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A painted stone reredos in the Priory Church of St Cuthbert, Worksop, Nottinghamshire, UK, was analysed before recent conservation to determine the pigment scheme employed. The screen was created by the eminent British architect Sir George Gilbert Scott in the middle decade of the 19th Century. The results help inform the wider range of palettes employed by British architects and craftspeople working in the 19th and early 20th centuries which have previously been little studied. The pigments generally were high-quality vermilion (red), chrome yellow (yellow), and ultramarine (blue), and several alternatives were also evident such as red lead and haematite for red, bone black, and carbon black for black. Lightening and darkening agents were incorporated as lead white, barytes, and carbon, and pigment mixtures were used to achieve the colours dark blue-red, and green.

A painted stone reredos in the Priory Church of St Cuthbert, Worksop, Nottinghamshire, UK, was analysed before recent conservation to determine the pigment scheme employed. The screen was created by the eminent British architect Sir George Gilbert Scott in the middle decade of the 19th Century. The results help inform the wider range of palettes employed by British architects and craftspeople working in the 19th and early 20th centuries which have previously been little studied. The pigments generally were high-quality vermilion (red), chrome yellow (yellow), and ultramarine (blue), and several alternatives were also evident such as red lead and haematite for red, bone black, and carbon black for black. Lightening and darkening agents were incorporated as lead white, barytes, and carbon, and pigment mixtures were used to achieve the colours dark blue-red, and green. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first quarter of the 19th Century the factory established at Nantgarw created some of the finest quality porcelain in the world, rivalling that of Sevres, but beset by economic difficulties resulting from extraordinarily high kiln losses approaching 90 %, the production which started in 1817 (ceased by 1820) produced the finest translucency ever achieved in Georgian porcelains. An opportunity has arisen to analyse rare Nantgarw porcelain shards excavated archaeologically from the Nantgarw China Works site. Two types of compositions, bone china and silica-rich pastes are identified by Raman and SEM-EDXS analyse, confirming some ancient studies. The spectral data from "sagged" silica-rich shards are interpreted to reveal potential explanations of the manufacturing fault which significantly contributed to the demise of the ceramics factory. Finally, the pigments and glaze used in Nantgarw porcelain decoration have been analysed and identified for the first time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]