Chintzware, or chintz pottery, describes chinaware and pottery covered with a dense, all-over pattern of flowers (similar to

chintz Chintz () is a woodblock printed, painted, stained or glazed calico textile that originated in Golconda (present day Hyderabad, India) in the 16th century. The cloth is printed with designs featuring flowers and other patterns in different colou ...

textile patterns) or, less often, other objects. It is a form of transferware where the pattern is applied by

transfer printing Transfer printing is a method of decorating pottery or other materials using an engraved copper or steel plate from which a monochrome print on paper is taken which is then transferred by pressing onto the ceramic piece. Fleming, John & Hugh ...

as opposed to the more traditional method of painting by hand. The main firms making chintzware were English, nearly all part of the huge

Staffordshire pottery The Staffordshire Potteries is the industrial area encompassing the six towns Burslem, Fenton, Hanley, Longton, Stoke and Tunstall, which is now the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. North Staffordshire became a centre of ce ...

industry. including as Grimwades (trade name Royal Winton), A.G. Richardson & Co. (trade name Crown Ducal), James Kent Ltd.,

Shelley Potteries Shelley Potteries, situated in Staffordshire, was earlier known as Wileman & Co. which had also traded as The Foley Potteries. The first Shelley to join the company was Joseph Ball Shelley in 1862 and in 1896 his son Percy Shelley became the s ...

Ltd., and Elijah Cotton Ltd. (trade name Lord Nelson) and between them turned out a great variety of chintz dinnerware, teaware, and ornamental pieces mostly from the 1920s to the 1960s. There were over 50 different patterns in various colours available. While often made in pottery, some manufacturers such as Shelley produced

bone china Bone china is a type of ceramic that is composed of bone ash, feldspathic material, and kaolin. It has been defined as "ware with a translucent body" containing a minimum of 30% of phosphate derived from animal bone and calculated calcium phos ...

chintzware, particularly after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

. Chintzware was also copied at the time by German, Czech and Japanese manufacturers. Royal Winton began reproducing a few of their chintz patterns in the mid-to-late 1990s.

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Further reading