Bringing together every scrap of evidence needed to reconstruct its history is "Colonial Philadelphia Porcelain: The Art of Bonnin and Morris," an exhibit opening tomorrow at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

For the first time, the public will be able to view all 19 surviving pieces attributed to Bonnin and Morris, as well as tantalizing fragments of lost production.

"Nobody had seen these pieces together," says the museum's curator of American art, Alexandra Alevizatos Kirtley, who organized the exhibit. "For instance, the Metropolitan [Museum of Art in New York] and the Smithsonian have pickle stands that are a pair, but no one had seen them side-by-side until last week."

Nearly identical openwork fruit baskets, part of museum collections in Detroit and Boston, also are reunited.

Both forms have applied decoration - florets on the baskets and natural shell forms on the stands. The white soft-paste porcelain, which Kirtley says was made with clay from large deposits in Delaware, is further enhanced with cobalt blue patterns and edging.

The factory operated for only two years. The surviving pieces in the exhibit are more elaborate ones that families obviously treasured.

Intriguing shards excavated at the factory's site in the city's Southwark section, near the Navy Yard and Interstate 95, testify to a wider production of tea and table wares. And period documents quoted in the exhibit's catalog indicate personal items also were among the firm's products.

Gousse Bonnin, who came from England, and Philadelphia-born George Anthony Morris had big plans when they first advertised on Christmas Day 1769 that they had the raw materials to make "as good porcelain as any heretofore manufactured at the famous factory in Bow, near London." Indeed, the closest relatives to the Philadelphia pieces are contemporary products from Bow and other English factories.

The project had the support of the locals, who were tired of the flood of cheap imports from the motherland. Benjamin Rush wrote the publisher of the Pennsylvania Journal, "Go on in encouraging American manufactures."

Deborah Franklin, Ben's wife, bought some of the factory's designs and shipped them to her husband in England in 1771. He responded, ". . . I am pleased to find so good progress made in the China Manufactory. I wish it Success most heartily."

Local business magnate Thomas Cadwalader bought teapots, sugar dishes, and toilet boxes for the dressing table, purchase records indicate. The shell-encrusted pickle stand he bought for 15 shillings was the company's most expensive item.

News of a rival factory in Pennsylvania was not well received, Kirtley says. "The English heard about this immediately - they were furious. They flooded the market with competitive wares. The fact that the Philadelphia factory produced wares of merit was very symbolic."

In England and Europe, porcelain firms were hard to keep going. And even though Bonnin and Morris had a source of raw materials, skilled craftsmen from the old country, and local boosters, their enterprise remained underfunded and closed in 1772.

As noteworthy as the Art Museum's exhibit is the publication that accompanies it: the 2007 volume of Ceramics in America (Chipstone Foundation, $65), a comprehensive survey of the subject that features Kirtley's catalogue raisonné of the surviving pieces, with new photography by Gavin Ashworth.

The volume explores porcelain in America from every angle with new research, a reprint of Graham Hood's 1972 work on the factory, and discussion of another early porcelain venture in Charleston, S.C. One chapter illustrates a practical re-creation of the elaborate pickle stand, which shows why that form brought top dollar.

"Michelle Erickson's work on remaking the pickle stand is incredibly innovative, because we've never looked at it in that way," Kirtley says. "By attempting to make them again, we learn about them."

The life story of each precious Bonnin and Morris piece will intrigue collectors. Because Philadelphia porcelain resembles English examples, many local owners were never sure what they had until 20th-century research began to fill in the facts.

Thus, more examples of porcelain from what the founders called the "American China Manufactory" could appear as a result of this exhibition. The few examples sold in recent years have brought six-figure prices, although more plentiful related pieces from English factories can be purchased in the $800-to-$5,000 range. A new American discovery would likely rock the market.

A complementary Art Museum exhibit will open March 29: "Turned and Thrown: English Pottery, 1660-1820." Put together by associate curator Donna Corbin, this show includes about 50 pieces from local collections, including delftware, salt-glazed stoneware, and creamware.

Treasures include a 17th-century "fecundity" dish with a reclining Venus and an elaborate posset pot with blue and white decoration and snake handles. (Posset was a hot milk drink with ale or wine.)

Says Corbin: "According to the family history, [the posset pot] was presented to David Ogden by Richard Townsend in 1682 during the crossing of the Atlantic on William Penn's ship, the Welcome, in thanks for Ogden becoming the godfather to Townsend's child, born during the voyage."

Antiques: If You Go

"Colonial Philadelphia Porcelain: The Art of Bonnin and Morris" will be on exhibit tomorrow to June 1 at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Gallery 286. A related symposium, "Bonnin and Morris: New Perspectives on Philadelphia's Role in the Production of Early American Porcelain," is scheduled from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. April 9. Members $40; nonmembers $50. Registration: 215-235-7469.

The exhibit "Turned and Thrown: English Pottery, 1660-1820" runs March 29 to July 27 in Gallery 277a at the Art Museum.

Related programs will take place at Winterthur Museum and Country Estate in Delaware: At 6 p.m. March 25, "A Fever for Porcelain: Porcelain Rooms of Europe," a lecture by Reinier Baarsen of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam; and April 10 and 11, at Winterthur's Ceramics Conference 2008, "From Flowerpots to Tabletops: Ceramics in Use From the 1600s to the 1800s." Information and registration: www.winterthur.org or 800-448-3883.