James Giles (1718–1780) was a decorator of Worcester, Derby, Bow and Chelsea porcelain and also glass, who created gilt and enamelled objects such as decanters, drinking-glasses, perfume bottles and rosewater sprinklers, for a rococo and neoclassical market. Producing work similar to the enameling done by the later Ralph and William Beilby of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, he maintained a showroom in fashionable Cockspur Street in London, enjoying the patronage of royalty and affluent clients including Clive of India, the Duke of Northumberland, Princess Amelia (the second daughter of George II), Thomas Pitt, the Duke of Marlborough, the painter George Stubbs and Horace Walpole. Family History His father, also James Giles, was of a Huguenot family named 'Gilles', from Nîmes. James senior was recorded in 1729 as being a 'China Painter' and living in London. His son, Abraham, was recorded in the same year as being apprenticed to Philip Margas, of the Glass Sellers' Company, whereas James junior was indentured in 1733 to John Arthur, a jeweller at St Martin-in-the-Fields. Career About 1756 he rented a workshop with a kiln in Kentish Town and by 1763 had moved on to Berwick Street. A few years later he started a showroom in the Arts Museum in Cockspur Street, opposite the Haymarket, seemingly with the support of the Worcester porcelain factory. When his collaboration with Worcester ended in 1771, he moved to an address in the same street at the north-west corner of Trafalgar Square. Giles bought his undecorated porcelain and glass from a large number of sources, resulting in glassware of great variety in shape, size and colour, in turn leading to an enormous diversity of bijouterie for the luxury trade. He advertised widely, strangely failing to mention his glassware in the many notices that were placed in "The Public Advertiser" between 1767 and 1776. His first advertisement, in "Mortimer's Universal Director" of 1763, stated that 'This ingenious Artist copies the Pattern of any China with the utmost exactness, both with respect to the Design and the Colours, either in the European or Chinese taste ... [and that] ... He has also brought the Enamel Colours to great perfection'. The business ledgers for 1771–76 still exist. They record orders for some 50 000 Worcester pieces between 1771 and 1774, and glass bought for £234 from William Parker's Glass Warehouse in Fleet Street - a figure amounting to fifteen per cent of Giles's annual budget. William