Derby Artist - William (Quaker) Pegg.
William Pegg, or William 'Quaker' Pegg as he is
often referred to, is regarded by many as being the finest flower
painter to have ever worked in ceramics.
Born near Newcastle under Lyme in 1775, the son of a gardener, William
Pegg worked in a pottery from the age of 10 and by the age of thirteen
was already an accomplished self taught flower painter on earthenware
bodies.
At the age of 15 William Pegg started
an apprenticeship as a china painter at one of the Staffordshire
potteries. The hours were long and hard but when he had finished
at the factory William Pegg would go home and study further. He
wrote that he found it a punishing schedule but his efforts served
him well.
In 1796, aged twenty one, he was
offered the post of chief flower painter at the Derby factory to
succeed the innovative and well respected William Billingsley.
William Pegg spent two periods of time at the factory with a substantial
gap between and there is a marked difference in his work over that
time.
His original pieces are marked on
the back with a blue factory mark and the plants latin and common
names. William also produced copies or ‘reorders’ of
known Derby patterns from an earlier period and these bare a puce
mark and don't usually carry the plants name. 
After painting at Derby for five years,
his convictions led him towards the Quakers. He followed their doctrines
of simplicity and lack of decoration devoutly and despite frequent
comments and guidance from his fellow workers and friends decided
that his china painting was frivolous and an affront to God. He
left the factory and the profession to become a knitter of hosiery.
William Pegg ( or Quaker Pegg as he became known to his colleagues
) returned to the Derby factory in 1813.
There was a noticable change to his style of rendition during his
second period. His work was always big and bold but now displayed
a freedom of expression that was to increase over the coming years
and which is often described as flamboyant. Flowers now have seem
to create a mood. Still botanically accurate but now grouped and
positioned for maximum visual impact.
Pieces from this second period normally
carry a red factory mark along with the plants identification. Most
of his work during this time was done in conjunction with the same
gilder and often has the gilders mark ‘2’ on the back.
In 1820, after being at the factory
for seven years on this second occasion his religious fervour seems
to have taken hold again. At the age of 45 William left the profession
again and opened a small shop at his home where he worked with his
wife for the rest of his life.
William 'Quaker Pegg died shortly after
Christmas in 1851.
William Billingsley (1758-1828).
William Billingsley was one of best flower painters at Derby together with William Pegg.
Roses were his favourite subject, and china decorated with borders
of his 'running roses' became a special feature of the Derby factory.
Later Billingsley worked at Pinxton, Mansfield, Worcester, Nantgarw,
Swansea and Coalport, and these factories also adopted his style.
In the 1780s, Billingsley developed
a new naturalistic style of flower painting on ceramics. His technique
involved painting with a heavily loaded brush, and then wiping away
much of the paint with an almost dry brush, to produce particularly
delicate colours and highlights. 
The Billingsley Prentice Plate was
made especially for the instruction of apprentices at the Derby
factory.
In 1813, William Billingsley and his son-in-law Samuel Walker
established the Nantgarw Pottery.
William came to Nantgarw from the Worcester Porcelain Factory.
William who also went by the alias William Beeley, was a well-known
painter of flowers, especially roses, but also painted shells and
landscapes. He painted dessert, tea and coffee services, plates,
dishes and tureens. Plates were the main product at Nantgarw in
the early years but few were decorated. The porcelain was sold to
dealers "in the white" and was decorated according to
the current fashion.
The Nantgarw pottery was started with only £250 capital and
suffered financial problems from the start. William Billingsley
was interested in the manufacture of soft paste porcelain, the finest
of which was produced in France. 
Nantgarw porcelain was known as artificial
soft from the nature of its paste or body which could be potted
very thinly and was made to Billingsley's secret formula: a synthetic
mixture of alkaline and aluminum silicates with added bone ash.
Bones, burnt and mixed with clay, were ground by miller David Jones
in a mill adjoining the Cross Keys public house. The water wheel
was powered by a leat running from the canal to the River Taff.
The high temperature needed to produce perfect pieces made Billingsley
soft paste method difficult to fire. As much as 90% of production
was ruined in the firing process and was taken from the kiln damaged
and unusable.
With only a small financial capital
to work with, and high production losses Billingsley and Walker
were constantly running short of money.
By 1814 they had used their initial
£250 and also and additional £600 advanced by Walker
as a partner. Their petition to the government for financial support
was unsuccessful and so they closed the pottery in 1814. At this
time Billingsley and Walker joined Lewis Weston Dillwyn at his Swansea
pottery, but the soft paste method once again proved to be too expensive
and so Billingsley concentrated on painting porcelain.
Cuthbert Gresley (1876-1963).
 Cuthbert
Gresley and his younger brother Harold, trained under J.P.Wale
In 1893 both Gresley brothers started
work at the Derby Porcelain factory.
Cuthbert was a truly accomplished ceramics painter with flowers
and landscapes being his specialities, but he turned his hand to
painting anything that was required.
He lived at Chelleston and Shelton Lock in Derbyshire, England.
John Brewer, (1764-1816)
 John
was the elder of two brothers who both worked at Derby. Their parents
were both artists and from 1762-1767 had studios in London at Rupert
Street.
John Brewer started working at Derby in
1795. He was a talented watercolour painter, who had never
applied his art to porcelain painting. At Derby he painted a variety
of subjects including plant and flower painting.
This finely painted service is boldly painted with botanical specimens each titled in red script to the reverse.
The richly gilded borders with swans and stylised flower-heads are on a rich salmon ground.
The flower is named on the reverse as : Large Seabious
Zachariah
Boreman (under construction). 
Mr
Strutt's Cotton Mill at Milford 1787. Water Colour by Zachariah
Boreman
 Derby
Named Landscape plate by Zachariah Boreman
Derby Landscape plate Painted by the father of English landscape
painting on porcelain, Zachariah Boreman c.1794.
Blue mark pattern no 18, which is a mistake. It should be pattern
no 182.
Named view "Near Breadsall Derbyshire".
Also note the honey gilding which is superb quality.
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