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The History of Lladró

The famed and highly acclaimed company that we know today as Lladró was created at around 1953 as a tiny family business in Almàssera, a small agricultural village next to the grand city of Valencia. The city lies on Spain’s eastern Mediterranean coast, a city famed for its art with such works as the Plaza de la Virgen. The founding brothers of Lladró, Juan, José and Vicente chose to devote their own time to creating beautiful ceramic works of art to give their family, primarily a farming family, a better future. They enlisted for the famous Valencia Arts and Crafts school. Here the two brothers Juan and José mastered the art of drawing and painting, but their younger brother, Vicente, took up sculpting.

To gain practice with their newly acquired skills, a kiln was constructed in their parent’s small basement for heating their works of art. With time their work became better and better, they started to manufacture and sell their own ceramic flowers in the local market. At this same time, they had started to plan and create some of their own Lladró figurines in porcelain.

During the year of 1958 they relocated from the small shop in the basement of their family home in Almácera to an actual factory which was situated in the nearby town of Tavernes Blanques. The next ten years were that of great growth and progress for the brothers. The studios in Tavernes that were originally moved into for the extra space were enlarged seven times up until 1969 when the stone was set for the place that was to become known as Porcelain City, the home of Lladró porcelain figurines. Since that time, for nearly 20 years, Lladró has gone on to expand across the world, feeding growth at home in the small town of Tavernes. Today, with a count of two thousand people, Lladró creates and sells it’s works of arts in over 100 countries across the world.

Lladró maintains the great tradition of porcelain figure making, keeping the classic crafting techniques of the 18th centaury, and stretching back to China’s lost heritage giving us some of the most inspiring pieces of art in history.

One of china’s greatest discoveries was that of porcelain. The mixture of simple clay and other minerals and materials has given us a substance like no other. It is thought that porcelain appeared for the first time in the Tang dynasty. It was certainly a great asset for Lladró.

Marco Polo’s near 2 decade stay in China during the 11th century made a great difference to European art at that time. Every European aristocrat wanted a piece of the new porcelain art.

At that time porcelain was considered by European royalty to be a very desirable luxury material, a much befitting way to honour themselves. This rise in demand took place just at a point when the manufacturing imperial porcelain in China was becoming a problem. Costs were rocketing, theft was uncontrollable, and materials were in short supply.

The market for the wonder material looked short lived. European salesmen had great problems overcoming the Chinese reluctance to maintain supplies, as the Chinese were so determined on keeping the secret of porcelain manufacturing to themselves. However, in Vienna, Venice and other European cities, there were experiments being undertaken to try and uncover the secrets of the material and later create what was to become known as European porcelain.

During the 1940s, the Lladró brothers went back to the foggy history of porcelain making, creating their own recipe for porcelain mixture and humanizing their own manufacturing techniques and styles in every aspects. Their pigments, moulds, varnishes, and firing routines were all altered resulting in art that not only included great beauty and finesse, but also quality of the highest standard.

To explore our range of Lladro collectibles further, please visit our website at http://www.theukgiftcompany.co.uk

About the Author

Church’s China, one of the United Kingdom’s longest established China and Glass Retailers was founded in 1848 by a wheelright and carpenter, Thomas Church. He set up his business in Maryport Street in the sleepy market town of Devizes in Wiltshire.

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