Transfer Printed Enamels: Birmingham's First Known Example, & an Overview (1749 onwards) *

Plaque, "Success to the British Fisheries", 1750-51, probably Birmingham.

12.4 cm wide, 9.8 cm high, held by the V&A.

This plaque is the earliest known example of the transfer printing process on enamel, and was almost certainly made in Birmingham in 1750 or 1751. The year is known because the plaque commemorates the 'foundation by Royal Charter of the "Free British Fishery Society" or British Herring Fishery Company, on 25 October 1750'.*1*

The transfer-print is in red and overpainted in pinks and magenta, on white enamel with a copper base, and framed in a gilt metal frame. This is an early example of transfer printing, the process hasn’t been mastered yet, and the transfer-printed lines are a little powdery and needed to be over-painted in places. The design is similar to other Birmingham enamels of this period, including the picturing of swans, which was a re-used motif on Birmingham enamels.

Development of Transfer Printing

Enamel plaque of the King of Prussia by J. Sadler of Liverpool, c. 1758.
Sold at Bonham's in 2009 for £1,920.

Liverpool

Transfer printing was the process of applying copperplate prints to the surface of enamel. It was possibly developed in Liverpool in about 1749, as was claimed by two engravers of the town, John Sadler and Guy Green.*14* Whether this was true or not, John Sadler produced a variety of transfer printed enamels till about the 1770s (image above), as well as prints on earthenware.

Birmingham

The earliest known surviving transfer printed enamel (top image, above) is generally thought to have been made in Birmingham. In 1751 a Birmingham-based engraver, John Brooks, attempted to take out a patent for the process but a year later apologised in the local newspaper, Aris's Birmingham Gazette, that 'he never intended to encourage a Monopoly in that Branch of the Trade', suggesting that it was not his invention and was already being practiced in Birmingham.*15* Another engraver known to be working on producing prints to transfer onto enamel at this time was Robert Hancock.

Brooks later moved to London and formed a partnership with Stephen Theodore Jansen and Henry Delamain in setting up the Battersea enamel manufactory producing printed enamels.*16* 

Base of snuff-box with transfer print of owl and birds, c. 1758-60.
Probably Birmingham made.

The trade continued in Birmingham under several makers, and one of the largest enamel makers was John Taylor, possibly employing up to 200 people across the enamelling and gilding trades. As well a painting enamel boxes, Taylor's manufactory produced transfer printed enamel. Lady Shelburne visited the enamelling part of Taylor's factory in 1766 and described the transfer printing of enamel:

At Mr. Taylor's we met again, and he made and enamel'd a landscape on the top of a box before us, which he afterwards gave me as a curiosity from my having seen it done. The method of doing it is this: a stamping instrument managed only by one woman first impresses the picture on paper, which paper is then laid even upon a piece of white enamel and rubbed hard with a knife or instrument like it, till it is marked upon the box. Then there is spread over it with a brush some metallic colour reduced to a fine powder which adheres to the moist part, and, by putting it afterwards into an oven for a few minutes, the whole is completed by fixing the colour.*17*

London

The Battersea factory in London was open between 1753 and 1756. Although transfer printing had been conducted in Birmingham for at least two years already, many of the early Birmingham transfer prints were overpainted, so Battersea goods were the first time London shoppers saw and bought transfer printed enamels. Horace Walpole wrote to his friend Richard Bentley in 1755 sending him ‘trifling snuff box’ which he sent to a friend as a ‘sample of the new manufacture at Battersea, which is done with copper-plates' and Walpole had his own ‘cabinet of enamels’ where he displayed intriguing samples of the manufacture.*18* After the closure of the Battersea factory in 1756, they advertised their remaining stock for sale, which included:

A quantity of beautiful enamel, coloured and uncoloured, […] and never yet exhibited to the public view, consisting of snuff boxes of all sizes, of great variety of patterns, […], very proper ornaments for the cabinets of the curious, bottle-tickets, with chains for all sorts of liquors and of different subjects, watch-cases, tooth-pick-cases, coat and sleeve buttons and other curiosities.*19*

Bottle ticket, probably Battersea made 1753-1756.
Sold at Bonhams in 2019 for £956.

Post 1756

After the closure of the Battersea factory, transfer printed enamel was probably exclusively produced in Liverpool by Sadler, and in Birmingham and nearby Black Country towns such as Bilston and Wednesbury, by various artisans. See examples of transfer printed enamels: here.

Notes

*1* As described on the V&A website: https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O79612/success-to-the-british-fisheries-plaque-boitard-louis-philippe/. The plaque (first image) is claimed by the V&A to have been designed by the London-based engraver Louis Philippe Boitard, but there is no evidence for this. Victorian and early 1900s scholars stated this because they thought that these goods were only London produced, which has since been disproved. See Susan Benjamin, English Enamel Boxes (1978).