Perhaps the most important development in colonial America took place in Savannah, Georgia, where Andrew Duché started a pottery about 1730. He interested himself in the manufacture of porcelain and discovered the china clay and feldspathic rock necessary to its manufacture. By 1741 he appears to have made a successful true porcelain but failed to gain adequate financial assistance to develop it. He therefore travelled to London, arriving in 1744, and tried to sell the secret to the founders of the Bow factory in London. Their interest is certain, since the patent specification subsequently filed specifically mentions unaker, said to be the Cherokee name for china clay. Duché returned to Virginia by way of Plymouth and there spoke with William Cookworthy, later to be the first manufacturer of true porcelain in England. It is still not known to what extent Duché actually manufactured porcelain; but since the Bristol Journal for November 24, 1764, refers to the import of some specimens of porcelain said to have been made in Georgia, there is little doubt that the first porcelain to be made in an English-speaking country came from North America. The Cherokee clay was shipped to England from time to time during the 18th century. Wedgwood imported several tons of it to use in the development of the jasper body.
By 1765 potteries were being established on a sufficient scale to warrant an attempt to recruit workmen from Staffordshire. Wedgwood wrote at the time: "They had a agent amongst us hiring a number of our hands for establishment of new Pottworks in South Carolina."
The manufacture of tin-glazed ware began in Mexico soon after the Spanish Conquest in the first half of the 16th century. Spanish styles predominated, especially that of Talavera, but Chinese influence occurs in the 18th century. The wares became a kind of inspired folk pottery in the 19th century.
