BACK TO ARCHIVE   ENGLISH MINIATURE CHINA   Page 2   Stokesay Ware's popular dinner service, Sovereign Red, is decorated with a 22-karat gold rim and retails for about £208 ($330). The full range of Stokesay Ware china is available via mail order from London. Karen and Peter have recently expanded their business by taking a workshop in a small mews in the Stoke Newington area of London, an area becoming increasingly fashionable as younger people buy the attractive, but sometimes neglected, houses of the neighborhood and invest time and money on renovation. In their Stokesay Ware workshop, Karen and Peter have created a pleasant working environment, which includes a showroom area with displays of their complete range of miniature dollhouse china, all handmade using traditional techniques and materials. STOKESAY WARE'S Blue and White Collection includes traditional designs from the mid 18th century. "We start with a bucket of clay slip, make our own plaster molds, cast the items and glaze and decorate them," Peter says. "Most pieces are fired three or four times in our kilns." The decoration on the miniature china is achieved by transfer printing, a process developed around 200 years ago, which makes highly decorated work much more affordable than hand decoration. "Transfer printing enables us to do things that are very detailed at a fraction of the cost of something that is hand-painted," Karen says. However, she admits that "we are pushing technology to its extreme by printing designs this fine." Karen researches, and designs the Stokesay Ware miniature china. She takes original patterns from 18th and I9th century English china as her inspiration, but she adapts and enhances them to create her own version in miniature. This practice is based on the actions of early English china factories; when one company brought out a new pattern that proved popular, other manufacturers would bring out something similar, but not identical, and give it a different name.   THE FULL RANGE of the Stokesay Mulberry Collection of handmade fine china is available via mail order from London.     1 :: 2 :: 3         HOME :: FINE CHINA :: GALLERY PRICE LIST :: ORDER :: EVENTS :: PROJECTS LINKS :: ARCHIVE         STOKESAY WARE 37 Sandbrook Road, Stoke Newington London N16 0SH, UK Telephone 020 7254 5242 International +44 20 7254 5242 email peter@stokesayware.com         Content, design & graphics copyright © Karen Griffiths 2000