Pattern 826 Spode bone china Bute shape Coffee Can hand-painted & decorated with the same Oriental border design as seen on patterns 282 & 586 placed between two bands of platinum lustre & enhanced with iron-red enamel & rich gilding. This design was introduced c1805.
Decorating porcelain using platinum to create a lustre was a new discovery in 1805. The process had been invented by John Hancock who was employed by Henry Daniel & it was Daniel who became Josiah Spode II's enameller in 1805. The term 'enameller' described the person responsible for both enamel colour & gilt manufacture, a chemist, a decorating manager, a recruitment & training officer for painters & gilders, and oven firing manager. c1805 Henry Daniel set up his decorating business inside the Spode factory, it was an arrangement which would last until 1822.
The arrangement between Daniel & Spode was between one business man & another, they depended entirely on each other for business and yet surprisingly there was no recorded partnership. The arrangement was mutually agreeable to both. This can be explained by the fact that the Pottery industry had been producing pots for many decades previously but the fine decoration of porcelain business was a much more recent affair.
As businessmen they also preserved business secrets from one another. Spode was careful to not reveal his bone china recipes & Daniel, for example, didn't reveal his significant use of platinum for lustre decoration.
Daniel owned all the tools & materials for decorating Spode's wares, surprisingly he even owned the large kilns in which the porcelains received their decorating firings (which couldn't have been moved if they had fallen out with each other) & yet he also rented from Spode the workshops in which his decorators worked.
A speck of grit or kiln dust inside on this coffee can base
A decorator's mark on its base which has smudged a bit but no pattern number