china manufacturer who first produced an English true hard-paste porcelain similar to that of the Chinese and Germans.

Cookworthy was apprenticed at 14 to a London apothecary, who later set him up in a business, Bevans and Cookworthy, at Plymouth. He became interested in china manufacture about 1745, when he was visited by the American china maker Andrew Duché of Georgia. The first soft-paste (artificial) porcelain factories were established about this time. A few years later he discovered the only English source of china clay ( kaolin) and china stone (petuntse) at St. Austell in Cornwall. After many years of experiment with these materials, he finally learned the secret of hard porcelain, obtained a patent (1768), and established the Plymouth (Plymouth porcelain) China factory.