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The Nantgarw Pottery was established in November 1813, when artist and potter William Billingsley and his son-in-law Samuel Walker, a skilled technician, purchased \"Nantgarw House\" on the eastern bank of the Glamorganshire Canal, eight miles north of Cardiff in the Taff Valley, Glamorganshire, UK, and set about building the kilns and ancillary equipment in its grounds, necessary to transform the building into a small porcelain pottery.

Billingsley had been instrumental in the development of the porcelain recipe for Flight, Barr & Barr at Royal Worcester, he and Walker, had signed an agreement not to disclose their new porcelain recipe to a third party, but there was no clause preventing them from using that recipe themselves. They had left Worcester in secret and started the venture at Nantgarw with only £250 to invest in the project between them. By January 1814, the Quaker entrepreneur William Weston Young had already become the major share-holder in their venture, having invested £630 into the first production period at Nantgarw, as his diaries at the Glamorgan Record Office testify, where payments are recorded to a Mr \"Bealey;\" an alias Billingsley travelled under since leaving Royal Worcester.

It is assumed Young was acquainted with Billingsley through a mutual friend, and fellow earthenware decorator Thomas Pardoe, whom Billingsley had approached at Swansea's Cambrian Pottery, while seeking employment in 1807. Young's work across Glamorganshire as a surveyor may have put him in the position to advise Billingsley whilst still at Royal Worcester, of the suitability of the site at Nantgarw. Its proximity to the Glamorganshire Canal enabled heavy shipments of china clay, as well as the pottery's delicate porcelain wares to be smoothly transported to and from Cardiff docks by barges.

With the pottery established, Billingsley sought to produce a soft paste porcelain. Nantgarw porcelain was made to Billingsley's secret formula. Bones, burnt and mixed with clay, were ground by miller David Jones in a mill adjoining the Cross Keys public house, in the village. The water wheel was powered by a leat running from the canal to the River Taff. The high temperature needed to produce perfect pieces made Billingsley soft paste method difficult to fire. The vast majority of the pieces warped or shattered in the firing process. The resources of the three associates soon ran out and the group approached the British Government's Committee of Trade and Plantations (The Board of Trade), requesting a grant of £500, referring to the subsidy afforded to the famous Sèvres Porcelain Factory by the French Governernment. They were not successful, but one member of the committee, porcelain enthusiast Sir Joseph Banks, suggested his friend and potter Lewis Weston Dillwyn of the Cambrian Pottery of Swansea, Glamorganshire, should make an inspection and report on the matter.

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