A-Z of Ceramics - R is for Repairer

The 'repairers' working in the 18th-century British ceramics industry did not, as their name suggests, mend or rivet broken ceramics. Rather, they were the skilled craftsmen responsible for assembling figures and certain wares from the constituent parts formed in plaster piece-moulds. They also cleaned up mould seam-lines, incised or sharpened up such details as facial features and clothing accessories, and added small hand-modelled or separately cast components.

Repairers were responsible for many of the variations found in sculptural porcelain pieces, as here. Modelling and designing appear to have been overlapping areas of activity in the 18th-century ceramic industry; but in assemblages of this type - which can bring together thrown shapes, standard moulded components, hand-pierced work and parts modelled by hand - the distinctions between modelling, repairing and designing become completely blurred.

Figure of Neptune, made at the Bow porcelain factory, about 1750. Museum no. C.203-1928. Soft-paste porcelain. Given by E. F. Broderip, and Bequeathed by Miss Helena Hill

Figure of Neptune, made at the Bow porcelain factory, about 1760. Museum no. C.42-1944. Soft-paste porcelain, painted in enamels. Given by E. F. Broderip, and Bequeathed by Miss Helena Hill