Apart from their paste, renowned for its absolute whiteness and considerable translucency, Billingsley and his pupils, Pardoe and Walker, have acquired a certain fame by their enamel-painting on this Nantgarw porcelain. Life-size roses, auriculas, tulips, and lilies were their favourite flowers. This was the culmination, as it were, of the school that delighted above all in the double rose, a not very paintable flower, at least in a decorative point of view. We saw its beginnings at Derby more than thirty years before this time. But Baxter the younger, whom we have come across at his father’s workshop in Gough Square, painted figure-subjects on the Swansea porcelain, and some of the translucent ware of the Nantgarw type was sent up to London unenamelled, there to be converted into the old soft paste of Sèvres. * * * * * Before we return to the West of England to treat of the true hard porcelain of Plymouth and Bristol, there remain to be mentioned briefly a few unimportant factories of soft paste--unimportant, that is, from the point of view of art. LOWESTOFT.--Taking advantage of some suitable clay found in the neighbourhood, and of the fine silvery sand of the shore, a manufactory of soft paste was established at Lowestoft about 1756. Later on we find some references to a ‘Lowestoft Porcelain Company.’ The ware produced was chiefly blue and white, with views of the neighbourhood, but other small pieces are found crudely painted in colour. The execution of much of this ware is very summary, and the glaze is often dull and spotted. A blue and white plate in the British Museum, with _poudré_ ground and panels painted with views of Lowestoft and the neighbourhood, is an unusually favourable specimen. More commonly we find jugs and ink-pots with inscriptions--‘A Trifle from Lowestoft,’ etc.--and with dates in one or two cases ranging from 1762 to 1789. Whether any hard porcelain from other sources was ever painted at Lowestoft is very doubtful.[242] The ‘Lowestoft porcelain’ of the dealers is now known to have been painted by Chinese artists at Canton. That this is so was conclusively proved many years ago by Sir A. W. Franks. The thrashing out of the question had the advantage of throwing much light on the origin of this curious pseudo-European decoration. The greater part of this porcelain painted at Canton is covered with elaborate armorial designs, and it was made not only for England but for other European countries that traded with the East. The history of this Sinico-European ware is well illustrated in a large collection brought together chiefly by the late Sir A. W. Franks and now in the British Museum.[243]