Chris cracks China

“Now the factory is no more, the Chinese especially are snapping up Royal Worcester products,” said Chris, who was one of the company’s last apprentices and left to go freelance in 1980.

Using a small kiln in a studio room beside his kitchen, he is producing new original paintings on bone china, very much in the style of Harry Davis, who was one of the most legendary Royal Worcester artists.

In fact, the project has even more echoes of the famous firm’s past than that, because Chris paints on blank bone china pieces made in a little workshop in the village of Hallow, near Worcester, by Kinver Ceramics, which is run by Harry Davis’s grandson Rick Davis.

When Royal Worcester finally closed its doors in 2009, Kinver Ceramics became the last firm in the city making fine china, using a team of craftsmen and women who had all served long apprenticeships at the original Severn Street factory.

To white vases, jugs, plaques, loving cups and other pieces from the Kinver kilns, Chris adds beautiful paintings of birds and animals such as pink flamingoes and macaws, snow leopards and polar bears, using metallic oxide paint with the familiar whiff of aniseed. “You can always tell a porcelain artist because he smells of aniseed,” he laughed.

Each piece is painted and fired five times to gradually build up the colour until there is a depth and vibrancy that’s the hallmark of the Royal Worcester tradition.

It’s not exactly a rapid production line either, because only about three pieces, depending on their complexity, are produced each week. The subjects come from magazines, books, newspapers – just about anywhere. “I’m always on the lookout for anything unusual,”

said Chris.

After leaving Worcester’s Bishop Perowne High School and not getting very far in his quest to become a journalist, he joined Royal Worcester Porcelain as a trainee artist in 1974.

“I was there for six years, mostly painting still life and Highland cattle,” he said. “It gave me an excellent grounding.”

Since branching out on his own as a watercolour artist, Chris Hughes’ reputation has gone from strength to strength and he now sells all over the world. His latest lines in original paintings on bone china are being sought after by dealers from France to Taiwan – particularly by collectors of Royal Worcester originals.

Catching him at work though can be tricky because, for half the year, Chris works from a house he and his wife Jane own on the beautiful Greek island of Alonissos.

As the winters are chilly out there, the couple actually return to the UK from October to April – rather the reverse of most people who have holiday homes abroad, which are used to escape the worst of the British climate.

Chris and Jane spend from May to October each summer in their Greek idyll which, being an island, has been less affected than the Greek mainland by the nation’s economic woes.

“Initially, I used to teach watercolour painting while on holiday out there,” he said.

“But we finally decided to put down roots and with the help of some very good friends on Alonissos, we discovered an old olive grove surrounded by pine forests overlooking the Aegean.It was the perfect location for us both with nothing but the birds and cicadas to wake us up in the morning and within walking distance of the main harbour for supplies and beach swimming.

“After buying the land in 2005, we designed our own house and studio and it was completed in 2006.”

Now the couple spend the summer months on the island and as well as painting, Chris runs watercolour courses from his Greek home, so if you’re looking for a holiday with a difference that could be it.

In the meantime, his china to China enterprise is looking very bullish. Or porcelain to Peking if you prefer.