The Marshall Collection of Worcester porcelain in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Abstract

The Marshall Collection is widely considered the most fully comprehensive collection in existence of early coloured (i.e. excluding blue-and-white) porcelain from the Worcester factory. The factory, founded in 1751, became the most enduring of all eighteenth-century English porcelain factories. Its products are sought after by a large and enthusiastic collecting community. The Marshall Collection constituted a systematic attempt to obtain examples of every pattern and shape made by the factory in the 'first period', up to 1783, so that this publication, the first complete catalogue of the collection donated to the museum, will be a definitive source of reference.