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Bonnin and Morris of Philadelphia: the First American Porcelain Factory, 1770–1772. By Graham Hood. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press, 1972. Pp. xiii + 78. $6.95

Bonnin and Morris of Philadelphia: The First American Porcelain Factory, 1770-1772, a monograph of the extremely short-lived success and ultimate failure of one of the more notable of pre-Revolutionary America's semi-industrial craft enterprises, is well written and well researched. As the title suggests, the Philadelphia partnership of Gousse Bonnin [1741(?)-1778(?)] and George Anthony Morris [1742(?)-1773] was the first American firm to manufacture successfuly the expensive and difficult-to-produce translucent ceramic ware known as porcelain. Earlier American attempts had all proved abortive, and only relatively recently — within the preceding four decades — had English potters mastered the art. One of these American experiments was conducted by Andrew Duche in Georgia and has already been discussed by Graham Hood in his "Career of Andrew Duche" (Art Quarterly, Summer, 1968). Trained as an art historian, the author was first drawn to his subject by artifact. A sparse survival of blue and white ceramic ware attributed to the Bonnin & Morris factory of Philadelphia sparked Mr. Hood's intermittent five-year investigation of the ill-fated factory. His approach might be considered interdisciplinary in this day of overspecialization and is indeed refreshing. The author's task of establishing whether in fact Bonnin & Morris did produce porcelain (as opposed to earthenwares), could be answered only through research in contemporary documents both in the United States and abroad, coupled with archaeological site investigation. The author's thesis is that the failure of the factory, in a country where labor was scarce and consequently extremely costly, was hastened by the disintegration of the Nonimportation Agreement and the price cutting practiced by the politically favored East India Company in order to maintain its monopoly. The author notes that this price cutting was a preview of similar activities by that same company which led to the Boston Tea Party. A letter in the August 1, 1771 Pennsylvania Gazette, probably authored by Bonnin, the more clearly drawn of the partners, lamented that since the beginning of production at his factory the price of imported ceramics had fallen five shillings on the pound, thereby making it possible for the imported wares greatly to undersell his already expensive-to-produce domestic ones. Between April and August 1771, "no less than Fifteen Thousand Pounds of China have been imported into this Province." This competition was impossible for Bonnin & Morris to meet successfully; the American firm already had been forced to offer double wages to lure workmen from the more secure wages of England. Mr. Hood provides an interesting sidelight in noting the scare tactics which established British manufacturers employed against the threat of higher salaries promised in the colonies. Josiah Wedgwood's firm