Samuel Keys (1771 – 1850) was an English

china painter China painting, or porcelain painting, is the decoration of glazed porcelain objects, such as plates, bowls, vases or statues. The body of the object may be hard-paste porcelain, developed in China in the 7th or 8th century, or soft-paste porce ...

Life

His family background is not known. Keys was one of the principal gilders and china-painters in the Derby china factory under

William Duesbury William Duesbury (1725–1786) was an English Vitreous enamel, enameller, in the sense of a painter of porcelain, who became an important porcelain entrepreneur, founder of the Royal Crown Derby and owner of porcelain factories at Bow porcelai ...

the elder, to whom Keys was articled. He was highly regarded, and much of the success of the china, especially the figures in the

Dresden Dresden (; ; Upper Saxon German, Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; , ) is the capital city of the States of Germany, German state of Saxony and its second most populous city after Leipzig. It is the List of cities in Germany by population, 12th most p ...

style, was owing to his skill in decoration. On 3 August 1795, in

Dronfield Dronfield is a town in North East Derbyshire, England, which includes Dronfield Woodhouse and Coal Aston. It lies in the valley of the River Drone between Chesterfield, Derbyshire, Chesterfield and Sheffield. The Peak District National Park i ...

, Derbyshire, he married Hannah Grattan. Keys left Derby some years before the close of the factory, and worked under Minton in the

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

district. He returned later to Derby, where he died in 1850, in his eightieth year. Keys preserved his delicacy of execution to the last. He collected materials for the history of the Derby china factory, which form the foundation of subsequent accounts.

His sons

Keys left three sons, all apprenticed at the Derby factory. John Keys (bapt. 1797, died 1825) became a skilled flower-painter in water-colour, and teacher of that art. Edward Keys (bapt. 1795) left Derby about 1826, and went to work for Minton, Daniell, and others in the Staffordshire Potteries. He was known for his

figurine A figurine (a diminutive form of the word ''figure'') or statuette is a small, three-dimensional sculpture that represents a human, deity or animal, or, in practice, a pair or small group of them. Figurines have been made in many media, with cla ...

s. Samuel Keys the younger (bapt. 1804) was noted for his figurines of leading actors. He left Derby in 1830, and went to the Potteries, where he worked for several firms. He set up, with John Mountford, a firm producing Parian ware.

References

;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Keys, Samuel 1771 births 1850 deaths English ceramicists