Spode

Spode is a well-known English brand of pottery and homewares produced by the company of the same name which is based in Stoke-on-Trent.

Overview

Spode is a Stoke-on-Trent based pottery company that was founded by Josiah Spode (1733–1797) in 1770. Josiah Spode earned renown for perfecting under-glaze blue transfer printing in 1783–1784 – a development that led to the launch in 1816 of Spode's Blue Italian range which has remained in production ever since.

Josiah Spode is also often credited with developing a successful formula for fine bone china. Whether this is true or not, his son, Josiah Spode II, was certainly responsible for the successful marketing of English bone china.

Today Spode is owned by Portmeirion Group, a pottery and homewares company based in Stoke-on-Trent. Many items in Spode's Blue Italian and Woodland ranges are made at Portmeirion Group's factory in Stoke-on-Trent.

The foundation

Josiah Spode is known to have worked for Thomas Whieldon from the age of 16 until he was 21. He then worked in a number of partnerships until he went into business for himself, renting a small potworks in the town of Stoke-on-Trent in 1767; in 1776 he completed the purchase of what became the Spode factory until 2008. His early products comprised earthenwares such as creamware (a fine cream-coloured earthenware) and pearlware (a fine earthenware with a bluish glaze) as well as a range of stonewares including black basalt, caneware, and jasper which had been popularised by Josiah Wedgwood. The history and products of the Spode factory have inspired generations of historians and collectors, and a useful interactive online exhibition was launched in October 2010.

Roderick Spode

Roderick Spode, 7th Earl of Sidcup, often known as Spode or Lord Sidcup, is a recurring fictional character from the Jeeves novels of British comic writer P. G. Wodehouse, being an "amateur dictator" and the leader of a fictional fascist group in London called The Black Shorts. In the 1990s television series, Jeeves and Wooster, he is portrayed by John Turner and depicted as having a rather Hitleresque appearance.

Overview

Spode is a large and intimidating figure, appearing "as if Nature had intended to make a gorilla, and had changed its mind at the last moment". He is constantly in love with Madeline Bassett, and though he intended to remain a bachelor during his career as a dictator, he nevertheless attempted to protect her from men "playing fast and loose"; to this end, he threatened on several occasions to beat Bertie Wooster and Gussie Fink-Nottle to a jelly. He marches his followers around London and the countryside, preaching loudly to the public on the dissoluteness of modern society until a heckler hits him in the eye with a potato (reinterpreted in the TV series as turnips thrown by Barmy and Tuppy).

Jeeves and Wooster

Jeeves and Wooster is a British comedy-drama series adapted by Clive Exton from P.G. Wodehouse's "Jeeves" stories. The series was a collaboration between Brian Eastman of Picture Partnership Productions and Granada Television.

It aired on the ITV network from 1990 to 1993, with the last series nominated for a British Academy Television Award for Best Drama Series. It starred Hugh Laurie as Bertie Wooster, a young gentleman with a "distinctive blend of airy nonchalance and refined gormlessness", and Stephen Fry as Jeeves, his improbably well-informed and talented valet. Wooster is a bachelor, a minor aristocrat and member of the idle rich. He and his friends, who are mainly members of The Drones Club, are extricated from all manner of societal misadventures by the indispensable valet ("gentleman's personal gentleman") Jeeves. The stories are set in the United Kingdom and the United States in the 1920s and 1930s.

When Fry and Laurie began the series they were already a popular double act (see Fry and Laurie) due to regular appearances on Channel 4's Friday Night Live and their own show A Bit of Fry & Laurie (BBC, 1987–95).

Spore

In biology, a spore is a unit of asexual reproduction that may be adapted for dispersal and for survival, often for extended periods of time, in unfavorable conditions. By contrast, gametes are units of sexual reproduction. Spores form part of the life cycles of many plants, algae, fungi and protozoa.Bacterial spores are not part of a sexual cycle but are resistant structures used for survival under unfavourable conditions. Myxozoan spores release amoebulae into their hosts for parasitic infection, but also reproduce within the hosts through the pairing of two nuclei within the plasmodium, which develops from the amoebula.

Spores are usually haploid and unicellular and are produced by meiosis in the sporangium of a diploid sporophyte. Under favourable conditions the spore can develop into a new organism using mitotic division, producing a multicellular gametophyte, which eventually goes on to produce gametes. Two gametes fuse to form a zygote which develops into a new sporophyte. This cycle is known as alternation of generations.

Fine china

Fine china is a term that typically refers to:

it may also refer to either of the following.