This handsome publication showcases the entire collection, with 35 key pieces highlighted by Simon Spero, of English blue-and-white porcelain collected by William Margaretten and donated to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco.
 
William “Bill” Margaretten was first introduced to blue-and-white porcelain by his mother-in-law, who gave him and his wife, Mary Ann, a Worcester piece from her collection upon their marriage. He became an avid collector and soon focused on acquiring early English blue-and-white porcelain produced by the renowned mid-eighteenth-century manufactories Lund’s Bristol, Limehouse, and Worcester, with an emphasis on Worcestor.
 
Brimming with rare patterns and shapes, the Bill and Mary Ann Margaretten Collection of Early English Porcelain grew to become an extraordinary private collection, which was given to the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco in 2022. The collection includes a beautiful molded small sauceboat from Lund that is the only recorded undecorated example of its kind. The collection also boasts a rare “trial” plate, which came to light, literally so, in 1985, in a country auction in Sussex, where it was concealed in a stack of eighteenth-century Chinese plates, to be sold together in one single lot. It had lain in a neighboring country house, unrecognized, for more than two centuries. One of the most important examples of Worcester to be discovered, the plate is a key piece in the evolution of the genesis of the Worcester factory and will forever be associated with the Margaretten collection.
 
Richly illustrated, A Legacy in Blue and White: The William and Mary Ann Margaretten Collection of Early English Porcelain includes three scholarly essays: one offers profiles of the three main porcelain producers, Lund’s Bristol, Limehouse, and Worcester, and highlights thirty-five notable examples of the collection; another traces the history of collecting porcelain at the Legion of Honor museum; and a third examines the greater porcelain industry in England. A checklist of the entire collection, with detailed apparatuses, rounds out the volume. Illustrated with full-color photography throughout, A Legacy in Blue and White is an essential reference for aficionados of English mid-eighteenth-century porcelain.