Royal Worcester

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Tea canister, about 1768, Worcester porcelain factory V&A Museum no. 1448&A-1853

Royal Worcester manufactures bone china and in particular porcelain.

Founded in Worcester, England in 1751, the factory was established on the banks of the River Severn by a group of local businessmen, with the guidance of Dr John Wall, an eminent physician. Dr. Wall along with another of the group, apothecary William Davis, developed their method for producing porcelain. Dr. Wall secured the sum of £4500 from the partners to establish the factory in Worcester and those original partnership deeds are still housed in the Museum of Worcester Porcelain.

The Worcester factory always prided itself on its quality Worcester Porcelain. It received a royal warrant in 1789, and is still currently by appointment to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

At its height, the firm employed nearly 1,000 people, but after merger with Spode, and heavy competition from overseas, the production was gradually switched to factories in Stoke and abroad. 100 staff were made redundant in 2003 and another 100 went in 2005. 15 porcelain painters left the Severn Street factory on Friday 29 September 2006, together with 100 other workers ^[1]. The very few employees who remain with Royal Worcester will be retrained so the company can focus on the production of ornamental, giftware and prestige ranges.

[edit] Worcester Porcelain Museum

The factory's former site includes a visitor centre and the independent Worcester Porcelain Museum (formerly known as the Dyson Perrins Museum). The Museum houses the world’s largest collection of Worcester Porcelain. The collections date back to 1751 and the Victorian gallery, the ceramic collections, archives and records of factory production, form the primary resource for the study of Worcester porcelain and its history.

However, the old factory features in the company's business plan and is provisionally part of a new redevelopment in Worcester. The modern era has produced many new styles of porcelain. In particular, branding with well known celebrity chefs. This is a very popular way of increasing the product base and provides the modern family with quality porcelain that reflects their lifestyle. A popular design is the Jamie Oliver Collection of which there are a number of different styles.

Rienzi - Center for European decorative arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas Rienzi's collection consists of one of the finest collections of Worcester porcelain in the United States by its owner, Harris Masterson III. Harris Masterson III acquired his first piece of 18th-century Worcester in 1943 while stationed in England during the war. This purchase initiated a life-long interest in the pursuit of early Worcester which led to the collection at Rienzi, one of the finest and largest of its kind in North America.