Orange hexagonal vases

Iron red ground, hand-painted with simple gilding. These important vases help us identify the different types of decoration used at Giles Studio. This type of rose painting and ‘Naturalistic Birds’ are also seen on many other items in this collection, but very rarely appear together. James Giles, an independent decorator who bought white porcelain and enamelled it for resale. Since the early 1760s Giles had an arrangement with the Worcester factory to supply him with quantities of white china which he painted and gilded in London. Giles was influenced by the latest Meissen porcelain that was painted with flowers and birds in a lively and spontaneous manner. The painters who worked for Giles painted in a very distinctive style and as a result Giles-decorated Worcester porcelain can be easily distinguished from factory-painted pieces. Because of its fresh and spirited painting, Giles-decorated Worcester porcelain is particularly popular with collectors today. Giles painted on Worcester porcelain ‘blanks’. With an unreliable supply of white porcelain and relying only on the luxury end of the London market. Giles was bankrupt in 1775.James Giles was to advertise his productions in 1768 as ‘curiously painted in the Dresden, Chelsea, and Chinese Tastes’. Pieces decorated in the workshop of James Giles in the 1770s often have tooled gilding, which gives a particularly luxurious appearance. Among those who kept a warehouse in London was James Giles (1718-80), who leased premises in Cockspur Street, near Trafalgar Square, from 1767. From at least 1743 he was in business in Berwick Street, Soho, as a ‘China and Enamel painter’30 and between 1771 and 1774 is known to have purchased around 40-50,000 pieces of Worcester porcelain for decoration in London. Hardly able to paint all these pieces himself, he evidently employed a team of painters, who may well have included Fidelle Duvivier and perhaps J.H. O’ Neale, and produced a large range of styles independently of the factory itself. Lavish gilded decoration, often elaborately tooled, and a huge variety of patterns and styles earned him the patronage of many aristocrats, whose names appear in his surviving ledgers for 1771-6,31 Princess Amelia, daughter of King George II; the Dukes of Marlborough, Richmond and Bolton; the Duchesses of Portland, Leinster and Ancaster; the Earl of Carlisle; Lady Dysart; Lord Clive; Lady Charlotte Finch; Sir Watkin Williams Wynn.