18 
House & Garden 
A shelf of rare transfer printed Worcester. It is seldom found with marks and hence collectors 
should proceed with caution. George Hancock was the masterhand at this sort of work 
THE MAKING and SEEKING of OLD WORCESTER 
If, Like Charles Lamb, You Love to Rummage in Old China-Closets, Here 
Is a Satisfactory Collecting Hobby 
GARDNER TEALL 
With others the fire of en¬ 
thusiasm will heat the kiln 
of the desire to collect— 
and to keep on collecting 
old china, until it be¬ 
comes the passion of the 
soul. Then there are the 
“between extremes”. 
Wasn’t it Pope who said 
“Old China is below no¬ 
body’s taste, since it has 
been the Duke of Argyle’s, 
whose understanding has 
never been doubted, either 
by his friends or his ene¬ 
mies,”—I am not sure; 
however, we do not have 
to follow the Argyles; the 
, same intuition is as apt to 
I he cups and sau- , TT , . . 
cers to the left are our own. L n 1 1 k e 
Worcester of the Oliver, old china tickles 
middle period the universal palate with¬ 
out any strenuous cultiva¬ 
tion of the taste for it. 
Old Worcester is not to be forgotten by 
those others of us who, like Charles Lamb, 
love to rummage in old china-closets, even if 
only visually. You will not come across it at 
every turning and you may not come across it 
at all. 
I had vainly searched the antique shops of 
a certain Eastern city for a bit of old Wor- 
C HARLES LAMB 
once confessed “I 
have an almost feminine 
partiality for old China. 
When I go to see any great 
house, I inquire for the 
china-closet, and next for 
the picture gallery. I can¬ 
not defend the order of 
preference, but by saying, 
that we have all some taste 
or other, of too ancient a 
date to admit of our re¬ 
membering distinctly that 
it was an acquired one. I 
can call to mind the first 
play and the first exhibi¬ 
tion that I was taken to; 
but I am not conscious of 
a time when China jars 
and saucers were intro¬ 
duced into my imagina¬ 
tion.” 
I suppose the majority of us are like the 
gentle Elia, that smouldering in the breast 
of every one of us is the spark which, once 
kindled, will burst forth into the flame of a 
love for old china. With some, the glow will 
be gentle, stopping perhaps with a bit of 
delft, a Sevres saucer, or “the pickle dish my 
great-great-grandmother had on her table the 
day Thomas Jefferson dined at her home.” 
Pierced open - ware 
Worcester, a style 
that followed the 
period of Dr. Wall 
Old Worcester in the “Japan taste” which followed the blue and white pieces of 
the Dr. Wall period. It was a popular form of decoration made by Flight 
