Originally published in 2007 by the British Museum Press, London.

A special feature of this outstanding book is its lavish use of colour, with hundreds of wonderful full-colour illustrations depicting some 800 individual pieces from this unique collection. As these are fully supported by an authoritative and informative text, written by the leading experts on the subject, the result is an important work of reference which will demand a place on the bookshelves of not only those with an interest in Worcester, but also all lovers of fine porcelain. 700 colour illustrations

This book addresses the contributions made by analytical chemistry to the characterisation of 18th and early 19th Century English and Welsh porcelains commencing with the earliest reports of Sir Arthur Church and of Herbert Eccles and Bernard Rackham using chemical digestion techniques and concluding with the most recent instrumental experiments, which together span more than a hundred years of study. From the earliest experiments which required necessarily the sacrifice of significant portions of each specimen, which may already have been damaged , to the latest experiments which needed only microsampling or the non-destructive interrogation of valuable perfect specimens a comprehensive survey is undertaken of more than twenty manufactories of quality porcelains. The correlation is made between the quantitative elemental oxide determinations of the scanning electron microscopic diffraction and Xray fluorescence data and the qualitative molecular spectroscopic Raman data to demonstrate their complementarity and use in the holistic forensic assessment of the origin of the fired procelains ; this will form the groundwork for the adoption of analytical techniques for the attribution of unknown or questionable procelains to their potential source factories . The book will also examine the perception of what constitutes a porcelain and its definitions and examines the assignment of porcelains to types which currently employs the definitions of hard paste , soft paste , hybrid , magnesian and bone china from the conclusions derived from the analytical data and a consideration of the raw materials employed in their manufacturing processes. During the discussion of this analytical evidence several themes and protocols have been established for its utilisation in the potential identification of porcelains and several case studies undertaken for this purpose are cited. The book will be of interest to analytical scientists , to museum ceramics curators and to ceramics historians.

This book broadens the discussion of pottery and china in the Victorian era by situating them in the national, imperial, design reform, and domestic debates between 1840 and 1890. Largely ignored in recent scholarship, Ceramics in the Victorian Era: Meanings and Metaphors in Painting and Literature argues that the signification of a pot, a jug, or a tableware pattern can be more fully discerned in written and painted representations. Across five case studies, the book explores a rhetoric and set of conventions that developed within the representation of ceramics, emerging in the late-18th century, and continuing in the Victorian period. Each case study begins with a textual passage exemplifying the outlined theme and closes with an object analysis to demonstrate how the fusing of text, image, and object are critical to attaining the period eye in order to better understand the metaphorical meanings of ceramics. Essential reading not only for ceramics scholars, but also those of material culture, the book mines the rich and diverse archive of Victorian painting and literature, from the avant-garde to the sentimental, from the well-known to the more obscure, to shed light on the at once complex and simple implications of ceramics' agencies at this time.