The new factory, known as La China, was erected in the garden of the Buen Retiro, a palace in the suburbs of Madrid. Here for the next thirty years, that is until the death of Charles III. in 1788, supported by a large yearly grant, and surrounded by the strictest secrecy, was made the porcelain destined for the decoration of the royal palaces and for presentation to other courts. Only in the time of Joseph, Napoleon’s brother, and of Ferdinand VII., was the ware from the royal works allowed to come into the market, and this was at a period of decline. The Buen Retiro gardens were the scene of desperate fighting between the English and the French in the year 1812, during which the porcelain works were completely destroyed. We hear, at the commencement, of quarrels between the Spanish and Italian workmen, and of breakdowns in the kilns. But Charles and his director, Buonicelli, must soon have surmounted the preliminary difficulties, for already, during the years 1763 to 1765 (as we learn from an inscription on one of the slabs), Giuseppe Gricci was occupied in decorating the porcelain chamber, the famous _Gabineto_ of the palace at Aranjuez, which surpassed in magnificence the earlier room of the same description at Portici. The large plaques which surround this chamber are decorated with groups of Japanese figures in high relief, carefully modelled and painted. Between these plaques rise tall looking-glasses brought from the king’s new glass-works at La Granja, and the porcelain frames of these mirrors are elaborately decorated with fruits and flowers. There is another of these porcelain cabinets in the Royal Palace at Madrid; this time the plaques are ornamented with children in high relief. Here and in the other Spanish palaces, at Aranjuez, at La Granja, and at the Escurial, may still be seen vases of porcelain from Buen Retiro, some of them six or seven feet in height. These vases are often set in gilt bronze mountings and filled with branches of porcelain flowers. Among the specimens of Spanish porcelain that we see in English collections, it is the plain white ware that interests us most. This is of a very beautiful warm tint, and the vases are surrounded by _amorini_ in full relief among flowers, or again by sea-shells modelled from nature, as in the case of the Capo di Monte ware. But many other things were made--imitations of Wedgwood, for example, white relief on a dull blue ground. In its last days the factory fell under French influence, and an attempt was made to imitate the hard paste of Sèvres with the aid of native clays. It would seem that some of the paste made at an earlier time was of a hybrid nature, containing magnesia, like that of Vinovo.