The outturn of the kilns, like that of Chelsea, was sold periodically by auction, but the sales took place in the city for the most part, and the principal warehouse was in Cornhill. Though so difficult to identify nowadays, a large quantity of porcelain must have been produced by the Bow factory during the thirty years of its independent existence. Like its rival at Chelsea, the works had many ups and downs, and Crowther, the proprietor, became bankrupt in 1763. Compared with Chelsea, however, the bulk of the ware produced was no doubt of a common and cheap kind. Sprimont, in his ‘Case of the Undertaker,’ says somewhat contemptuously, ‘The chief endeavours at Bow have been towards making a more ordinary ware for common use.’ This is, of course, the dictum of a rival, but the Bow firm, in their advertisements, only claim to provide ‘china suitable for gentlemen’s kitchens, for private families and taverns.’ There has been the widest difference of opinion as to the actual specimens of porcelain that may with certainty be classed as the produce of the kilns at Bow. The earliest dated pieces are of a very modest kind--certain little cylindrical ink-pots. There is one in the collection formerly at Jermyn Street, with the inscription ‘Made at New Canton, 1751’; another in a private collection is dated a year earlier. The execution is rough, and the hastily coloured decoration of flowers is in the Japanese style. Some little time after this, in 1753, we find proof that the kilns were turning out much more ware than the proprietor could find painters to decorate.[226] They advertise in a Birmingham newspaper for ‘painters in the blue and white potting way and enamelers in china-ware’; also for ‘painters brought up in the Snuff-box way, Japanning, Fan-painting, etc.’ They are at the same time in search of persons ‘who can model small figures in clay neatly.’ Such advertisements seem to come from a commercial house with a large but perhaps irregular outturn. Sprimont would probably have exercised more care in the selection of his artists.