The urgency, secrecy and espionage surrounding the pan-European race to discover the formula for "white gold', the seemingly miraculous and highly valued material of
hard-paste porcelain perfected in China more than a millennium before, has been likened to the development of the atom bomb in the 20th century.
A Edward Marshall Boehm made
hard-paste porcelain items from the late 1940s onwards.
During the first half of 17th century, Marquis Carlo Andrea Ginori, advisor to the Grand Duke of Tuscany, established the first Italian factory of
hard-paste porcelain, the Doccia Porcelain Manufactory, paving way to the legacy of Richard Ginori.
They made simple decorated mainly tea wares, in a milk-white, translucent,
hard-paste porcelain with underglaze blue and polychrome decoration.
The brand's representative said: "Alumilite has a stiff structure similar to
hard-paste porcelain, a translucent look, high mechanical resistance, a hard surface and is creamy white in colour - an indispensable feature of soft-paste porcelains."
For starters, Twomey based the entire installation on three individual commedia figurines from the Gardiner Museum's permanent collection, works originally acquired by the Museum's co-founder, George Gardiner: Harlequin, Scaramouche and Leda, all 18th century
hard-paste porcelain figurines produced in Germany and Italy.
The Bow factory, along with that at Chelsea, produced only soft-paste china, because as yet the English had not perfected the
hard-paste porcelain first produced centuries earlier in China and only recently at Meissen in Saxony.
Hard-paste porcelain produced in Germany and Austria was of exceptional quality, extremely white and durable.
Hard-paste porcelain was not made at Sevres until the late 1760s, when, as previously mentioned, kaolin was found in the Limoges region.
In fact, Spode wasn't the first factory to use bone ash in the manufacture of porcelain - others had used it as part of their soft-paste formula in the 18th century - but Spode is credited with its first use in the
hard-paste porcelain mix that was to become the bone china we are familiar with today.
Nowadays, the range is completed by new spray flacons, featuring stoppers made of
hard-paste porcelain or bisque and of very fine workmanship.
The case is made of soft-paste porcelain, an imitation of the
hard-paste porcelain made in Japan and China.