative, Felspar Porcelain, outclassed all other contemporary English porcelains not just in terms of beauty but also of reliability of manufacture. Spode’s Felspar Porcelain is recognised as the forerunner of all modern English Bone China.