JOSIAH WEDGWOOD AND HIS POTTERY
This Edition is limited to fifteen hundred
copies (1,000 for England and 500 for the
United States of America), of which this is
No UQ3..
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JASPER BOWL
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Victoria and Albert Museum.
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JOSIAH WEDGWOOD
AND HIS POTTERY
BY
WILLIAM BURTON
M.A., F.C.S., etc.
With 32 Colour and 72 Black-and- White Plates
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
1922
PREFACE
To tell over again the life-history of Josiah Wedgwood
and his work in pottery, work which appears to me
more varied and comprehensive than that of any other
man, and to give some account of his labours for the
public good which, during his later years, absorbed
so much of his time and strength, can only be a labour
of love for one who has been actively engaged in the
potter's trade for the best part of a lifetime.
The field which this book attempts to cover has been
well surveyed and explored by many writers during the
last fifty years, for the career of this notable Englishman
and the far-reaching influence of his work have attracted
attention and appreciation that are almost world-wide.
Such merit as this work may claim may, I hope, be found
in its clear and simple survey of Wedgwood's work as
a potter and organizer of labour in pottery-making,
and in the consideration of the relations which his personal
doings bore to the expansion of the industry and the
activities of the principal contemporary potters in
North Staffordshire. This aspect of the history lias
been specially treated in a chapter which describes the
achievements of his chief colleagues and rivals in the
trade, and exhibits Josiah Wedgwood as the leader
of this important movement. At the same time it sets
forth what is known of the work of other potters who
VI
Preface
deserve to be held in honourable remembrance for their
contributions to the art of pottery in Staffordshire.
It is but natural that, in the compilation of such a
work, I should recall, with pleasure, my association
with Etruria where, for five years, I served as chemist
to the firm of Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, and imbibed
my love of the craft with my first experience of its
practice.
My warmest thanks are gratefully recorded to a
number of friends who have given me their help, without
stint, in the labour necessarily involved in the completion
of such an engaging task.
WILLIAM BURTON
39 QUEENSBOROUOH TERR U !• ,
LONDON, W.2.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PACJE
1. BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION ..... 1
2. THE EARLY CONDITIONS OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY IN
STAFFORDSHIRE . . . . . . .10
3. THE IMPROVEMENT OF MANUFACTURING CONDITIONS IN
STAFFORDSHIRE . . . . . . .19
4. THE WHITE AND CREAM-COLOURED EARTHENWARE . 32
5. USEFUL WARES ....... 44
6. RED, BLACK, AND BUFF POTTERY . . . .56
7. THE INVENTION OF THE " JASPER " BODY . . 67
8. WEDGWOOD'S PRINTED EARTHENWARES ... 77
9. THE WEDGWOOD " RUSSIAN SERVICE " . ,85
10. THE STAFFORDSHIRE LUSTRE POTTERY ... 94
11. WEDGWOOD'S PUBLIC WORK . . . . 100
12. WEDGWOOD AND His PARTNERS . . .113
18. WEDGWOOD'S PRINCIPAL ARTISTS . . . 128
14. WEDGWOOD AND His FAMILY . ... 141
15. THE PRINCIPAL CONTEMPORARY POTTERS IN
STAFFORDSHIRE 149
LIST OF PLATES
Jasper Bowls ....... (Colour) Frontispiece
FACING PAGli
Head of Plato. White Jasper (Colour) 4
Sauce Boat and Coffee Pot. Agate Ware ... 6
Sir Walter Raleigh (Bust). Black Basalt 8
Vase. Painted in encaustic style .... (Colour) 10
Lamp and Cover. Black Basalt ... 12
Black Basalt Urn-shaped Inkstand . . . . . .14
Red Terra-cot ta Jug . . . . . . . .14
Covered Sugar Basin and Teapot. Green Glaze with modelled
sprigs ........ (Colour) 16
Cream Jug, Teapot and Cover, and Covered Sugar Basin. Terra-
cotta 18
Black Basalt Vase. With encaustic painting . . (Colour) 20
Marcus Tullius Cicero (Bust). Black Basalt on wooden plinth . 22
Milk Jug — White Stoneware ; Teapot and Milk Jug — Lilac Jasper . 24
Fruit Dish and Candlestick. Cane Ware ..... 26
Dessert Plates. Green Glaze ..... (Colour) 28
Cauliflower and Pineapple Teapots .... (Colour) 30
Perforated Fish-Slice. Queen's Ware ..... 32
Covered Cup and Saucer ; Sauce-Boat with Attached Stand ; Cream
Jug. Cream colour ........ 34
Tureen and Stand. Queen's Ware ...... 36
Madonna and Child. " Pearl " Ware . . . (Colour} 38
" Sadness " (Bust). Cream Ware .... (Colour) 40
Embossed Dish — Queen's Ware. Cream-colour Dish . . .42
Twig Basket and Stand. Cream colour ..... 44
ix
List of Plates
FACING PAGE
Soup Tureen and Ladle. Cream Ware ..... 46
Punch-Glass Stand. Cream colour .... 48
"Silver" Shape Cup and Saucer; " Bute '' Shape Cup and
Saucer .......... 48
Covered Sugar Box and Collee Pol. Lavender Ware (Colour) 50
Shell-shaped Dish — "Pearl" Ware; Leaf-shaped Dish — Cream-
colour Ware ....... (Colour) 52
Nautilus Dessert Dish. White Stoneware (Biscuit) . . 54
Sauce Boat ; Cruet. Queen's Ware ..... 54
Terra-cotta Teapot and Pastille Burner . . . (Colour) 50
Punch Kettle and Perforated Stand for Charcoal. Red Terra-cotta 58
" Centaur and a Bacchante." Greyish-huff Terra-colta . . 58
Milk Jug. Lavender Ware ....... 60
Cambridge Ale Jug. Red Terra-colta . . . . .60
Medallion: "Cupid on a Dolphin handing a Leller to Polyphemus."
Greyish-buff Terra-cotta . . 60
Cup and Saucer. Cane body . . . 62
Bowl. Bamboo Ware . .62
Game Pie-Dish and Cover. Cane body . ... 62
Wax Model for Plaque. (Never used) . (Colour) 64
Vase, with Painted Greek Ornament. Black body ... 64
Fruit Dish. Brown enamel ornament ..... 66
Fish Disli 66
Honey-Pot and Cover; Covered Cream .Jug. Cane-coloured Ware 66
Jasper Vase: "Venus in a Chariot drawn by Swans and Doves"
(Colour) 68
Sir William Hamilton. White Biscuit . . 70
Covered Sugar Box — Grey Jasper; Teapot — Olive Jasper . 70
Copy of Portland Vase ........ 72
" Apotheosis of Virgil." Jasper Plaque ..... 72
Jasper Vase and Pedestal ..... (Colour) "\
Personal Ornaments in Jasper Ware . . * (Colour) 76
Personal Ornaments. Jasper Ware ...... 76
Chessmen in Jasper Ware . . 76
Supper Tray and Centre Dish. Queen's Ware . 78
Oval Dish. Moulded wavy edge ...... 78
List of Plates
XI
Coffee Pot and Teapot. Cream-colour Ware
Plate. Printed in black at Liverpool
Cup and Saucer. Printed in purple at Liverpool
Dish with Perforated Border. Cream colour
Plates. Cream Ware
FACING PAGE
80
80
80
82
82
Plates: "Mercury and the Woodman"; "The Prodigal Son."
Cream colour .........
Cup, Cover and Stand, and Slop Basin. Jasper Ware (Colour)
Jardiniere. Light blue Jasper ... ...
Pedestal. White and green chequer
Fruit Dish and Perforated Chestnut Basket . . (Colour)
Coffee Jug. Lilac Jasper .... .
Goblet- shaped Vases. White on green Jasper ....
Covered Cream Bowl and Ladle; Twig Basket. Gold Lustre
(Colour)
" Silver Lustre " Candlestick .......
" Silver Lustre " Tea-Tray .......
A Madonna. " Pearl " Ware .......
Slab with Design by Bartolozzi after Cipriani. Pale blue Jasper
Classic Drum (To be used as bulb pot). " Pearl " Earthenware
Jasper Tray ........ (Colour)
Embossed and Pierced Fruit Dish and Leaf Plate. " Pearl " body
" Marbled " Vase ....... (Colour)
' Terror." White Jasper bust . . .
Cup and Milk- Jug. Floral decoration in enamel colours (Colour)
Wine Cooler. Grey Stoneware .......
Jasper Plaque : " A Sacrifice to Cupid " .
Venus or Susannah at a Fountain ; Omphale ; Female Figure.
Waxen-white Biscuit .......
Table-Centre. Cream colour, enamelled
Ivory Box ; Convex Medallion ; Glass Scent-Bottle
Plaquette ........
Pot-pourri Vases. Figures in dark blue Jasper
Benjamin Franklin. White Jasper relief .
Jasper Vase (Procession of Deities) ....
Framed Medallion with Flaxman Figure
(Colour)
Basalt
(Colour)
(Colour)
84
86
88
88
90
90
92
118
120
122
124
126
128
130
xii List of Plates
FACING PAGE
Jasper Plaque: "Sacrifice of Iphigenia " ... . 132
Joseph Priestley. High relief; on glossy blue ground . 134
Head of Medusa : Modelled by Flaxman . . . 136
Toilet-Box of Satinwood. Inlaid with Jasper Ware . . . 138
Knife-Handles ; Jelly Mould. " Pearl " body, enamelled
(Colour) 140
Candlesticks. Blue and white Jasper ..... 142
Covered Sugar Basin and Table Ornament. Cane body
(Colour} 144
" Hebe." Figure in white Jasper. (Circa 1790) . . 1 k»
Covered Vase. Cane-coloured Ware . . . (Colour) 148
Ball-Clay Proof of Flaxman's Model oi Plaque, " Mercury join-
ing the Hands of France and England " (1787). (Commemor-
ative of the Commercial Treaty between France and England,
1786) 150
Agate Ware Vase. White plinth in " Biscuit " Jasper (Colour) 152
Flower Vase with Perforated Cover. Light blue Jasper . . 154
George III. Cameo in white Jas;a-r ..... 156
Admiral Keppel. White Stoneware Biscuit .... 156
" Cleopatra before Augustus." (From a print by Burke after
Angelica Kauffmann.) ('ream-ware Plaque . . . 158
Agate Ware Vase ....... (Colour) 100
John Wesley (Bust). Black Basalt 162
Jardiniere. Earthenware . . . . . . . .161
Spill Vase — Red reliefs on buff ground ; Voltaire — White Jasper
bust ; Bell-Pull—Blue and white Jasper . . . .166
Jasper Ware Saucers .... . (Colour) 170
Voltaire. Cane body Figure . . . . . . .172
Perforated Basket and Stand. Jasper Ware . . (Colour) 176
Feeding-Cup and CofTee Pot and Strainer. " Pearl " Ware . 178
Marriage of Cupid and Psyche. White on blue Jasper . .178
" Am I not a Man and a Brother ? " Cane Ware . . .180
Terpsichore. White on black Jasper Ware .... 180
Wedgwood marks . . . . . • . 182
CHAPTER I
BY WAY OF INTRODUCTION
NO title of honour was ever more fully earned or
justly deserved than that of " Master Potter "
bestowed, by general acclaim, on Josiah Wedgwood,
of Burslem, who founded, in middle life, the world
famous works at the village he built and christened
" Etruria," some two miles north of Stoke-on-Trent,
but actually on the important old road that ran across
England from the towns of the Severn valley by way
of Market Drayton, Newcastle-under-Lyme, Leek and
Sheffield to Hull, and by way of York to Newcastle-on-
Tyne. Here, the business of pottery-making in innu-
merable branches and styles has flourished exceedingly,
until a catalogue of its productions would fill a goodly
volume, while its influence on the doings of contemporary
potters was almost world-wide. Through all the years
from its foundation, in 1769, this place has been renowned
both for its ceramic triumphs and for the civic and scientific
labours of a succession of able, if eccentric, men with
a decided streak of genius, who have guided its destinies
during the century and a half of prosperity and renown
which it has already enjoyed, and of which, happily,
no man can see the end.
B
2 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
The spirited and self-reliant class of English yeomen
may have vanished, but its representatives during the
eighteenth century drove a deep and abiding furrow
through the broad field of English life and enterprise.
Lancashire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Staffordshire
can boast a long roll of honoured names in this connexion,
and the virtues of the class were most admirably ex-
emplified by such famous families as the Peels, the
Arkwrights, and the Wedgwoods. These families, notable
for their women no less than for their men, were not
only of importance in themselves, but circumstances
enabled them to impress the full force of their character
and of their ideas, as with a stamp, on that great, tran-
sitional, economic movement by which the older home
and village industries were transplanted to organized
factories where men, women, and children were trained
in specialized occupations, so that they became cogs in
the wheels of a machine — just as had happened, to an
even greater degree, in China many centuries earlier.
The wild moorland district of North Staffordshire, then
a remote and inaccessible tract of country with rough
and miry lanes avoided by the stage-coaches, claims
many an honoured Astbury, Twyford, Warburton, Wedg-
wood, Wood and Turner ; and among all these the Josiah
Wedgwood who founded Etruria became the leader and
chief. The history of the Wedgwood family has been
freely and admirably written — with documents, deeds,
letters, and everything relevant to the subject — by a
living member of the family, and this valuable work 1
is such a mine of reliable information for all students
1 " A History of the Wedgwood Family," by Josiah C. Wedgwood, M.P. London :
The St. Catherine Press, Ltd., 1908.
By Way of Introduction 3
of the by-ways of North Staffordshire history, and the
growth of its industry, that we may commence our
account at once with the history of the most famous
European potter of his time and of this enduringly
vital family.
Josiah Wedgwood came of a stock that had long
practised the simple pottery-making current in the
district, while some of his father's relatives had become
well-known and comparatively wealthy from the opera-
tions of the various works they managed or controlled
in the town of Burslem, which prides itself on being
the " mother-town " of the local pottery industry. He
was born in the master's house at the Churchyard Works
of that town, and his baptismal register of July 12,
1730, is still preserved. His father was not a wealthy
manufacturer, though he was evidently in comfortable
circumstances, and the young Josiah received only such
scholastic education as was general in his class ; though
even here his share seems to have been somewhat meagre,
for when his father died, in 1739, he was taken from school
to work in the factory by his elder brother, Thomas, on
whom the management of the family affairs appears to
have devolved. He was apprenticed to this brother,
in the customary way, for a period of five years from
November 11, 1744. * In 1747 he suffered from a
virulent attack of small-pox, which not only enfeebled
him for some years but left him with a troublesome
affection of the knee, so that in 1768, more than twenty
years later, his right leg had to be amputated above the
1 The indentures of this apprenticeship are to be seen in the Hanley Museum.
They are printed in extenso in the volumes on Wedgwood written by Miss Meteyard
and LI. Jewitt.
4 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
knee. Fortunately, a strong constitution and great
natural fortitude enabled him to pass triumphantly
through all these ailments and their attendant depression,
so that many writers have seen in this affliction one of
the determining factors of his later eminence, for he was,
thereby, impelled to perfect himself in the less laborious
branches of the trade, and so he acquired that dexterity
in the craft of making and fitting handles and spouts
to jugs and teapots (" stouking," as it was called in those
days), which paved the way to the more highly skilled
branches of the potter's work, such as block-cutting
and modelling. lie became an expert workman in all
these callings, and thus extended and perfected his
knowledge as a practical potter to a degree shared only
by his most eminent contemporaries — for this was a
time when the master-potter could, if necessary, perform
any operation reasonably well — and was an excellent
craftsman in many branches of his industry.
After a few years, Josiah Wedgwood left the employ-
ment of his brother and entered into partnership with
a tradesman named Harrison,1 of Newcastlc-under-Lyme,
and they occupied a works on Cliff Bank, which over-
looks the town of Stoke-on-Trent from the road that
climbs up to Hartshill on the way to Newcastle-under-
Lyme. Cliff Bank at this time housed quite a little
nest of potteries, and there Harrison and Wedgwood, or
Harrison, Wedgwood and Aldersea, as the firm is often
called, appear to have made the white and blue salt-
glaze pottery, then at the height of its fame, together
with the various clouded, mottled and tortoise-shell
1 This Harrison is believed to have been a descendant of Major-General Harrison,
of Cromwell's " New Model."
By Way of Introduction 5
wares which formed one important branch of the general
earthenware trade at that day.
Wedgwood had only worked at this factory at Cliff
Bank for about two years (1752-4), when he entered
into partnership with Thomas Whieldon, of Fenton,
the most famous potter of the time in Staffordshire
for technical skill and knowledge of the trade. This
fortunate association, invaluable in the education and
to the rising reputation of the younger man, was advan-
tageous to both parties, for Whieldon was an extremely
skilful potter who possessed established connexions
with the Birmingham metal-mounters and silversmiths,
while Wedgwood had an inexhaustible fund of energy,
and was already winning a reputation for his ceaseless
experiments — a passion he nourished to the end of his
life. Tradition avers that Wedgwood proved too enter-
prising in business and too fond of experiments to be
quite comfortably yoked with his senior partner ; but
they appear to have dissolved their partnership, with
mutual esteem and goodwill, about the end of 1758.
In confirmation of this date there is an existing memor-
andum of agreement, dated December 30th, 1758, in
which Wedgwood engaged his cousin Thomas, then
employed at the Worcester China Works, to serve him
as a journeyman-potter for five years from that date.
At the opening of the year 1759, when Wedgwood
was in his twenty-ninth year, he commenced his in-
dependent career as a master-potter by leasing from his
distant cousins, John and Thomas Wedgwood, of the
Big House, Burslem (who had been important manu-
facturers there for more than twenty years), a portion
of their works in the Burslem market-place. This works
6 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
was known as the Ivy House factory,1 and became
famous as the scene of Wedgwood's first independent
venture as a manufacturer ; though in a few years he
also leased a larger works in the vicinity, called the
Bell Works, and at these two small factories he laid
the foundations on which all his later manufacturing
enterprises were so solidly built up.
At this date the pottery industry of North Stafford-
shire—rapidly as it was growing in extent, variety and
reputation— was still conducted by methods and appli-
ances that seem almost primitive in their simplicity.
Open pits lined with large stones were used for tempering
and blending the clay mixtures, while wind and sun were
the only drying agents, so that the year's supply of potter's
clay had to be prepared during the warmer months.
Slip-kilns, for drying the fluid mixtures to the necessary
consistency by the heat of a coal fire, were just coming
into vogue, and the materials for the jasper, black-
basalt and other bodies, so extensively used by Josiah
Wedgwood, are still prepared at Etruria as they were
when work was commenced there. It would be impossible,
I imagine, to mention another family of like distinction
that has clung so tenaciously to the working methods
of its founder and has striven, despite all the chances
of time and fate, to adhere to the guiding principles
enunciated by any potter, however eminent.2 The liber-
ality of the family has always granted to students the
privilege of visiting this living survival of an eighteenth-
1 In local parlance a pottery works was, and still is, called a "pot-bonk," i.e.
pot-bank, for the site was generally levelled with the accumulations of waste from
the kilns.
2 The closest parallel would, perhaps, be found in the devotion of the successive
chiefs of Sevres to the life-work of Brongniart.
SAUCE-BOAT AND COFFEE POT
Agate ware. ? Whieldon period
Coffee Pot — Height 5j In.
Victoria and A Ibert Museum. Formerly in Enoch Wood Collection.
By Way of Introduction 7
century factory, and the old works, now surrounded by
the successive extensions which have grown up about
it during a century and a half, together with the Wedg-
wood Museum of recent foundation, is a shrine of pious
pilgrimage for potters and students from the ends of
the earth.
It is to the enduring credit of Josiah Wedgwood
that while he was industriously building up his own
position as a manufacturer, he threw himself with all
the energy of his disposition into every sensible scheme
that was proposed for the improvement of the district
in which he lived and worked. It was imperative that
better means of communication should be constructed
both between the pottery towns themselves and with
the important centres of English commerce ; especially
with the port of Liverpool, which was entering on its
career of rivalry with Bristol for the trade with Ireland
and with America in which it finally conquered by reason
of its proximity to the thriving industrial regions of
Lancashire and Yorkshire. The port of Chester had for
many centuries been an important centre in the coast-
wise traffic of the western side of Britain, as well as with
Ireland, and at this time the plastic Devonshire clays,
shipped from Bideford, were always spoken of as " Chester
Clays," for they were carried from that port into Stafford-
shire by pack-horses in the usual way ; just as at a later
period " cawk," the mineral sulphate of barytes, was
brought from the lead mines of Derbyshire for the manu-
facture of the " jasper " wares of Wedgwood and his
contemporaries. The leading pottery manufacturers
must have found these slow and difficult methods of
transit for materials and goods a great hindrance to the
8 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
development of their trade, so that the success of a
few recently constructed canals, especially that made
by the Duke of Bridgwater from his coal mines at
Worsley to the river at Manchester, gave rise to a
canal fever in several industrial centres in England
mildly comparable to the railway fever which raged
some eighty years later. The advantages which canal
barges offered over pack-horses and carriers' wagons
were so obvious that it is easy to understand why a
number of the principal manufacturers in Staffordshire,
backed by the political influence of the Gower family,
who were the owners of extensive estates in the county,
should have zealously striven to further the " Stafford-
shire Canal " project.
Wedgwood acted as treasurer of the canal under-
taking, a signal evidence of his growing wealth and his
importance in the district ; but he also seems to have
played the most important individual part in the suc-
cessful completion of the project. He devoted both
his money and his time to the canal, and, incidentally,
this public work proved of advantage to his manufac-
tures, as it spread the repute of his pottery and secured
valuable friendships for him among the county families,
who were to become his first influential patrons. With
his active and distinguished mind he was soon a notable
figure in the county, and such reputation as he gained
in this way, supported as it was by the excellence and
variety of his manufactures, was a legitimate triumph
for one who owed his success largely to his own courageous
and enterprising spirit.
Having thus cleared the ground with this brief
historical survey, we may fitly proceed to consider the
SIR WALTER RALEIGH
Black basalt. (Circa 1780)
Height 17JJ in., width 9jj- in.
Fo/c/ee Collection, British Museum.
By Way of Introduction 9
ceramic triumphs which brought Wedgwood such high
and undiminished repute. His ideals, which were those
in highest favour at the time, are in many ways remote
from those of to-day. The passion for Greek vases,
which was natural enough when the excavations in
Southern Italy brought such things vividly before the
modern world by their virtual resurrection, has been
replaced by a belief in the superiority of Oriental porce-
lain as the fullest expression of the potter's art and skill.
Wedgwood's virtues as a master who created some
of the finest models of practical utility combined with
elegance that are known in all the long history of
the potter's craft will, however, always remain as a
heritage and an inspiration to those of his countrymen
who strive to create, as he did, objects of beauty for
everyday use.
CHAPTER II
THE EARLY CONDITIONS OF THE POTTERY INDUSTRY IN
STAFFORDSHIRE
IN order that we may arrive at a sound and
just appreciation of Josiah Wedgwood's labours and
achievements as a potter and disentangle his especial
contributions to the fictile arts from those which are
due to other active members of the busy and inventive
community into which he had been born, it seems advis-
able that we should review, at least in their broad out-
lines, the general conditions under which the industry
was carried on in North Staffordshire before the sweeping
changes and innovations of the mid-eighteenth century,
in which he played such a distinguished part, revolutionized
the methods and conditions of the manufacture of pottery
and porcelain in England.
Less than fifty years before Josiah Wedgwood was
born the wide region which has so long been distinguished
emphatically as " The Potteries " was a wild and isolated
tract of country, supporting only a sparse and scattered
population. This was mostly grouped, as if for pro-
tection, in the more cultivated plots about the old churches
and the remains of a few monastic buildings and their
granges and farms, or dwelt apart in the more remote
dells and nooks of the wild, rolling moorlands which
extended to the north of Stoke-on-Trent. By the time
Wedgwood was fifty years of age the district had gained
10
VASE
Painted in encaustic style
Height 13£ in., diameter 6J in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
•ji/r-: .-I « .1 ).•>'••• i
.11 j'') 1.. l»:'JI[Jf.'.' ,JM -
Early Conditions of the Pottery Industry n
a reputation throughout the civilized world as the most
important centre of pottery manufacture in these islands ;
for, in addition to supplying the needs of our own popu-
lation, in every class, by its neat and eminently prac-
tical and serviceable earthenwares, it had entered upon an
important and rapidly-expanding overseas trade with
our kinsfolk abroad and with all the countries of Europe —
even with those which could boast of old-established
pottery industries of their own.
Throughout the Middle Ages, such simple pottery
as was made in England seems to have been manufactured
mainly by the tilewrights and potters who were attached
to the various monastic establishments, and it is possible
that at the dissolution of these institutions a considerable
number of such craftsmen were set free and had to work
on their own account — finding their patrons or regular
customers among the general public as best they could,
and, in most cases, sinking lower and lower in the scale
of existence and of craftsmanship. Almost certainly,
this was what happened in the districts surrounding
Reading, Bristol, Malvern and Worcester, as well as in
North Staffordshire (where the remains of Hulton Abbey,
lying between Burslem and Hanley, long testified to its
ancient importance). In this last mentioned region the
pottery industry seems to have suffered from a lingering
decline after the dissolution of the monasteries. The
fact that it was not enumerated among the local trades
and industries by so minute and careful an observer
as Leland, though he traversed the district in 1537, and
that it was not mentioned in Speed's list of "Shire Pro-
ducts " in 1625, would seem to suggest that until about
the middle of the seventeenth century the making of
12 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
pottery was not developed in North Staffordshire to a
more notable extent than happened in many other parts
of England where suitable clays could be easily found,
together with abundant wood-fuel to burn the crockery.
Some time before the middle of that century much
greater developments appear to have taken place, for
the increasing scarcity of wood revealed the importance
of the coal that could be so readily worked from the
" outcrops " on the hillsides or in the numerous " cloughs,"
along with the accompanying coal-measure clays, which
were in themselves sufficient for the manufacture of such
elementary kinds of pottery as were in common use.
Throughout this period, and even to that of the con-
struction of the turnpike roads in Wedgwood's lifetime,
the district remained a remote, almost an isolated one,
for the existing roads which intersected it were little
better than narrow, miry lanes scored with ruts and holes,
where wheeled vehicles floundered from one impediment
to another. The usual method of conveyance for goods,
coals and clays of every kind was in the panniers of
pack-horses or galloways, which generally travelled in
strings or groups so that their drivers could assist
each other to overcome the difficulties and mischances
of the way; while wandering " cratemen " or pedlars
vended the finished crockery through the neighbouring
counties, wandering from farmstead to farmstead, or
attending the numerous markets and fairs. By such
means the fame of Staffordshire crockery was spread
abroad, and it gradually displaced all those local wares
of the rougher kind which had hitherto served the
needs of the countryside in the west of England and
the adjacent parts of Wales.
LAMP AND COVER
Black basalt
Height 13| in., diameter of bowl 7« in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Early Conditions of the Pottery Industry 13
Fortunately, Dr. Robert Plot, the keeper of the
Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, who was an eager natu-
ralist and observer, has left us an interesting and in-
valuable account of the conditions of the industry as
they came under his notice in the course of a progress
through the district, which is recorded in his history
of Staffordshire, published in 1686.1 This account
may be, appropriately, summarized here, not only for
the accuracy of its descriptions, but because it is the
only first-hand account of such matters that we possess.
He records that the various clays were prepared by
spreading them abroad in heaps, in their hard condition,
just as they were got from the coal-mines or from the
outcrops of the seams where they were mined along
with the coal. Here, they were fully exposed to the
slow, recurrent action of sun, wind, rain and frost ;
for they were left out in the open during two or three
seasons, and were turned over at intervals so as to expose
fresh surfaces, a process known as " weathering." The
next step was to throw a quantity of this softened,
" weathered " clay into a pit, sunk in the ground and
lined with slabs of fired clay or with flagstones quarried
from the neighbouring hills, which served to support
the sides of the pit and preserved the clays from con-
tamination by the soil. In this pit the weathered clays
were mixed with water into a fluid by agitating the
clay and water with a long wooden paddle carrying a
cross-piece at the top which was gripped by the labourer.
After a vigorous agitation, or " blunging " as it was
called, the mixture was allowed to stand for a little
1 Plot, R. (Dr.), "Natural History of Staffordshire." London, 1686. A summary
of this account will be found in the " Jermyn Street Museum Catalogue," pp. 100-1.
14 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
time, so that the stones, gravel, and hard, unweathered
particles sank to the bottom of the pit, while the fluid
which contained the fine particles of clay, in suspension,
was ladled off and poured through a hair-sieve into a
large shallow tank called the " sun-kiln." Here it
was left exposed to the sun and wind until the mass
slowly dried to such a consistency that it could, finally,
be cut out in blocks and stored in a damp cellar to " age "
in preparation for the work of the " thrower " or " presser,"
who shaped it on the potter's wheel or in moulds, and,
after it had dried sufficiently, smoothed and finished
the vessels or affixed handles and spouts, while a further
slow drying completed the clay-work.
Lead ore, in the form of galena, the native sulphide
of lead, brought from neighbouring Derbyshire or from
North Wales beyond Chirk and Wrexham, was the prin-
cipal ingredient of the glaze. It was roughly pounded
to a coarse powrder, which was tied up in a bag of " butter-
cloth " (i.e. coarse muslin) and dusted thickly over the
surfaces of the clay vessels. These coated vessels were
placed in the fireclay saggers, which protected them in
the kiln ; during the firing the powdered lead ore was
gradually roasted to lead oxide, which, in its turn, melted
and dissolved the outer skin of the clay vessel over which
it had been applied. This solution of clay in lead oxide,
a mixture of somewhat indefinite and variable composition,
produced the yellow, treacly glaze, so that when the
operation was finished there were the strongly-coloured
yellow (buff), red or brownish pots, all complete. The
articles which were, generally, made at this period,
comprised few objects other than mugs, jugs, or pitchers
and dishes (plates seem to have been a later addition, for
BLACK BASALT URN-SHAPED INKSTAND
Mark: Impressed " WEDGWOOD & BENTLKY"
Height 4i in.
RED TERRA-COTTA JUG
Fluted to imitate basket-work
Mark : Impressed imitation Chinese seal mark
Height 5J- in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Early Conditions of the Pottery Industry 15
at this time wooden trenchers were mostly used instead),
while the shapes given to these vessels were only of the
simplest order — such as are common to most European
countries during the early stages of pottery-making.
Such were the manufacturing conditions in the dis-
trict long before Wedgwood's birth, and though we have
the evidence of a few carefully made tygs and other
drinking vessels that articles of better shape and finish
were made to some extent, we believe that these were
the exception rather than the rule — however interesting
they may be as the precursors of better things. The
marked improvements that are so evident in every
branch of pottery-making in Staffordshire from the end
of the seventeenth century have been generally attri-
buted to the ferment caused in the district by the doings
of two foreign potters, the brothers Elers. They had
settled at Dimsdale Hall, an old manor house lying in
a secluded spot among the trees of Bradwell Wood,
off the main road which runs from Newcastle-under-
Lyme to the North, and with an outlook across the wide
valley on the east, through which the canal and railway
now run, to Burslem Church on its commanding hill-
top. Here they made such pottery as had never been
seen before among the potters of the district ; mostly,
in small articles of table ware, such as teapots (with
handles and spouts that were hand-made and not moulded),
cups, small mugs and piggins for use as punch-ladles,
in a fine, unglazed, red body or terra-cotta of beautiful
tone and texture. No specimens of their manufacture
have ever been found which bear names, dates or maker's
marks, so that, in spite of excavations on the factory
site and in its vicinity, we can only select from among
16 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
the early examples which are best authenticated as having
been made in the district about this time, and say that
some of them were probably made by the Elers, or by
John Philip Elers, who is supposed to have been the
potter.1
Fine and delicate pottery of this order can have
been little less than a revelation to the natives of the
district, and a plentiful crop of legends has been handed
down as to how these " foreigners " were spied upon
in order to discover the secrets of such a superior manu-
facture. The old story goes that two local potters,
Astbury and Twyford, by an assumption of dense
stupidity, secured employment in their works and learnt
the methods they used. Certainly the Elers left the
district within a few years, probably about 1710, while
the continued improvements which became manifest
from this time were due to the labours of a number
of potters who all bear well-known Staffordshire names
and an undoubted pedigree.
Both Astbury and Twyford established little pot-
works of their own in Shelton (the district between
Stoke and Hanley), and there are two dull-black un-
glazed teapots still preserved in the Hanley Museum
which were given by Enoch Wood more than a century
ago, and vouched for, by him, as the work of Twyford.
Astbury is known to have travelled to London and other
important centres to dispose of his pottery to the best
advantage, and he was, by all accounts, one of the pioneers
in this method of increasing the demand for his wares.
1 This was the mature opinion of Professor Church as expressed in his " English
Earthenware " (Victoria and Albert Museum Handbooks), and we are still in the
same condition of imperfect knowledge.
COVERED SUGAR BASIN
Green glaze with modelled sprigs, gilded
Height 4 in., diameter 4f in.
Fitzhenry Qifl, Victoria and Albert Museum.
TEAPOT
Green glaze with modelled sprigs, gilded
Height 5J in., diameter 4£ in.
Fitzhenry Qifl, Victoria and Albert Museum.
Early Conditions of the Pottery Industry 17
He is also believed to have been the first Staffordshire
potter who imported the white-burning Devonshire clays ;
which were mixed with fine white sand obtained locally,
and applied as a slip-coating on the vessels made from
the native buff and red clays. Simeon Shaw ascribes
to Astbury the merit of the discovery that calcined flint
was an excellent material to use in conjunction with many
clays, especially for the manufacture of a hard white
pottery (circa 1720). Josiah Wedgwood, writing much
nearer to the time, awards the merit of this discovery
to a potter named Heath, also working at Shelton, but,
as is the case with many fundamental discoveries of the
highest importance, we are never likely to learn the exact
truth of this matter. The descendants of both Astbury
and Twyford have continued the business of pottery-
making in Staffordshire to the present time, and the site
of the modern Twyford works, famed all the wrorld over
for its sanitary pottery of every kind, is only about
half a mile from the Twyford factory to which reference
has just been made.
For the names of the Staffordshire potters of this
period, and especially of those who worked in the regions
about Burslem, there is an interesting document, drawn
up by Josiah Wedgwood in 1765, l which gives a list of
the master-potters who were then at work in the districts
of Burslem and Hanley, and mentions the kind of pottery
which was made by each of the firms. In this docu-
ment he also gives an illuminating estimate of the weekly
costs and wages for a typical small factory, which is
almost certainly based on actual experience, and he
*" Stailordshire Pottery and its History," Josiah C. Wedgwood, M.P. London :
Sampson Low, Marston and Co., Ltd., 1913, pp. 48-53.
C
i8 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
further states that, in 1715, there were 42 master-potters
in Burslem, but not one of the whole number turned
out more than £6 worth of goods in a week. The various
kinds of pottery mentioned make up an interesting
and somewhat amusing list, for along with a preponder-
ance of " Black and Mottled " (about 20 factories in
all), we have smaller sections who made " Brown Stone,"
" Stoneware and Freckled," " Stoneware," " Butter Pots,"
44 Cloudy," and " Mottled." Such a list conjures up at
once the rustic pieces which have formed the spoil of
the late collectors of old Staffordshire pottery, and which
have been so copiously illustrated and described by Mr.
Solon, Mr. Hodgkin, Mr. Frank Falkner, Mr. C. J. Lomax,
and other enthusiasts, during the last thirty or forty
years. The indifference or contempt with which these
fundamentals in the historical development of the in-
dustry were once regarded has been replaced by an active
and painstaking curiosity which bids fair to resolve,
once and for all, most of the difficulties about which men
still dispute.
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CHAPTER III
THE IMPROVEMENT OF MANUFACTURING CONDITIONS IN
STAFFORDSHIRE
IN attempting a survey of the career of an active
and inventive man who was able, after his first
successes, to gain almost universal fame by his various
productions, it is almost natural to over-emphasize
the importance of the work of his maturity, though
this embodies all the knowledge so patiently gathered
during his earlier years and before he is able to display
the full range of his powers and resources. Such a course
would be, particularly, out of keeping with the character
of Josiah Wedgwood, who, throughout his eventful
life, made the ground secure before he launched on each
fresh and more ambitious exercise of his ability and
organizing power.
There are few distinguished potters who have ranged
over so wide a field, and still fewer who have displayed
in all their doings such sound, good sense ; a quality
of mind which is pre-eminent in the work of this man,
not only as a pottery manufacturer, but also in his
public and private life. He never disdained or abandoned
the successes of his earlier years as a potter, but continu-
ously added some fresh application of the old methods,
or some new invention of his own, as his knowledge ex-
panded and his growing reputation brought him fresh
opportunities for the display of his masterly skill.
19
20 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
A constant preoccupation of his mind, from the time
of his settlement in Burslem as a manufacturer, was
the imperative necessity that his workmen should be
trained in more precise methods than such as served
elsewhere, as well as in the use of improved machinery.
He realized that the aid of machinery could be usefully
applied in two directions : first, in replacing the exhausting
and deleterious labour involved in pounding and grinding
the hard materials and rocks used as prime constituents
of the bodies and glazes of the pottery, as well as in the
more perfect levigation of the various colouring oxides
and their compounds ; and second, by effecting mechanical
improvements which increased the precision of the
potter's throwing-wheels and turning-lathes used in shap-
ing and finishing the pottery before it was fired.
Dr. Plot's account of the methods in general use
in the district, written some seventy years earlier, has
been summarized in the preceding chapter, and it enables
one to understand the conditions under which the in-
dustry was conducted before the changes which are under
consideration here were introduced. So long as the
industry remained a traditional family calling, where
every member of the family took an allotted share in
the work, while a few hired labourers — who usually
worked for more than one master on different days
in the week — provided the less - skilled labour, there
was little possibility of any widespread introduction of
mechanical appliances which would have displaced so
much of this employment.
From the time of Josiah Wedgwood's immediate
predecessors the primitive local customs which had
prevailed when nearly all the workers were supposed
BLACK BASALT VASE
With encaustic painting
(1770)
Height 6| in.
British Museum.
I
Improvement of Manufacturing Conditions 21
to be competent to carry out the various operations
on a " pot-bank," and only the master-potter reserved
to himself those special branches of the craft which
called for particular training or skilled manipulation,
were passing away. Increasing demands for more highly
finished pottery, and the improving organization of the
potter's methods, conspired to bring about a more dis-
tinct subdivision and narrower specialization of the work
as a whole. Those workmen who attained any marked
dexterity in some particular set of operations were re-
tained, as much as possible, for such departments of
the work, and by this time we begin to hear of work-
men who are distinguished from the general ruck by always
being spoken of as throwers, block-cutters, modellers,
and so forth. The full results of these changes in organ-
ization were not revealed immediately, but they exercised
a potent influence on the future course of the industry,
and especially by a more definite subdivision of the
various callings into a number of separate crafts, so that,
for anything beyond the most ordinary crockery made
from coarse clay by the simplest methods, no workman
was any longer simply described as a " potter "
except in the general and indefinite sense in which any
one engaged on a pot-bank may be loosely spoken of
as a " potter."
This change, which had been slow and gradual through-
out the seventeenth century, was somewhat quickened
when improved tools and machinery were invented on
the spot, or were adapted from those used in other manu-
facturing industries. The inventions of the Lancashire
textile workers and machinists, and of the Birmingham
workers in metals, bone and ivory, were to some extent
22 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
reflected in the pottery works of the country, while
the situation of North Staffordshire between these two
busy and thriving industrial centres, and its increasing
trade relations with both, were calculated to bring about
the introduction of fresh ideas in workshop methods and
management. In the industries of the northern counties
and of the midlands the use of machinery and the sub-
division of occupations had progressed more rapidly
than in the manufacture of pottery, though the more
enterprising and energetic among the Staffordshire em-
ployers were, by this time, quick to sei/e on any hints
that could be gleaned from either district for the improve-
ment of their own methods.
It is, perhaps, significant that one of the first works
Wedgwood could call his own had its name changed
in the common parlance of the district, and was, hence-
forth, called the Bell Works, because he put up a re-
sounding bell to call his workpeople to their labours,
whereas it had been customary to summon them, if
they were summoned at all, by repeated noisy blasts
on a cow's horn.
The general body of workpeople in the potteries was
slow to respond to such changes, and though we do not
hear of the breaking of machinery and the burning of
factories that occurred from time to time in other parts
of the country, we know that old, ingrained customs
are not readily changed, and opposition may be even
more difficult to deal with when it is sullen and covert
than if it becomes clamant and notorious. Throughout
the district, all those manufacturers who were striving
to improve the industry had these difficulties to face,
though Wedgwood and his chief contemporaries soon
MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
Black basalt on wooden plinth
Height 8| in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Improvement of Manufacturing Conditions 23
managed to grapple with them successfully, while those
who neglected or failed to deal with them before they
became acute disappeared from the scene, bankrupt
in affairs as in progressive ideas.
It seems incredible that the first mill (a windmill x)
for grinding calcined flint in water was only erected in
1758 at a place called the Jenkins, near Burslem, on some
land which belonged to John Wedgwood of the Big House,
where flints and other hard materials were ground in
water instead of being crushed into dust by stone stampers
worked by water-power. A few years later, when Josiah
Wedgwood built his mill at the Etruria works, the grind-
ing pans were driven by a steam-engine, one of James
Watt's early " Sun and Planet " engines, made by
Boulton and Watt at their Soho Works, near Birmingham,
and this engine was still driving the grinding mills in
the Etruria factory until a few years ago.
Lathes, for finishing and refining the round pottery
shapes after they had been " thrown," had been in use
in Staffordshire from the time of the Elers, who are
sometimes credited with their introduction into the
district ; but there is ample evidence in Wedgwood's
correspondence that he sought, far and wride, for im-
provements in the potter's lathes of his early years.
He got his friend Bentley to translate foreign works
on lathes and the practice of turnery, and they discussed
and made experiments with many of the devices used
for turning other materials, in order that they might
improve their own machines and methods. Their cor-
1 There is an amusing sketch of a proposed windmill sent to Wedgwood by
Dr. Erasmus Darwin about 1768, in Miss Meteyard's " Life of Josiah Wedgwood,"
vol. ii., p. 29.
24 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
respondence about this time is full of suggestions and
ideas relating to this branch of their manufactures,
and when they met they were soon immersed in such
books as they had secured and in plans and sketches
of suggested improvements to their machines,1 for pre-
cision and still greater precision of manufacture was
Wedgwood's watchword, and all his productions show
how true he was to his principles. What other manu-
facturers had regarded as trifling things and not worthy
of serious attention, were soon shown in their true im-
portance. He purchased a number of sets of scales and
weights so that his throwers should weigh the balls of
clay before they were used, and an approximate table
of weights was drawn up for the principal standard
articles ; he had the scraps weighed daily in order to
check waste and loss, and in addition he frequently
had the finished plates weighed in lots, to see that they
did not deviate from an approved weight. Here was
a revolution, indeed, from the methods of his predecessors
and of those contemporary potters who preferred the
old casual ways.
At the same time he gave much thought and atten-
tion to improvements in his kilns and ovens, and expended
much money and labour upon their construction so that
the heat should be distributed, under control, as proved
to be best in practice. It is difficult for anyone who
has not had actual experience to realize the importance
to a potter, especially to a maker of fine and expensive
wares, of the proper construction of his kilns and ovens.
I have known important factories where, owing to
1 There is an account of these labours and studies in Miss Meteyard's " Life ol
Josiah Wedgwood," Chap, i., vol. ii.
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Improvement of Manufacturing Conditions 25
defective construction or proportions, only about half
the cubic space inside the oven could be relied upon
for producing soundly fired pottery, and we may be
sure that any such conditions would have proved in-
tolerable to a manufacturer of the temperament of
Wedgwood.
The effective kiln-space is always a measure of the
capacity for production of the works as a whole, it is
the bottle-neck through which everything must be poured,
so that the utmost attention must be bestowed on such
methods of construction and of firing as will yield re-
liable results over the maximum amount of firing-space,
when reasonable care and skill are exercised by the
fireman. With every improvement that is sought for
in pottery manufacture these problems are of the first
importance, as sound pottery can never be made unless
it is sufficiently and consistently fired.
The limits of size which are practicable in potters'
kilns and ovens are soon reached, and there are many
legends of the disastrous consequences which ensued at
some of the Staffordshire factories, when extra large ovens
were built only to collapse at the height of the firing.
If we may judge by the size of the hovels or cones sur-
rounding the ovens which were built by Wedgwood
at Etruria, some of which I have seen in use over 100
years after their erection, he and his bricklayers 1 had
solved this question quite satisfactorily ; and the green-
glaze oven and the jasper- ware ovens at Etruria are
still constructed on the plans that were perfected at
1 There is a well-known cameo portrait in Wedgwood's jasper of Edward Bourne
— " Old Bourne " as he is affectionately termed— who was the head bricklayer at
the Etruria works.
26 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
this time — and not from mere conservatism or aversion
to change, but on account of their excellence in use.
Two customs of the pottery trade which frequently
puzzle outside observers may be mentioned here. The
work of the operative potter is always reckoned in dozens,
but this " potter's dozen " is an extremely variable
number of articles. The technical "potter's dozen" seems
to have been determined, originally, by the amount of
space occupied in the ordinary sagger l (which is spoken of
as the " common-height sagger," and used as the basis
of reckoning) by a dozen full-sized dinner plates. It
follows that small articles may be reckoned in any mul-
tiple of twelve, so that 24, 36, or even 144 pieces may be
a dozen, commonly called the " long dozen ' for that
article, while large jugs, ewers, wash-hand basins, slop-
pails, etc., would be reckoned as so many dozens each,
according to the amount of sagger space they occupy.
To this day, in any settlement of the potter's prices for
making different articles, this question of the actual
number of pieces which shall be reckoned as " the dozen "
inevitably crops up afresh and is just as regularly haggled
over.
Another difficulty which arises from the number of
processes through which the pottery must pass to com-
pletion is the question as to whether the operative potter
shall be paid for his work as " good from hand," that
is, when it leaves him to be dried, and subsequently
fired, or as " good from oven," that is, after it has been
fired. The employers generally claim, with some justice,
1 A sagger is the fireclay box or case in which pottery is fired in the " biscuit "
or the glazing oven. It protects the pottery from the direct impingement of the
flame and from flying bits from the oven walls.
FRUIT DISH
Cane Ware
Mark: Impressed "WEDGWOOD • and "v.
Length 8.} in., width S in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
CANDLESTICK
Cane body. Glazed
Height 8J in.,
width at base 4| in.
Improvement of Manufacturing Conditions 27
that many making-defects can only be detected after
the piece has been fired, while the operative potter
claims that defects due to careless firing are debited
to him unfairly. Such problems of management as these
will recur as long as the present system of pottery-making
continues, and the squabbles arising from them often
seem to be enjoyed by both sides, where each is eager
to " best " the other, as they term it.
To return to our immediate history, Wedgwood
could joyously experiment in new adventures and take
risks with the best, but he retained throughout his career
the keenest passion and delight in the manufacture of
fine things, yet always with a clear sanity of outlook
which is entirely admirable in a business man and per-
fectly in keeping with his distinguished order of mind,
which touched few things that it did not adorn.
In the extensive use of a bright fresh green glaze
on softly modelled ornament, Wedgwood, had he known
it, was carrying on one of the oldest devices followed
by the potter in all countries ; for a similar use of bright
green and yellow glazes occurs from the beginnings of
glazed earthenware with almost every race of potters
whose works are known to us. Many centuries earlier,
such glazes were freely used in Egypt, Syria, Persia,
China and Japan, and their unnamed makers were doubt-
less as proud of the gay effects they produced as the
European potters of later times.
There is a traditional belief in the Staffordshire
potteries which one likes to fancy might be true, that
the bright green and yellow glazes which were so ex-
tensively used throughout the district in the eighteenth
century were the firstfruits of Wedgwood's inventive-
28 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
ness, and his methods certainly mark a technical advance
over those that had been followed in the production
of the primitive " mottled," " cloudy " and " tortoise-
shell " wares of Staffordshire, made before Wedgwood
was born or while he was but a boy. In these the
colouring oxides of iron, copper and manganese were
dabbled, with a piece of rag or a sponge, over the surface
of the shaped clay vessel before the application of the
glaze. As the glaze melted during the firing it dissolved
the patches of oxide if they had not been too thickly
applied, and the glaze was strongly coloured to the re-
quired tint where the patches had been put. This rule-
of-thumb method was, necessarily, uncertain in its re-
sults, for the surviving examples, which are probably
typical of the best that were made, often display irregular,
shiny-black patches or streaks where the glaze was not
thick enough to dissolve all the colouring oxide. In
the later examples, such as those of Whieldon and Wedg-
wood for instance, the finely ground oxides of iron or
copper were mixed with the fluid glaze in definite propor-
tions, so that the applied glaze contained the colouring
matter before it was fired. This method has been gener-
ally followed since that date, though the composition
of the glaze, and consequently the tone of colour pro-
duced, has varied from time to time with different makers ;
for within the space of a few years many potters were
making similar glazed-ware in all the pottery towns.
Wedgwood's principal productions in the green-glaze
pottery comprise various dessert services enriched with
softly-modelled leaves and flowers or fruit (the vine and
the water-lily were favourite patterns. See Plate facing
this page), and these have continuously maintained their
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Improvement of Manufacturing Conditions 29
hold on popular favour in these islands as well as through-
out Europe and America. In addition to the dessert
services, he introduced for table decoration a number
of models of tall candlesticks adapted from contemporary
silversmith's work, and he also manufactured, in large
quantities, various tea and coffee services in simple,
elegant shapes which were often left quite plain, but
more often, perhaps, seem to have been enriched with
moulded or applied ornament.1 Such applied ornament
is frequently spoken of as " sprigged," whether it consists
of floral, animal or human forms.
I have formed the opinion from the quantity of early
specimens now to be seen in various countries, in the
possession of private families, that this green-glaze
earthenware, together with the " cauliflower " and " pine-
apple " wares in which the same glaze also plays an
important decorative role, must have formed the bulk
of Wedgwood's early export trade, and we know that
in later years the export trade with Europe and America
grew to be an important and lucrative department of
his total business. When we remember how popular
such wares were in the British Isles also, it is easy to
understand why they received so much attention at
his hands both when he was working his factories at
Burslem and after he had finally settled at Etruria.
Other decorative devices in which the various coloured
glazes or coloured clays play the most important part
had been extensively used in Staffordshire and were,
by this time, common property, as they might well be,
1 This applied or " sprigged " ornament was prepared by squeezing moist clay
into intaglio moulds of plaster-of-Paris, or " pitcher," i.e., fired clay ; a method
which was afterwards used for making the " jasper " and other reliefs, formed in
clay of one colour and applied to vessels fashioned from clay of another colour.
30 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
for they seem to be almost as old as glazed pottery,
and have been adopted in almost every pottery centre
of the Old World from remote ages. These are best
exemplified by the " Tortoise-shell," " Marbled " and
" Agate " wares which embody the final efforts in the
methods used by the primitive slip-ware potters, where
the work is carried to a pitch of elaboration, refinement
and finish entirely in keeping with the aims and outlook
of the eighteenth-century manufacturers. This truly
decorative pottery, which smacks so strongly of the soil
from which it grew, lias always been able to command
a widespread, popular appreciation, for it has been
continuously manufactured by the Wedgwoods at Etruria,
by other potters in different parts of England as well as
by numerous potters throughout Europe.1
As we might expect, many of the pieces in this style
made by Josiah Wedgwood mark the limits of perfection
in the methods used, for his numerous vases, bulb pots,
inkstands, and other articles in this style display such
skilful and patient dexterity in manipulation as is not to
be surpassed (see Plates facing pp. 108,152 and 160), though
some of his contemporaries in Staffordshire have left
us a great number of such pieces, some of which quite
equal those made by Wedgwood in their skilled manipu-
lation and perfect finish. Fortunately, the museums
of London, Burslem and Liverpool, together with the
Kaye-Cox Collection in the Whitworth Galleries at Man-
1 Pottery of similar appearance and manufacture has been widely made in many
countries. The methods have been handed down from the ancients, and there is
little to choose in quality or manipulative skill between the productions of different
countries, European and Asiatic. Many fine specimens exist which were made at
Apt, near Toulouse, and this factory was, in 1802, in possession of the widow Arnoux,
whose grandson, Leon Arnoux, was for fifty years the director of Minton's at
Stoke-on-Trent.
Improvement of Manufacturing Conditions 31
Chester, contain a wealth of fine specimens made by various
Staffordshire potters of the eighteenth century, so that
they can be readily examined and compared by collectors
and students of the present day ; and they deserve the
most careful examination.
That these productions were highly prized is proved both
by the skilled labour that was lavished on their manufac-
ture and by the care with which fine specimens have been
preserved ; for every ceramic museum in Europe contains
examples of these Staffordshire "Agate" wares, and their
quality is uniformly high. There is little to choose, as we
have said, in point of skill or taste, between the pieces
in this style which were made by Wedgwood and those
made by Palmer and Neale, of Hanley. Wedgwood was,
naturally, fully alive to all that was going on in the
district, especially in a matter that concerned him so
closely, but he was more generous minded than some of
his biographers have been, for we find him writing to
his partner, Bentley, in reference to some questions
or remarks about Palmer's vases, " We (W and B) must
be progressing, or they will be treading on our heels."
CHAPTER IV
THE WHITE AND CREAM-COLOURED EARTHENWARE
HAD Josiah Wedgwood produced no other kinds
of pottery than his table wares in the perfected
cream-coloured earthenware, or " Queen's Ware " as it
was christened by permission of Queen Charlotte when
he was appointed " Potter to the Queen," in 1763, he
would still have been known to the world as an able
and distinguished potter, for his plates and dishes, tureens
and sauce-boats, cups and saucers, jugs, teapots and
general table ware, made in such vast quantities in this
particularly English material, have never been surpassed
in that combination of utility with elegance which must
always be regarded as one of the outstanding merits of
his " useful " wares.
From at least the beginning of the eighteenth century
the Staffordshire potters had been generally and con-
tinuously experimenting in the direction of white or
light-coloured earthenwares, which they might offer as
a reasonable substitute for the tin-enamelled faience
of Europe or the Oriental porcelains which commanded
the patronage of the well-to-do. A considerable degree
of success had already attended on these efforts, and,
by the close of 1758, when Wedgwood returned to Burslem
on the expiration of his partnership with Whieldon,
such light-coloured earthenwares were already being
manufactured, on an extensive scale, by quite a number
32
CAULIFLOWER TEAPOT
Height 4£ in.
PINEAPPLE TEAPOT
Height 4i in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
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White and Cream-coloured Earthenware 33
of firms located there, among whom the Warburtons
of Hot Lane, Burslem, and the Baddeleys of Shelton
were the chief, or at all events they are the best known.
A memorandum, written in red enamel-colour on
the back of a large dish of Wedgwood's "Queen's Ware"
by Enoch Wood of Burslem, who is so well known as
a potter and as a collector of the early Staffordshire
wares, is quoted in full in Professor Church's " English
Earthenware," ] and may usefully be summarized here
as it conveys some important information.
" The cream-colour ware was, at this time, composed of flint and
clay only as the fine, white, salt-glaze ware was, and the glaze was com-
pounded of flint and white or red lead, and the ware was fired in the
accustomed way and manner as used for glazed tea-pots, tortoise-shell,
mottled, agate and cauliflower. Also sand from the Mole Cop and
Baddley Edge was used either in the body or glaze. N.B. — Before
flint was introduced they used a certain proportion of slip for the body
in the glaze to prevent crazing, and to make it bear a stronger fire in
the glaze oven."
The name of the potter who discovered the value of
the improvement mentioned in the last paragraph of this
memorandum ought to be held in esteem, could we
but have known it !
Fortunately, specimens of this early cream-colour
earthenware are still plentiful, and they prove it to have
been an excellent product, as anyone will perceive who
takes the trouble to regard them attentively.
The final improvements in the composition of the
body of the ordinary English earthenware followed on
the importation into Staffordshire of the china-clay
and china-stone discovered in Cornwall by William
Cookworthy, the inventor of the Plymouth China, the
1 " English Earthenware," by Sir A. H. Church, F.R.S., etc., p. 87. Handbooks
of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
34 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
first hard-paste porcelain made in England. A patent
for the use of these clays and rocks had been granted
to Cookworthy in 1768, and it is unlikely that china-
stone had been used in Staffordshire before that time,
although china-clay from various places in England
and abroad had, at least, been experimented with. When
these various English materials — the ball-clays of Dorset
and Devonshire, the china-clay and china-stone from
Cornwall, and ground, calcined flint — -were all available
in unlimited quantities, the earthenware became more
perfect and sound in body and more uniform in tint,
while it received that superior finish, at the hands of
well-trained workers, which first enabled North Stafford-
shire to secure its commanding position in the pottery
world.
The fundamental importance of an unrestricted supply
of these materials to the growing earthenware industry
explains why the Staffordshire manufacturers, as a body,
so vigorously opposed Champion's attempt to secure
an extension of Cookworthy's original patent in 1775.
All the important potters in the district united with this
object, for the general progress of the industry was
seriously threatened, and Josiah Wedgwood, with John
Turner of Lane End (now Longton), was deputed, on
their behalf, to oppose such an extension of the grant
when the proposal was under examination before a com-
mittee of the House of Lords.1 After the case had been
heard Wedgwood and Turner journeyed together through
Devon and Cornwall, and they secured a joint lease of
1 It docs not seem necessary to repeat all the arguments in this case. The
subject has been referred to by every writer on the pottery and porcelain of the
period, and the reader may be left to form his own conclusions as to the rights and
wrongs of the matter.
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White and Cream-coloured Earthenware 35
some extensive workings at St. Stephens, between St.
Austell and Redruth, from which they were very soon
able to ship china-clay and china-stone round to Liver-
pool, whence it was forwarded into Staffordshire ; at
first by pack-horses and, after some years, by the canal
when that was completed. It was in this way that
Wedgwood and Turner became merchants in these com-
modities, for besides amply supplying the requirements
of their own factories they appear to have sold them
to other potters in the district who could pay their price.
It may be of some little interest to note that similar
potter's materials are still conveyed by wagon from the
canal wharves at Etruria Vale to the pottery works in
Hanley and the district away from the canal.
When he had thus secured possession and control
of abundant supplies of the best materials, Wedgwood
was able to extend the production of his fine earthen-
wares with certainty. He already made the cream
colour in a light and a darker shade, and, by the use
of glazes containing different small proportions of oxide
of iron, he began the regular manufacture of several
darker shades of colour which have been spoken of as
"saffron" and " straw colour " by many writers, though
on the works, I believe, they have always been called
" ivory " glaze (dark and light), while an intermediate
tint is known as " Dysart " glaze, from the fact that
an extensive service was made for the Earl of Dysart,
who stipulated for a glaze of lighter tint than the ordinary
" ivory."
Miss Meteyard quotes from a letter written by Wedg-
wood to his clerk or salesman, Cox, who was in charge
of the London warehouse, and who had, as is evident
36 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
from the context, passed on to the works some of the
complaints and faddy requests made by influential
patrons :—
" With respect to the colour of my ware, I endeavour to make it
as pale as possible to continue it cream colour, and find my customers
in general, though not every individual of them, think the alteration
I have made in that respect a great improvemt, but it is impossible
that any one colour, even though it were to come down from Heaven,
shod please every taste ; & I cannot regularly make two cream-colours,
a deep and a light shade, without having two works for that purpose."1
This, obviously, refers to an idea or suggestion that
had been previously discussed that Wedgwood should
manufacture two earthenware bodies, one perceptibly
darker than the other, for the different shades of his
cream-colour earthenware services, and we have just
seen how this difficulty was, in practice, overcome by
the use of one cream-colour body with a white glaze,
and two or three lightly-tinted glazes to produce the
different shades of colour in the finished ware.
The production of a " white " as distinct from the
lightest shade of cream-coloured earthenware could no
longer be postponed, and the result is to be seen in Wedg-
wood's " Pearl " ware, which, though it was never manu-
factured on such a colossal scale as the cream-colour,
demands notice here, for it was the precursor of those
hard and durable white earthenwares of later times,
variously known in the trade as " Granite," " P.G."
(pearl-granite), or by some other trade name, which in
the hands of such skilful manufacturers as the Haddocks,
the Meakins, the Johnsons, and W. H. Grindley, have
enabled the Staffordshire potters to extend their over-
seas trade in domestic pottery to an extent which
1 " Life of Josiah Wedgwood," Eliza Meteyard (I.e.). vol. ii., pp. 67-68.
TUREEN AND STAND
Cream colour. Queen's Ware
Moulded in low relief
Mark: Impressed " WEDGWOOD"
Tureen Height 6? in., length 11 jj in., width 8J in.
Stand — Length 14] in., width 11-J in.
Victoria and A Ibert Museum. From Jermyn Street Collection.
White and Cream-coloured Earthenware 37
would have given the keenest delight to Josiah
Wedgwood.
This " pearl " ware, as Wedgwood made it, differed
somewhat in composition from his cream ware, for it
contained a larger proportion of ground flint and china-
stone, while, to intensify its whiteness, a minute
quantity of finely ground oxide of cobalt was added
to the body-mixture, on the principle that causes a
laundress to use her " blue-bag " in washing and getting
up linen.
A minor branch of Wedgwood's activities which is
often overlooked, both by writers and collectors, was
his manufacture of those quaint and amusing " Toby
jugs." These embodiments of the bucolic humour of
the Staffordshire potters of his generation are too well-
known to call for description here, but in any notable
collection of such things some of the best examples will
be found bearing the name Wedgwood, stamped under the
base in the usual type of lettering found on his earthen-
wares, and these were undoubtedly made by the famous
Josiah, either before he finally severed his connexion
with Whieldon (another famous maker of such things),
or while he was conducting his Burslem factories. They
may fittingly be contrasted with such well-known Whiel-
don models as " The Squire," with its air of dignity
and consequence, or " The Hearty Good-fellow," a subject
which long remained in favour with many of the later
makers of such things.
More ambitious figures and busts made in the earthen-
wares, both cream-colour and " pearl," are to be found
in many private collections, while a number of large and
splendid examples, some of which were formerly in the
38 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
Jermyn Street collection and are figured and described
in its catalogue, are now preserved in the Victoria and
Albert Museum. When we consider the excellence of
these earthenware figures, some of which are as much
as 22 inches high, and are delicately tinted in enamel-
colours, we are able to appreciate more fully the extent
of the labours that must have been undertaken by Wedg-
wood before he entered on the production of his better-
known figures and busts in basalt and jasper-body.
Two admirable specimens of his productions in earthen-
ware are illustrated in the Plates facing this page, a
" Madonna and Child," of charming grace and tender-
ness, and a female bust entitled " Sadness," which seems
to me curiously reminiscent of some of the Derby china
figures modelled by Spengler.1
Though these figures were illustrated in outline in
the " Catalogue of the Jermyn Street Museum Collec-
tion " and by Sir Arthur Church in his " English Earthen-
ware," I am glad to be able to direct attention to them
afresh and to present illustrations which really show
their merits, for they seem to be almost unknown except
to devout " Wedgwood ': students. Had they pro-
ceeded from one of the French or German factories,
we should never have been allowed to forget them, for
every writer on Continental pottery would have dwelt
upon their merits, and would, probably, have used them
as an illustration of the superior artistry of French
and German work !
1 I have been unable to discover that Spengler was either commissioned or em-
ployed by Josiah Wedgwood, but examples of his work at Derby would be sure
to find their way into Staffordshire, and I suggest that in the modelling of these
examples we have the handiwork of William Wood, at Etruria, enlarging and trans-
forming Spengler's Derby figures.
MADONNA AND CHILD
"Pearl" Ware, enamelled
Height 13f in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
y
White and Cream-coloured Earthenware 39
A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF SOME TECHNICAL MATTERS
The beautiful Staffordshire " salt-glaze," which had
become one of the important branches of the industry
when Josiah Wedgwood served his apprenticeship " to
the art and mystery of Throwing and Handling," as the
indenture runs, was undoubtedly a serious attempt
on the part of this ingenious race of potters to produce
a type of pottery which, by its pearly whiteness and its
translucence, should bear some superficial resemblance
to Oriental porcelain. Having no knowledge of the
composition or methods of fabrication of the Oriental
wares, and possessed only of such information as they
had acquired by their own experiments, we may well
believe that the potters who first manufactured a sub-
stance which was so white, translucent and delightful
in surface texture as this white salt-glaze ware must
have felt that they had solved the problem, when, as a
matter of fact, they had only succeeded in producing
an additional variety of pottery which was to enjoy a
brief hour or two of popularity and repute ere its gradual
disappearance before the conquering progress of the
cream-coloured earthenware and the coveted porcelains
of England, Europe and the Far East.
This white salt-glaze was first manufactured by mix-
ing the whitest clays that could be obtained in Stafford-
shire and Derbyshire with finely-ground sand, as the
so-called " crouch " ware of Nottingham was made, but
afterwards it was mostly compounded from the South of
England clays and sand, which gave a finer product.
These highly siliceous clay-mixtures were sharply and
thinly potted by stamping cakes of the material in metal
40 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
moulds, or, at a later time, by casting from fluid slip in
moulds of plaster of Paris, and when they were glazed
with salt, in the usual way, they produced a very beautiful
white, glossy stoneware, which could be still further en-
riched by simple paintings in bright, raised enamel-colours
in the style of the highly-esteemed famille rose porcelains
of China. This was the type of pottery with which
the Staffordshire potters first made their existence known
in Europe, for the white salt-glaze found its way abroad
to Holland, Germany, and the Scandinavian countries
in considerable quantities, although its entire history,
apart from a short period of lingering decline in England,
is comprised within the eighteenth century, or a few
years on either side thereof.
The Staffordshire " salt-glaze " of the best period is as
thinly and elegantly potted as any chinaware, and its
finely-granulated surface, recalling the chicken-skin tex-
ture of some of the Oriental porcelains, imparts a distinctive
quality not only to the glaze itself but also to the super-
posed enamel-colours which, in the decorated examples,
were painted upon it in palpable relief so as to enhance
their brilliant purity of tone. It seems a matter for regret
that such a beautiful material should have suffered from
such grave practical defects when it was applied to articles
for table use ; but it was readily cracked when hot
liquids were poured into it and its thin, sharp edges were
easily chipped, so that after a brief period of popularity
it gradually sank in importance and finally disappeared
before the more durable and practical earthenwares
and porcelains.
The ordinary white or lightly-tinted earthenwares,
as they were perfected in Staffordshire by Wedgwood
"SADNESS"
Cream Ware, enamelled
Height 22J in.
Victoria and Albert Museum. (Formerly in the Jermun Street Collection.)
,
••v\ V5
White and Cream-coloured Earthenware 41
and his compeers, are on an entirely different plane of
achievement, for they possess such eminently practical
qualities that their principal application has always
consisted in the manufacture of table services, toilet
ware, and the thousand and one accessories for household
use, as well as for plant pots, bulb pots, and vases in-
numerable. For this important role they are admirably
fitted by the neatness and cleanliness in appearance and
finish, as well as the practicality of the forms in which
they were made, and their power of enduring any reason-
able amount of usage and wear ; for they will withstand
the handling of domestics better than the more costlv
•/
porcelains. It is unfortunate that their moderate cost
should too often serve to blind people to their practical
excellences, for we cannot doubt that they would have
received much greater consideration had they been more
costly to obtain or difficult to replace.
The cream-coloured earthenware was originated as
a definite species when the elder Astbury made his first
pottery white throughout its substance, by mixing a
due proportion of calcined and finely-ground flint with
the white Devonshire ball-clays ; his wares being glazed
with powdered lead ore and finished at one firing for
glaze and body in the usual wray. His son, the second
Astbury, used a mixture of white or red lead with flint
finely ground together in place of the primitive lead
ore or " galena " glaze of the district, but there was still
only one firing of the pottery. In 1750, Enoch Booth,
of Tunstall, introduced the plan of firing the clay articles
to what is known as the " biscuit " condition as a first
operation, and subsequently dipping these pieces of
porous pottery into a fluid mixture of finely-ground
42 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
flint and white-lead suspended in water to be finished
by a second firing at a lower temperature. In this way
the " biscuit " pottery received a coat of the glazing
materials in a perfect condition of fineness and intimate
admixture, while a second firing, at a lower temperature
than that needed to produce the " biscuit " ware, melted
the glaze and fused it to the body, so that the pieces wrere
thinly and evenly glazed all over. This process is said
to have been first practised, on the commercial scale,
by the Warburtons of Hot Lane, Burslem, and about
the same time, or very soon after, by the Baddeleys, of
Shelton, for these two families are reputed to have been
the largest manufacturers of cream-coloured earthen-
ware when Josiah Wedgwood settled at the Ivy House
in Burslem, in 1759. Wedgwood's early cream-colour,
including his Queen's Ware, was made in this way, and
such primary methods seem to have been in general
use in his factories until the introduction of :; Great-
bach's China Glaze," the precursor of the later types
of earthenware glazes, about 1765. l The final improve-
ments in the cream-colour and allied earthenwares came
about, gradually, when the china-clay and china-stone
of Cornwall were introduced into the body-mixtures
of the Staffordshire earthenwares, some time after 1768.
When it was once definitely established, the compo-
sition of the cream-coloured earthenware has remained
practically unaltered to this day — the body of the ware
consisting of mixtures of ball-clay, china-clay, ground
flint and ground china-stone ; while the glaze is com-
pounded from a glassy frit (made by fusing borax, soda
and a little potash, with china-clay, whiting and flint),
1 See " English Earthenware," by Sir A. H. Church, F.R.S., etc., pp. 81-82.
'-V
EMBOSSED DISH
Queen's Ware. With gold-
purple enamel colour
Length 8£ in., width 6jj in.
Victoria and A Ibert Museum.
CREAM COLOUR DISH
With "lag and feather"
pattern border
Length 81 in., width 7jj in.
White and Cream-coloured Earthenware 43
to which are added further quantities of china-clay, china-
stone and flint, as required to produce a smoothly-work-
ing fluid glaze. In Wedgwood's hands this perfected
light-coloured earthenware quickly became one of the
most important articles of his trade, at home and abroad,
for he exported it to the ends of the earth. Its uniform
and delicate tint of cream-colour distinguishes it both
from the " pearl " ware and from the various English
porcelains ; while by staining the glaze with small quan-
tities of finely ground oxides of iron (crocus martiis or
ground smithy-scale being generally used for the purpose),,
deeper shades of ivory and his well-known " Dysart "
glaze, an intermediate tint, were also manufactured.
CHAPTER V
USEFUL WARES
THE solid and enduring foundations of the busi-
nesses which Josiah Wedgwood developed so suc-
cessfully, first at Burslem and afterwards at Etruria,
will be found in the general excellence, durability and
refinement of his " useful " pottery, a descriptive term
which he may well have originated in this application,
as it is so consistently employed throughout his corre-
spondence to include all the varied pottery apparatus
and utensils employed in the preparation and service
of meals : the ewers, wash-hand bowls, soap dishes,
sponge bowls and other adjuncts of the toilet table ;
together with all the multifarious accessories of daily
life in the home, from pin -trays and trinket stands to
the garniture of my lady's writing-table or the capacious
and convenient inkstands, pen-trays, paper weights, taper-
holders, wafer-boxes, and reading lamps that equipped
the scholar's desk.
The fundamental excellence in material and manu-
facture, together with the suitability of shape and pro-
priety in use of these expressions of Wedgwood's taste
and skill, might have inspired the ideas which a modern
philosophic writer, Benedetto Croce, expounds in his
" ^Esthetic " :— 1
1 " Theory of ^Esthetic," translated by Douglas Ainslie. Macmillan & Co.,
Ltd., London, 1909, pp. 166-7.
44
TWIG BASKET AND STAND
Cream colour, picked
out in hair-brown
Basket— Height 2\ in., length 9J in., width 7| in.
Stand — Length 10! in., width 8£ in.
Victoria and Albert Museum. Bequeathed by Miss Ann Marlyrt.
Useful Wares 45
" Rustic dwellings and palaces, churches and barracks, swords and
ploughs, are beautiful, not in so far as they are embellished and adorned,
but in so far as they express the purpose for which they were made. . . .
Plates, glasses, knives, guns and combs can be made beautiful ; but
it is held that their beauty must not so far exceed as to prevent our
eating from the plate, cutting with the knife, firing oft the gun, or comb-
ing one's hair with the comb."
At the time when Josiah Wedgwood commenced
to manufacture the usual kinds of Staffordshire pottery
on his own account as an independent master-potter,
in Burslem, table wares of excellent shape and propor-
tion, which, as a rule, displayed bright and skilfully-
painted decoration, had been manufactured for several
centuries in Italy, France, Holland, and Germany, as
well as in Spain, in the popular tin-enamelled faience ;
while the earlier European porcelains were already
well-established and famous. The English " delft," made
with some considerable degree of success at Lambeth,
Bristol, Liverpool, and a few other places, was an obvious
and avowed imitation of some of these foreign wares,
both in materials and in style ; though, when the same
processes were introduced into Staffordshire they met
with indifferent success, for, by that time, the most
enterprising and skilful potters of the district were
busily engaged in other schemes of research and manu-
facture which seemed more in keeping with their native
bent of mind.
By degrees, the comparative simplicity in manu-
facture and the superior durability of the Staffordshire
" cream-colour " pottery set currents moving in the
opposite direction, so that, in a little while, earthenwares,
based on the English methods and produced from similar
materials, were manufactured on a considerable scale at
46 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
a number of centres in different departments of France,1
such as Luneville, Belle vue near Toul, and Niderviller ;
while at a later date similar earthenwares were made
at Longwy, Douai, Sarreguemines, Saint-Amand-les-
Eaux, Montereau, Paris, Orleans, Bordeaux, and Apt,
in Provence, to mention only the important centres
in which it gained a permanent foothold. The whole
subsequent course of the French pottery (as distinguished
from the porcelain) industry shows the marked impress
of the English methods and technique as they were
imported at this time, and later in the eighteenth century
— a partial liquidation of our indebtedness to France
in other directions, notably in some of our early porcelains,
such as those of Bowr and Chelsea.
So much has been written about the foreign potters
who brought fresh knowledge of their craft to England,
that we may, not unfairly, dwell a little on the course
of this reflux in the tide. A considerable number of
workmen, possessed of the necessary skill and knowledge,
but lacking means or opportunity to commence a works
of their own in Staffordshire, passed over into France
and with the support of French capitalists or of estab-
lished pottery manufacturers, introduced the manufacture
of earthenwares after the English fashion, either at
factories which were already engaged in producing the
tin-enamelled faience or in new works specially erected
for the purpose. Mr. Solon,2 in an appendix to his famous
book, " The Art of the Old English Potter," has traced
the history of some of these migrants from Staffordshire,
1 See " The Old French Faience," by M. L. Solon. Cassell and Co., Ltd., London,
1903, pp. 113-116.
2 " The Art of the Old English Potter," by M. L. Solon. Second Edition. Bern-
rose & Sons, Derby and London, 1885.
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Useful Wares 47
whose lives were full of romance, though they generally
served as the sport of Fortune in the end ; but we may
recall, with advantage to our narrative, the doings of one
or two of them whose sojourn in France left a permanent
impress on the industry of pottery in that country.
Ralph Shaw, of Burslem, emigrated to France with
all his family about 1735, and seems to have worked
in several factories at Lille and its vicinity ; but, in 1775,
he and a partner, William Clark or Clarke, of Newcastle-
under-Lyme, were settled at Montereau (Seine-et-Marne)
as makers of earthenwares, in the English fashion. They
gave as a reason for settling in this place, when they
applied for some privileges to the local authorities as
the custom was, that they had found in the vicinity
a wThite clay which was better suited to such manufac-
tures than the clay used in England (!), and they
were granted certain privileges as to customs and
duties, as well as a small subsidy of 1,200 francs a year.
Many years afterwards, viz., in 1810, this business was
amalgamated with a similar one which had been founded
about 1800 by M. de Saint-Cricq (Mr. Solon writes the
name " Saint - Crick "), at Creil (Oise), and the joint
enterprise still ranks among the important pottery-
works of northern France, despite the wars and revo-
lutions of the intervening years during which it has
been held by various military or revolutionary forces
at different times.
An item of considerable interest in the history of
this factory at Creil is that transfer-printing was intro-
duced from England for the decoration of the Queen's
Ware and faience made there, and this seems to have
been the earliest adoption of the process on an extended
48 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
scale in France. Table services printed in black on-glaze,
with views of towns, monuments and figures, in the
approved English fashion, are well-known, so that one
is forced to conclude that the engraved copper-plates
had been taken over by the Englishmen. Mr. Solon
expressed the opinion that the process was not thoroughly
mastered at this time in France, as on the wares in question
the impressions are pale and blurred and otherwise
distinctly inferior to contemporary English printing on
earthenware.
Having traced in some detail this particular instance
of the transplantation of English methods and ideas
abroad, the reader may be left to judge for himself what
was the standing and repute which had been won by
the Staffordshire earthenwares within a comparatively
short period, when almost every country in Europe,
from Sweden and Russia to Spain and Portugal, could
show us similar instances of its successful adoption.
Josiah Wedgwood had died before this movement
had spent its force, but the legacy of artistic and technical
achievement associated with such names as his in pottery,
with Hepplewhite in furniture, and with the brothers
Adam in the building of domestic palaces, was a living
force the energy of which was not fully spent for some
few generations after 1800.
I would wish to emphasize again, for public acclaim
soon dies away, the importance of Wedgwood's labours
in the creation and dissemination of beautiful domestic
pottery. I have no desire to minimize the value of
his jasper ware, but it is as unfortunate as it is true
that his efforts in this more ambitious field have, all
too often, been allowed to overshadow the life-long
PUNCH-GLASS STAND
Cream colour
Height 8£ in., diameter 7jj in.
Presented by Mrs. Kate Bentley to the Victoria and A Ibert Museum.
OH
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1/5
3- .5 £
^Q — ^
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'SPQ
Bil
3 3
Useful Wares 49
care and attention he gave to the improvement and
perfecting of his domestic earthenwares in " cream-
colour " and " pearl " ware, and the outstanding im-
portance of these labours as a permanent contribution
towards the sum-total of English achievement in the
finer arts of working in clay. He was one of the great
pioneers in this direction, and the record of his doings
in this field alone during his forty-five years of independent
mastership are sufficient in themselves to proclaim his
eminence among those craftsmen and masters-of-men
whom the world cannot afford to neglect or ignore as
the important and outstanding figures in the historical
evolution of our modern industries.
Wedgwood's " useful " pottery comprises, as we have
seen, articles of every type which were perfectly adapted
to all the varied purposes of the times that pottery could
fulfil, and a survey of all that he produced can only
lead an impartial observer to one conclusion. He con-
sistently aimed at a combination of usefulness and
elegance in his varied manufactures, and in this way he
achieved a real art in his vessels of clay, a result that
so many famous potters who also aimed, as he did, at
artistic results according to the fashion of their time
and place have so often failed to secure. If the reader
will examine and consider the excellence and service-
ableness of the cups, jugs, teapots, plates and dishes,
which are illustrated in this work alone, though they
form but a tithe of the best that he made, he will agree
that this is no over-statement of the facts.
A favourite shape of cup and saucer, known as the
" Bute " shape, was named after John, Marquis of Bute>
for whom a large service of pottery in which it was in-
50 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
eluded seems to have been designed during his term of
office as Prime Minister of England (1761-63). These are
reproduced in the Plate facing p. 48, and I regard them
as among the most perfectly shaped cups and saucers of
all that have been made, whether by an Oriental or a
European potter. Two other articles which formed part of
the same service, a milk jug and a covered sugar-box, are
illustrated opposite this page. Wedgwood's personal
opinion of the design of this particular service would
seem to be revealed by the fact that the tea and coffee
sets of his famous " Russian Service," made for Catherine
II. of Russia between 1771 and 1774, were of this design.
The sugar-box from which this illustration is taken was
one of the pieces made for this service, but was retained
at Etruria, on account of some slight blemish, until
it passed into my possession as a gift from the late Mr.
Godfrey Wedgwood.
A number of other service-shapes were accorded
special names, instead of a mere pattern-book number,
and these names were adopted, either from that of the
personage for whom the services were designed, or as
an indication of the source from wrhich they had been
derived. The days of the " crab-stock " handles and
other such rusticities had been left behind when the
principal Staffordshire potters set out to manufacture
articles of a type and fashion such as were better calcu-
lated to support an appeal to patrons of a rank and
fortune superior to the farmers and lesser gentry.
The "Silver" shape, as its name seems to imply,
originated with the plate-workers of the earlier part of
the eighteenth century, and it is of interest to note that
a cup and saucer of similar shape was a favourite pro-
COVERED SUGAR Box
Lavender Ware
Height 5 in.
COFFEE POT
Lavender Ware
Height 7£ in.
In the Collection of Mr. William Burton.
'
• -M.O
"7
Useful Wares 51
duction in the chinaware of Worcester and of Derby
about the time when Wedgwood popularized the shape
in his earthenware. This softly-fluted shape seems par-
ticularly well adapted for manufacture in the " pearl "
ware, which more nearly approaches chinaware in tint,
and the majority of the " old " Wedgwood examples
that have survived are of pearl ware, sometimes in plain
glaze save for a line of gilding on the rims and handles,
or decorated with the elegant painted and enamelled
borders which were then in vogue. The illustrations
of table-wrare facing p. 140 enable one to recall the
salient features of this favourite style of decoration of
the period.
The extensive and miscellaneous collections of shells,
seaweeds and fossils, which Wedgwood gathered in Etruria
Hall as a stimulating factor in the education of his children,
furnished him with many ideas for the decorative colour
schemes of his earthenwares, and were also adopted as
models for the dishes and plates of several dessert services,
the most important and complete of the series being the
" Shell " dessert service, which has retained its popularity
to this day despite all the later productions of Etruria.
A considerable number of different shells were utilized
in the various services to serve as models for his numerous
fruit dishes and table centrepieces, the plates based on
the pecten-shell being best represented in our collec-
tions nowadays. Of all these the "Nautilus" centre-
piece is the most important, and an example of this
beautiful piece of conventional modelling, in a fine, white
stoneware mounted on a stand modelled in imitation
of coral and supported on a foot shaped as a single shell,
is shown opposite p. 54.
52 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
An earlier and simpler example of table-ware of the
same type, though at the same time it is an equally
elegant and useful shape for its purpose, is the sauce-
boat reproduced from one of the relics of Enoch Wood's
famous collection of Staffordshire pottery which are now
preserved in the Victoria and Albert Museum (see facing
p. 54). This particular specimen is of additional interest
from the fact that it is vouched for by Enoch Wood
as a specimen of Wedgwood's early Queen's Ware, and
was, probably, made at one of his Burslem factories before
the foundation of Etruria.
The large collection of seaweeds which filled one
section of Wedgwood's educational cabinets doubtless
provided the original source of the decoration found on
his " Seaweed " tea and coffee services. The teapot,
coffee-pot, and milk jug of these services are notable
examples of the thin, sharp " potting " he demanded
from his workmen, so that the embossed seaweed ornament,
which is in very low relief, has a rarely delicate effect,
for it looks almost water- worn.
It seems unfair to the potter to refrain from drawing
the reader's attention to the distinction and sense of
style which are manifest in such refined and dainty
productions as these, especially when they are com-
pared with examples of a later style of modelled orna-
ment in which imitation lacework was applied as a decora-
tion to porcelain figures and other decorative examples.
This method must have been widely popular in the
late eighteenth century, for it was followed at some
of the most famous porcelain factories, both in
England and in Germany. While Wedgwood's " Sea-
weed " pattern is conceived and rendered so as to
\
(V
SHELL-SHAPED DISH
In "Pearl" Ware, tinted in enamel colours
Width 6f in., length 13 in.
LEAF-SHAPED DISH
Cream-colour Ware, tinted and veined in enamel colours
Length 12 J in., width 8£ in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
i ;'••!• 1,1 :litr
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. '.,•"'./
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i.tl.M f,.)>
v
Useful Wares 53
appear in perfect organic relation with the lines and
contours of the forms on which it is used, the imitation
lacework, wherever it was made or whatsoever skill
was spent upon it, wears an air of tawdry vulgarity
such as one always associates with the well-known
descriptive phrase " cheap finery."
From this condensed account of a few of the most
generally appreciated and artistically successful among
the wide range of " useful " shapes that Wedgwood
made in his light-coloured earthenwares, as distinct
from the shapes which were generally reproduced in
the " dry ': bodies, we must next turn our atten-
tion to the decorations in enamel-colours with which
they were frequently enriched, especially from about
1770.
The unadorned shapes of beautiful proportion and
contour manufactured in cream ware or in ivory-glaze
and devoid of painted decoration or gilding, so that
they might have been manufactured for the use of a
nation of Quakers, were of such all-round excellence that
they enabled Wedgwood to secure an extensive trade in
this branch of his business, for he sold the ware in great
quantities at home and sent huge consignments of it
overseas. Nevertheless, the more active demand, espe-
cially from abroad, was for pottery services decorated
with bright colours and enriched with gold.
The practical method by which the gold could be fired
to the glaze so as to be capable of withstanding the wear
inseparable from daily use was no longer a difficulty
at Etruria, as it had been when gilding was applied to
the " marbled " and other vases some few years before,
for by this time the details of the method had become
54 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
general property among the potters and porcelain makers
of Europe.
The rich masses of underglazc-blue which the Oriental
porcelain decorators used so skilfully and so successfully
as decoration were hardly likely to stir Wedgwood to
emulation, even had that been possible with his materials,
but he sought and found a decorative style of his own
in which delicate painted patterns of flowers and foliage,
berries and leaves and so forth, or heavier formal
borders derived from the practice of the Greek vase-
painters, could be carried out by his decorators and
enriched with a little reticent gilding. (See Plate facing
p. 90.)
All this procedure was very simple and easy to control,
for it involved no undue firing risks, as all the colours
and the gold were painted over the glaze, and, moreover,
it did not demand any greater skill in the executant
than could be easily and quickly acquired by anyone
who knew how to handle the simple tools of the pottery
decorator's trade.
These table services which were to be enriched with
enamel painting were sent to the workshops in London,
which had been acquired, primarily, for the decoration
of the " Russian Service." For a considerable number
of years the enamelled borders referred to above, and
a number of others that were introduced as the scheme
won its way to popularity, were executed on the glazed
ware sent up from Staffordshire by wagon, by a number
of enamel-painters of both sexes, who were employed
by Wedgwood and Bentley in Greek Street, Soho, where
they had spacious show-rooms and other premises. The
rear portions of the buildings and the basements were
UN
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SAUCE-BOAT
Cream colour. Queen's Ware
Height 4 in., length 51 in., width 3 in.
Formerly in Enoch Wood Collection.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
CRUET
Cream colour. Queen's Ware
Stand — Length 11} in., width 6? in.
Bottles — Height 5i in., diameter 2 in.
Castor — -Height 3J in., diameter 2 in.
Bequeathzd by Mrs. A. Cameron.
Useful Wares 55
fitted up and used as painting-rooms and kiln-places,
for, in order that their arrangements might be as com-
plete and practical as possible — real workshops and not
a mere show to impress the public — a muffle-kiln was
erected in a suitable room in the basement in order that
the painting might be fired and completed on the premises.
It is amusing to find that in some of the general accounts
of expenses that were incurred in the London show-rooms,
which are now preserved at Etruria, there are frequent
entries of the charges for billets of wood and sacks of
charcoal supplied for firing this kiln.
One can see that this was an excellent business
arrangement, as it served to confirm the reputation which
the Greek Street rooms had gained as a place of fashion-
able resort when the " Russian Service " was on exhibi-
tion there, for now all those people of consequence who
regarded themselves as important patrons of Wedgwood
and Bentley could still frequent the rooms with their
friends to observe such services as they had commissioned
being actually carried through the various processes of
decoration and firing.
CHAPTER VI
RED, BLACK, AND BUFF POTTERY
BEFORE we deal with the evolution of the " jasper "
wares, which Wedgwrood regarded as embodying
his crowning achievements as a potter and which will
assuredly perpetuate his name, we must describe in some
detail the different wares he manufactured in the simpler
and more ordinary " dry bodies," i.e. pottery with its
outer surfaces left unglazed. These were made from
the local clays, dug in the district round Burslem, which
burnt to various shades of red, buff, drab and chocolate
colour, and from which by due admixture of ochreous earths
and oxide of manganese, the rich and glossy black basalt
was also produced. These common and abundant
materials provided the training-ground on which the
potters of North Staffordshire made their earliest ex-
periments, and in course of time refined and improved
their methods of manufacture and decoration ; for they
had been at work in this field long before Josiah Wedgwood
was born, and the methods that had been gradually
perfected by a generation of potters whose names are
all but forgotten, called for little alteration when they
came to be applied to the " jasper " wares.
If, as we believe, the Elers established themselves
as potters in this part of Staffordshire because they had
become aware of the suitability of the local clays and
the abundance of workmen who had mastered at all
56
TERRA-COTTA TEAPOT
With white stoneware reliefs
Height 4J in., length 9 in.
TERRA-COTTA PASTILLE BURNER
Height 6J in., width of base 6£ in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
i.'UT
, >f ;i ti't
iJjisH
;: * i-^M'
,' !:'V-'
.
Red, Black, and Buff Pottery 57
events the rudiments of the potter's craft, their principal
legacy to the district will be found to consist in the
degree of refinement with which their little pieces of
red-ware were wrought and finished and the delicate
superiority of their productions to those made by the
many native potters who were at work in the locality
at that time or before it. Of these, Astbury and Twyford
had been employed by the Elers before they settled at
Shelton and commenced to manufacture some simple
red and black pottery on their own account, but the
leaven they had introduced was still fermenting in the
minds of other men, and some of the later productions
of the Staffordshire potters are deserving of passing
notice on this account. Thus, the well-known Samuel
Hollins, who likewise worked at Shelton at a much
later date, was commonly spoken of as the " red china
potter," merely, one supposes, because he worked in the
style and manner of the Elers and followed the methods
they had introduced so long before. His red and choco-
late-coloured teapots, jugs, and coffee-pots have a fine
surface with a compact texture which is almost com-
parable with that of Wedgwood's black basalt, while
they are usually decorated with " sprigged " orna-
ment. In the earlier specimens of these productions
of Hollins the applied ornament is formed in the same
clay as that of the vessel to which it is applied,
but in some of his examples which seem to be of
later date the figures and ornament appear in black,
or other dark-coloured clay, applied as reliefs on a
red or chocolate-coloured body. A few choice speci-
mens of his work are also in existence which are
made in a rich maroon-coloured body, and, like all
58 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
his productions, these are well-potted and finished to
perfection.
Hollins has been singled out for mention in this way
because his work illustrates the survival and a limited
extension of the methods of the preceding generations,
but when Josiah Wedgwood, in his turn, manufactured
such a great variety of table wares and decorative pottery
in the " dry bodies " he naturally availed himself of all
the methods that had been introduced by his predecessors,
of every rank in the craft, though it is obvious that he
usually carried them farther or applied them to new ends.
Wedgwood's particular merit will be found to consist
in the graceful, yet eminently practical, lines of the shapes
he finally settled upon for his ordinary articles of domestic
pottery, jugs, teapots and such things, and in the variety
of combinations he used in ornamenting them. Here
he repaid with interest all that he owed to the labours
and ingenuity of his predecessors, by the important
additions he contributed to the common stock. It would
certainly be difficult to recall any method in use in Stafford-
shire before his day that he did not make the subject
of fresh experiment and turn to practical account, usually
with some spice of novelty. The older methods never
lost anything of their freshness or power in his hands ,
while they often gained a degree of accuracy and pre-
cision such as has never been surpassed.
The red terra-cotta, or "Rosso antico," to follow the
fashionable jargon of the day which is often adopted
in Wedgwood's correspondence, was extensively em-
ployed at his Burslem and Etruria factories in the manu-
facture of teapots, jugs, coffee-pots, and the general
table-wares of that kind, and we find him humorously
PUNCH KETTLE AND PERFORATED STAND FOR CHARCOAL
Red terra-cotta: ribbed and modelled to imitate basket work
Mark : Impressed imitation Chinese seal mark
Height 13' in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
"CENTAUR AND A BACCHANTE"
Greyish-buff terra-cotta
(Circa 1770-80)
Diameter 15] in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Red, Black, and Buff Pottery 59
complaining when Bentley urged him to produce portrait
medallions and other relief work in this material : " My
objection to it is the extreme vulgarity of red wares.
If it had never been made in T'pots and the commonest
wares, my objection wd not have existed. ... I wish
you to fix upon one of the Bronze like colours for heads
for the cheap cabinets, as we shall never be able to make
the Rosso Antico, otherwise than to put you in mind of
a red Pot Teapot." l It would appear that further
experience proved this combination to have been less
incongruous than he had feared at the time of this letter,
for he subsequently made extensive use of his red terra-
cotta in the manufacture of a great variety of articles.,
such as busts and medallions, bough-pots for plants
and flowers, ink-stands, pen-trays, lamps, taper-holders and
other furniture for the writing-table as well as for tea ware
and the like in various combinations of coloured clays »
Thus he made the red pottery with black or buff ornament
in applied reliefs, cane-coloured pottery with reliefs in
red or buff clay, and less frequently cane-coloured pottery
with reliefs in black clay. Sir A. H. Church 2 drew atten-
tion to this fact long ago when he wrote : " Between
1776 and 1786 Wedgwood made many experiments in
some of these terra-cotta bodies, notably in the cane-
coloured and bamboo wares," though we may add here
that this was also the most fruitful period of his fine
productions in the " jasper " wares, for these years were
signalized by the appearance of the magnificent series of
portrait-medallions which are enumerated in his cata-
1 Wedgwood to Bentley, March 3, 1776. See Miss Meteyard's " Life of Josiah
Wedgwood," vol. ii., pp. 406-7.
2 " English Earthenware," Victoria and Albert Museum Handbook, p. 89,
60 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
logues under the classification " Illustrious Moderns,"
and at this time, too, Flaxman was at work on some of
the choicest models that he ever executed for Etruria.
This decade in Wedgwood's life, from 1776 to 1786,
must be regarded as the crowning period of his career,
for then his powers shone in their fullest lustre. What
more signal expression could be desired of his powers
of organization in the affairs of a great manufacturing
concern, and his perfect mastery of all the resources of
his craft, than that these numerous and important advances
should have been marshalled side by side during these
ten years, when almost every week and certainly each
succeeding month left its mark on the productions of
Etruria !
It is advisable that we should first consider the general
domestic services or small sets which were so profusely
made in the red terra-cotta, the cane, buff, and drab
or olive-coloured bodies and in the black basalt. These,
as a class, are all comprised under the designation " dry
bodies " because the outer surfaces were left unglazed,
though the turner's skill had imparted a fine surface-
texture so that they have a bright, glossy finish ; while a
thin wrash of ordinary lead-glaze was afterwards applied
inside such articles as jugs, cups and teapots to make
them impermeable by the fluids they were intended to
contain. Generally speaking, the tints arrived at in
these various bodies were fresh-looking and the pottery
is remarkably uniform in tone and texture. The shapes
in which such simple domestic pieces were designed
are always sound in construction and practical in use .
indeed, in my opinion, many of them might serve as
models for all time, as they have never been improved
MILK JUG
Lavender ware
Height -H in.
CAMBRIDGE ALE JUG
Red terra-cotta. (This jug
was made in three or four sizes.)
Height 6 in.
MEDALLION : CUPID ON A DOLPHIN HANDING
A LETTER TO POLYPHEMUS
(After the Herculaneum fresco)
Greyish-buff terra-cotta
(Circa 1770-80)
Diameter 15 .J in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Red, Black, and Buff Pottery 61
upon for their particular purpose. Their merits are well
exemplified by the well-known " Cambridge Ale-jug "
illustrated opposite p. 60 and other pieces.
In addition to their extensive use as the material
of such domestic wares as these, the same clays were
freely employed in the multiplication of figures, busts,
and ornamental pieces, as well as for candlesticks, ink-
stands, taper-holders, pounce boxes, wafer'boxes, bulb-
pots, bough-pots and similar articles, intended for what
may be described as the useful-ornamental trade. The
double purpose which such articles as these might serve
in the household caused much discussion and some
passing disagreement between Wedgwood and Bentley
(for the partnership with Bentley was to apply to the
" ornamental " productions only) as to where the exact
line was to be drawn between the two groups, the useful
and the ornamental. It was clearly impossible to lay
down any rigid line of division, so they arrived at a com-
promise, which seems to have been dictated by Wedg-
wood's good sense, under which the " useful " class was
to comprise all those articles which were made use of
in the serving of meals or for general domestic purposes,
while the " ornamental " class was to comprise all their
productions which were clearly intended for display or
adornment in the house rather than for use.
Various drab and olive coloured bodies were made
in several shades, though the names sufficiently indicate
the general type of colour. Apparently they were much
less popular than the red, buff, or black wares. The
most interesting and satisfactory application of these
drab and olive-coloured bodies will be found in those
examples in which the rather dull appearance of the
62 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
body is enlivened and refined in tone by applied floral
ornament in lilac-coloured jasper. The effect of this
combination is at once beautiful and unusual, and such
choice examples of its use as are to be seen in the collec-
tions of Wedgwood's ware in the Victoria and Albert
Museum make one wish they had been more widely
appreciated. I have no recollection of any cameos or
medallions in this combination, but it was occasionally
used for the personal ornaments which were afterwards
mounted in gold or in bright steel.
The cane-body, an admirably descriptive name for
the colour of a favourite Wedgwood ware, though other
potters in the district also used it freely, was largely
employed for the " useful " articles and more particularly
for such productions as the game-pie dishes, jelly moulds,
imitation " iced " cakes, and what is generally called
" pie-crust " ware. The cane-coloured pie-dishes were
manufactured in several sizes, the largest being about
18 inches long and 10 inches high. They are excellent
examples of the potter's skill, for they are well and soundly
constructed, so that they have proved very durable in
use. Sometimes they were made without ornament
save for a crimped edge recalling the rim of a pie, but
they were, generally, ornamented by an encircling wreath
of modelled leaves and berries in high relief (see Plate
facing this page).
Apart from its more ordinary uses, the manufacture
of articles in the " pie-crust " ware, so as to avoid the
consumption of flour in times of scarcity brought about
by failure of the English wheat harvest, finds explanation
in an unexpected quarter. In the " Life of George
Brummell " (the famous dandy, " Beau " Brummell),
CUP AND SAUCER
Cane body with reliefs
in white stoneware
Cup — Height 3 in., diameter 4} in.
Saucer — Diameter 6c in.
BOWL
Bamboo ware, tinted with
blue and white enamels
Height 3jj in., diameter 7| in.
Victoria and Alhzrl Museum.
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Red, Black, and Buff Pottery 63
published by Captain Jeffs in 1844, there is the following
passage : —
" The scarcity two years after BrummeH's retirement, viz., in July,
1800, was so great that the consumption of flour for pastry was pro-
hibited in the Royal Household, rice being used instead ; the distillers
left of! malting, hackney-coach fares were raised twenty-five per cent,
and Wedgwood made dishes to represent pie-crust."
This, of course, refers to a time after the death of
Josiah Wedgwood.
There are many other examples in the cane-body
which seem to have been intended to serve somewhat
similar purposes, for a great number of table ornaments
were made in it, in different imitative shapes, and decor-
ated with white " stoneware " or " jasper " reliefs, so
that they looked like " iced " cakes when they were
arranged about the table (see Plate facing p. 120). Of
course they were much too hard to be served as
Thackeray says he served the sugar elephant from
Gunter's that he had met so often at different supper
parties.
The black basalt, or " black Egyptian " as Wedgwood
seems to have called it when it was used for his vases
and other ornamental objects, was a dense, fine-grained
stoneware, coloured by the admixture of a considerable
proportion of clay ironstone (impure carbonate of iron
and clay) and manganese ore. Such mixtures produce
a fired-body which is so hard and dense that it can be
employed as a "' touch-stone " for the precious alloys
used by jewellers and goldsmiths, while it is capable
of acquiring a high polish at the hands of the lapidary,
who can polish or engrave it as he would treat a natural
agate or bloodstone. That it was a favourite material
with Wedgwood is shown, I think, by the extent to
64 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
which he used it for such admirable productions as his
taper-holders, which were mostly copied from the ancient
terra-cotta lamps of the Greek and Roman potters —
the large ornamental lamps with nozzles for a number
of separate wicks (see Plate facing p. 12) ; candlesticks
of various sizes and designs ; important and nobly con-
ceived vases and ewers (such as the famous " Wine "
and " Water " ewers which were modelled by Flaxman,
and which are among the most successful of his works
for Wedgwood), as well as for a great number of tea and
coffee services, which are of rare excellence in the form
and finish of the individual pieces.
The red and black bodies were also freely used in the
manufacture of busts, statuettes, and round or oval
medallions, often of considerable size. The busts were
extensively used for the embellishment of gentlemen's
libraries and writing-rooms, though too often they seem
to have been banished to the tops of book-cases where
their details would be practically invisible. The red
terra-cotta busts and figures do not seem to have been
so popular as those made in black, though one or two
models were freely made, of which the best known is
a small bust of Mercury, with the winged cap, which
is a beautiful example of modelling. The medallion
portrait of Flaxman, modelled by himself, which is in
the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum, is a
worthy example of his powers.1 Among the large-sized
portrait busts in black basalt we may mention those of
Cicero, Homer, Plato and Zeno ; Chaucer, Spenser,
Milton, Bacon, Lord Chatham, and the brothers De
Witt, the Dutch statesmen. Notable among figures of
1 Reproduced in " Josiah Wedgwood," by Sir A. H. Church.
VASE, WITH PAINTED GREEK ORNAMENT
Black body with ornament
in "encaustic" colours
Height 12 in., diameter 7 in.
Victoria and A Ibert Museum.
Red, Black, and Buff Pottery 65
a smaller size are the Linnaeus, Voltaire and Rousseau,
which are admirable examples of his portrait statuary.
Mention should also be made of the bronze " en-
caustic," as it was called, a process by which gold was
attached to the surface of the black basalt or other dry
bodies. Examples of this decoration are now rare, as
it is to be feared that the gold has mostly worn away
from the pieces to which it was applied, as it was only
made to adhere by japanner's size. Some of the best
examples are to be seen in the Liverpool Museum.
In concluding this review of Wedgwood's work in
the " dry " bodies it is necessary to direct the reader's
attention to one of the early practical results born
out of the wide series of experiments which were
undertaken for the production of a white porcelain-
like material. This was a fine-grained hard, white
stoneware, which was first used in making the square
plinths on which the vases, ewers, and other ornamental
examples fashioned in the " marbled," " pebble " and
" agate " wares were supported, and to which they were
securely attached by screwed metal rods and washers
inside. A great number of examples which illustrate
this application of the white stoneware will be found
among the museum collections of Wedgwood's vases
in London and elsewhere ; some of the best that are
known to me are now preserved in the Wedgwood In-
stitute at Burslem, in the Liverpool Museum, and in the
museum at the Etruria works.
The student should experience little difficulty in
distinguishing this white stoneware from the more famous
white jasper, as it differs sufficiently in appearance,
both in its slightly greyer colour and harder texture,
66 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
to permit of easy identification. Not infrequently the
white stoneware plinths — even some of those on which
important and costly vases have been mounted — betray
evidence of the two serious and ineradicable manufac-
turing defects that it had in use, viz., a marked tendency
to warp or twist out of shape and also to crack during
the firing.
In addition, there are a few examples — for such works
have become rare and difficult to obtain — which illustrate
another application of this white stoneware made by
Josiah II., consisting of small vases (seldom more than
six or seven inches in height to the top of the cover),
pot-pourri jars with perforated covers, and other pieces
of a similar kind. In these, the glossy white stoneware
forms the body of the piece, while the applied ornament
takes the form of richly modelled floral bands on the
neck or upper part of the body of the vase or jar, sur-
mounting little figures of amorini, all in dark blue
jasper of fine quality. I possess three such marked
examples, which I bought in Newcastle-under-Lyme
more than thirty years ago, when I was engaged at Etruria
as chemist to the firm of Josiah Wedgwood and Sons
(see Plate facing p. 124).
FRUIT DISH
Brown enamel ornament
Length 9| in., width 6; in.
British Museum.
FISH DISH
Length 11| in., width 4£ in.,
height If- in.
HONEY-POT AND COVER
Cane-coloured ware
Height 4 in., greatest width 5 in.
COVERED CREAM JUG
Bamboo pattern
Cane-coloured ware
Mark: "WEDGWOOD," impressed
Height 5] in., diameter 3 in.
Schreiber Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum.
CHAPTER VII
THE INVENTION OF THE " JASPER " BODY
THROUGHOUT the course of the long series of
trials and systematic experiments which were
undertaken in the hope of perfecting the whiteness,
and at the same time the reliability during the firing
process, of the glossy white stoneware, or white " por-
celain biskit " as it is frequently called in Wedgwood's
working notes and his correspondence with Bentley,
Wedgwood made repeated trials (amounting to some
hundreds in all) with every promising or likely white
mineral he could obtain either by his own exertions
or by those of a number of his scientific friends. It is
clear that he suffered many disappointments in these
researches and experiments, for, as yet, he hardly knew
what materials that he could obtain would give the
required results, but after one set of experimental failures
he would soon be all agog with fresh hopes of some other
mineral as yet untried.1
Among the white " spars " and " earths " with
which he was experimenting at this time (1773), as
is shown by the notebook entries, we find frequent
mention of two in particular, those which contain
barium ; the carbonate, which is often called " Witherite "
1 How widely Wedgwood cast his net in such attempts to discover a new material
for his work may be realized from the fact that he is said to have obtained some of
his first specimens of barytes from the district known as Anglezark, in Lancashire,
the moorland area lying in the triangle between Chorley, Bolton and Blackburn.
67
68 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
by mineralogists — after the naturalist, W. Withering, who
first emphasized its distinction from the sulphate — and
the more abundant sulphate which is commonly called
" heavy-spar," or colloquially by the Derbyshire lead-
miners, who find it in quantity as the gangue of the lead
ores in the Peak district, " cawk."
For some little time, Wedgwood was greatly puzzled
by the apparently capricious behaviour of these two
mineral substances when he fired them with various
proportions of his different white clays, and, in 1774,
he set out on an expedition into Derbyshire in his chaise
(" going a-fossilising " he called it), and soon returned
in triumph with supplies of both the barytes minerals
which he had obtained from the moors above Stony
Middleton. His trials quickly proved that the " cawk,"
or sulphate of barium, was the substance he required,
and this formed the principal and really vital ingredient
in his new pottery material, the famous " jasper body."
Sir A. H. Church l published the following percentage
composition as a close approximation to Wedgwood's
general formula for the preparation of the jasper clay :
Sulphate of barium (cawk), 59 ; clay, 29 ; flint, 10 ;
carbonate of barium (Witherite), 2 ; and such a formula
shows very clearly what an important role the barytes
plays in the composition ; for we may almost regard
the jasper body as finely divided barium sulphate with
the addition of the smallest possible amount of clay
which would enable the potter to fashion it into shape
by the usual methods and fire it successfully.
The jasper body stands apart from the usual types
1 " Josiah Wedgwood," by Sir A. H. Church, F.R.S. Seeley and Co., Ltd.»
London, 1903, p. 28.
JASPER VASE
Venus in a chariot drawn by swans and doves
Height 15f in., diameter 6| in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Invention of the " Jasper " Body 69
of earthenware, stoneware, or porcelain because of the
great proportion of the barytes minerals in its composition,
but it has many merits as a material in which the potter
can display the utmost refinements of his skill. These
were utilized to the full by Wedgwood, for besides pro-
ducing a fine white porcelain-like material from such
mixtures as those just given, he found that it could
be readily and uniformly stained by the ordinary mineral
oxides which are used in colouring pottery, to various
tones of blue, green, lilac and yellow, as well as to an
intense black (richer and fuller in tone than the black-
basalt). Its invention and gradual perfection must be
regarded as Josiah Wedgwood's crowning achievement
in a lifetime of experiment ; he had arrived at it by
unwearied research and as the result of endless trials,
while no other potter is known to have produced it unless
he had first acquired some knowledge of Wedgwood's
formulae. In spite of his admirable integrity and gener-
osity of mind and disposition, there is no doubt that
Wedgwood's secrets were spied upon, and one or two
of his neighbours who showed that they were not very
scrupulous in other matters are also suspect in this.
The characteristic appearance of Wedgwood's jasper
ware is so well known, for it can surely boast a wider
circle of admirers among all classes of our population
than any other species of European pottery with any
claims to distinguished merit, that an extended verbal
description seems unnecessary in this place, especially
as most of the principal varieties in colour and of the
modes in which it was used are illustrated in this
book. The ground colour of the jasper wares may
be in one of a number of distinct colours, each of which
70 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
occurs in several shades. Thus we have the different
shades of blue, which range from a dark, almost " indigo "
blue shade through several distinct shades of diminishing
intensity to a pale bluish-lavender ; the greens, in two
or three shades of sage-green, as well as a colder blue-
green, which are all extensively used, while an olive-
green, which also appears in dark and lighter shades, is
found more rarely.
A word may usefully be inserted here as to the genesis
of some of the rarer or exceptional shades of colour
that are so difficult to classify. I think it may safely
be assumed that many of these do not represent any
specially prepared shade of coloured jasper. The unusual
tone of colour is undoubtedly due to accidental varia-
tions [in the local temperature or atmospheric conditions
(actively oxidizing or reducing as the case might be)
of certain parts of the oven in which these particular
specimens happened to be fired ; though they are rightly
prized when they present an unusual beauty in surface
quality or tone of colour.
Next in importance to the blues and greens, the
ground colour most extensively used in the jasper ware
was a deep and glossy black, which is fuller and richer
looking, as well as more translucent, than the earlier
" black basalt " always so extensively used for the re-
production of the modelled figures and busts. In the
collections of Wedgwood's finest productions which are
displayed in the British Museum and in the Victoria
and Albert Museum there are a number of large and
important vases mounted on tall elaborately decorated
plinths in the same material, where the body is of black
jasper with reliefs in white jasper, and these represent
SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON
White biscuit, modelled by Flaxman
6| in. by 4| in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
COVERED SUGAR BOX
Jasper, grey ground with white
cameo decorations
Height 33 in., width 5j in.
TEAPOT
Jasper, olive ground with
embossed vine border in lilac
Height 5\ in., length 8} in.
Victoria and Albert Muszum.
The Invention of the " Jasper " Body 71
the most ambitious and ornate examples that were made
at Etruria during the later years of Josiah Wedgwood's
activities. Any student or connoisseur who wishes to
understand the pains and skill which were lavished on
the most costly specimens of jasper ware may ponder
over the details of such works as these, for it is only
by such a study that anyone can realize the immense
skill and the resources of technical knowledge with which
they have been wrought. We may grant much that
has been urged by amateurs of classic purity against
their art and archaeology, but beyond all cavil or dispute
there will still remain the stamp of a great Englishman
on his work in this style, and we may fitly adopt for
Wedgwood and his works, in presence of these triumphs,
the epitaph of proud humility inscribed by Wren over
the inner north transept door of St. Paul's : "Si monu-
mentum requiris, circumspice."
One may be forgiven for directing the reader's attention
to the oft-mentioned example which is certainly one of
Wedgwood's finest productions in this style, and known
as the " Pegasus " vase, for he presented it to the British
Museum in 1786 as a work of which he was proud. In
a letter to Sir William Hamilton, dated June 24, 1786,
he refers to this vase as follows : —
" I lamented much that I could not obtain liberty of the merchant
to send a vase, the finest and most perfect I have ever made, and which
I have since presented to the British Museum. I enclose a rough sketch
of it ; it is 18 inches high, and the price 20 guineas."
Mr. Hobson 1 states that the main subject of the
frieze of figures, sometimes entitled " The Crowning of a
Kitharist," but called by Wedgwood " The Apotheosis
1 " Catalogue of English Pottery in the British Museum," 1903, p. 255.
72 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
of Homer," is from a Greek vase in the British Museum.
It should be added that the reliefs used on this Wedgwood
vase were modelled by Flaxman, and they are notable
examples of his happy skill in the translation of the
painted subjects found on such ancient vases into low-
relief ornament.
The most famous of Wedgwood's reproductions from
the antique is represented by his copies of the " Portland
Vase," as it is alsvays known in England. The original
is an example of Grseco-Roman work in glass, which was
discovered in a sepulchral mound in the outskirts of Rome
in the seventeenth century.1 It is admittedly the finest
work of its kind that has come down to us, and the in-
terpretation of its design has engaged the attention
of scholars from time to time, with no very satisfactory
results. According to Sir Arthur Church,2 the subjects
illustrate episodes in the courtship of Peleus and Thetis,
while the youthful bust on the base of the vase represents
Paris wearing a Phrygian cap, and heavily draped.
The base is a separate work, and formed no part of the
original design. Sir William Hamilton bought the vase,
about the year 1782, for £1,000. He sold it to the
Duchess of Portland in 1785, and after her death the
Duke of Portland bought it for £1,029, and lent it to Wedg-
wood that he might make his reproductions. The value
1 This famous example of Grseco-Roman work in glass was found in a sepulchral
mount, Monte del Grano, a few miles out of Rome, by the road to Frascati, sometime
between 1623-44, during the Pontificate of Urban VIII (Maffeo Barberini, who seems
to have been the puppet of Richelieu). The vase was contained in a marble sar-
cophagus, from its date and style, of the early part of the third century of our era.
The vase was afterwards put on exhibition in the British Museum. In 1845, it
was broken, but has been stuck together again, and is still to be seen in the " Gem
Room " of the Museum.
2 " Josiah Wedgwood," A H. Church, F.R.S. Seeley & Co., Ltd., London,
1903, pp. 30-33.
COPY OF PORTLAND VASE
Etruria 1790-93
Height 10 in., diameter 7-jj- in.
Victoria and Albert Museum. Obtained from Charles Darwin,
whose father bought it from Wedgwood in 1793.
The Invention of the " Jasper " Body 73
put upon these reproductions by collectors has shown
great fluctuations from time to time, though at present
any one of the original copies would command a high
price. Fortunately, perfect examples of the Wedgwood
reproductions of the first series are accessible to all
students. The British Museum has one of the first
subscription copies ; while there are two at the Victoria
and Albert Museum — one in the Jones Bequest, and the
historic example from the Jermyn Street Collection
which was formerly in the Jermyn Street Museum.
This last specimen has the additional interest that it
was originally bought in 1793 by R. W. Darwin, of Shrews-
bury, the son of Wedgwood's friend and physician,
Erasmus Darwin, and was sold to the Jermyn Street
Museum by the famous Charles Darwin. This is the
specimen from which the illustration facing p. 72
has been made for this work.
Another use which was made of these adapted or
translated figures and groups will be found in their appli-
cation to flat slabs, plaques or panels, either rectangular,
circular or oval in shape ; the largest being of such
considerable dimensions that they must have taxed
all the manufacturing skill of Etruria. These slabs
were principally used at the time as inlays for furniture,
and they were also secured into recessed mantelpieces
of marble and other fine stones designed by such eminent
contemporary architects as the brothers Adam and
Sir John Soane. Few of them seem to have survived
in their original settings, for the mantelpieces have been
ruthlessly swept away and destroyed by later architects,
but examples of such plaques, now simply framed in
wood, are to be seen in the Falcke Collection in the
74 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
British Museum, while there are a considerable number
also in the Victoria and Albert Museum, some of which
came from the Jermyn Street Collection. Illustrations
of typical examples will be found in this work.
Busts and figures, usually of small dimensions, were
also made in white jasper. These are not common, though
such as are known are generally of beautiful quality.
It cannot have been a simple matter to produce " white
jasper " figures in all their waxen purity, for it must
always have been difficult to hit the happy mean in the
firing between the stage at which the material would
be dry and chalky-looking from insufficient vitrifaction
(when it would also become dirty from smoke or handling
after it was made), or they would be overtired, when
they became unpleasantly glossy and lost their sharpness
of detail or twisted out of shape. A bust of " Voltaire "
(p. 166), and a larger symbolic bust which is entitled
" Terror" (p. 110), are herein reproduced, as they are par-
ticularly noteworthy, both for the quality of the material
and for the skill with which they were modelled, so that I am
inclined to consider them the best examples of the white
jasper figures that I know. Undoubtedly figures of this
ware are of great beauty when they had been successfully
fired, and it seems a pity they should be so rare now.
Another ground colour which was freely used in the
jasper wares, though, unfortunately, it was somewhat
fugitive and uncertain at the high temperature required
to fire the ware, is generally known as " Lilac," the
name invariably used by Wedgwood, though Miss Meteyard
and others have, with unwarranted enthusiasm, spoken
of it as " peach-blossom." l This colour was obtained
1 " Handbook of Wedg-wood Wore," I.e., p. 34.
JASPER VASE AND PEDESTAL
*se— Height 13£
stal — Base 8| it
British Museum.
Vase— Height 13| in.
Pedestal— Base 8| in. wide
The Invention of the " Jasper " Body 75
by the use of refined and purified oxide of manganese,
and, as is natural with such manganese colours, it
varies according to the degree of fire to which it has
been subjected, from a brownish pink in which the
pink tone predominates, to a pale cafe-au-lait flushed
with pink, when it has some resemblance to the colour
of opening peach-blossom. The uncertainty of this colour
in the fire probably explains why it was less freely used
as a ground colour than the blues and greens, for at its
best this lilac ground is refined and beautiful in tone,
and it is extremely valuable, decoratively, on account
of its warmth amidst so many cool shades of colour.
The illustration of the vase facing p. 74 affords a choice
example of the best tone which the colour assumes when
used in fairly large masses.
Another purpose for which this colour was very freely
used was in the bands or central panels of the circular
and oval cameos,1 from about 1J inches to 2j inches
in diameter, where it was generally edged with an en-
circling band of green jasper ; and in some of these
small articles it appears with excellent effect. A number
of these choice little pieces are exhibited in the table-
cases of Wedgwood's wares in the British Museum.
In the Schreiber Gift in the Victoria and Albert Museum
there are a great number of small Wedgwood cameos
in various settings, intended for use as personal ornaments,,
and many dainty examples of the lilac-coloured ground
will be found among them (see Plate facing p. 76).
This mention of articles of personal adornment also
1 In Wedgwood's wares of this class those examples which are not more than
two and a half inches in diameter are generally called " cameos," while those which
are over this size are classed as " medallions." — " Handbook of Wedgwood Ware,"
I.e., p. 76.
76 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
recalls the extensive use made by Wedgwood of the metal-
mounter's assistance in extending the sale of his cameos,
seals, trinkets, and bijouterie, made in his numerous
bodies and particularly in red body and in jasper ware.
He undoubtedly commenced this association during
his partnership with Whieldon, who had been active
in this branch of the trade before him, but he built
up a much larger business of this kind, when he was
prepared to supply such a variety of suitable objects
for mounting in metal as seals, cameos and intaglios
for use in rings, chains for watches and muffs, watch-
cases, scarf-pins, hairpins, hat-pins, brooches, buckles,
bracelets, smelling-bottles, scent-bottles, and a host of
similar things. A selected group of such articles which
are mounted as they were used will be found on the
Plate facing p. 122.
The quaint sets of chessmen, some of which were
modelled by Flaxman between 1783 and 1785, are charming
examples of the smaller figures in " jasper " ware. They
were made in a variety of colours and combinations —
the major pieces are usually in white jasper on bases of
blue or green jasper ; while the pawns, which embody
many interesting figures of mediaeval foot-soldiery, are
usually of blue or green jasper. I have never heard that
a chess-board or chess-table was designed by Flaxman,
but a chess-board in the form of a circular table top in
black and white jasper, with designs from a mediaeval
tournament by Walter Crane, R.I., was made, I believe,
about 1870, probably for display at one of the Inter-
national Exhibitions.
in. x 1| in.
2 in. x H in.
2| in. x 2£ in.
in. X 1J in.
l| in. x 1J in.
Length 11£ in.
PERSONAL ORNAMENTS IN JASPER WARE
Schreiber Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum.
•i.HAY/
•
PERSONAL ORNAMENTS
Jasper Ware with
white cameo decorations
Schreiber Collection, Victoria and Albert Mi/.s
King, 4'2 in. Queen, -4*2 in.
CHESSMEN IN JASPER WARE
British Museum.
CHAPTER VIII
WEDGWOOD'S PRINTED EARTHENWARES
THE invention of the method by which patterns
printed from engraved copper-plates on sheets of
thin paper could be transferred to the glazed sur-
face of articles of pottery or porcelain as a means of
producing shaded outline designs in such a way that
the articles appear to be elaborately decorated, though
they could still be sold at a moderate price, seems typical
of the practical side of the English temperament. This
process was invented and had already been used in
London for a number of years before it was followed
in Staffordshire, though it was ultimately adopted there
with such success that the " Potteries " district might
have been its native home. The first practical results
in this style of decoration originated from the efforts
and experiments of a number of men — mostly engravers,
or printers of book illustrations and the popular books
of designs intended for the use of workers in various
trades — who discovered how such patterns could be
transferred from an engraved copper-plate, in verifiable
colours, and fired to the surface of articles in enamelled-
metal, porcelain and pottery. Many conflicting claims
have been advanced as to how and where the process
originated, but it would seem to have been experimented
with and improved in detail by several men before it
reached any definite success.
77
78 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
Battersea, with its enamels, and the porcelain factories
of Bow, Chelsea, and Worcester, were all early in the
field with patterns printed on their wares. Doubtless
it was the successful issue of these efforts that first directed
the attention of the Staffordshire potters to the process.
Some of the more enterprising of these manufacturers
adopted it on a great scale, though for many years they
were content to send their glazed pottery to Liverpool by
wagon, where the printed patterns were applied and fired
to the surface of the glaze, and the ware was then returned
to its makers, either to be sold as it was or to receive
further enrichment in painted enamel-colours and gold.
The names and doings of John Sadler and Guy Green
are famous in the history of the application of printed
patterns to pottery and tiles, for they were responsible
for the introduction and widespread use of the process
in Liverpool, shortly after 1750. At that time, Liverpool
was the seat of an extensive and thriving trade in pottery-
making, as in addition to producing pottery and porcelain
of several kinds, great quantities of wall-tiles were also
made, in obvious imitation of the more famous tiles of
Delft, in Holland. Examples of all these productions
of the Liverpool potters, bearing excellently printed
designs mostly copied from book illustrations, the en-
graved plates used for the purpose and the actual printing
representing the work of Sadler and Green, form a large
proportion of the Liverpool pottery ware that is to be
seen in our museum collections. Sadler and Green must
have perfected their processes by the year 1755, l as shortly
1 See Mayer's "Art of Pottery in Liverpool," and LI. Jewitt's " Ceramic Art in
Great Britain," vol. ii., pp. 29-30, for copies of affidavits sworn at Liverpool by
these printers, in 1756.
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Wedgwood's Printed Earthenwares 79
after that date they began to advertise the fact that
they were prepared to print and fire patterns, in various
colours, on tiles and pottery, with a choice of subjects
from the series of engraved plates they owned, for any
manufacturer who would send his goods to their works
in Harrington Street, Liverpool, for that purpose.
They appear to have circulated handbills, of their
own printing, to this effect among the Staffordshire and
Yorkshire potters, and it is believed that Wedgwood
was one of their first customers among the manufacturers
in his district. He had established himself in business
at Burslem about the year 1759, as we have seen, and he
very soon commenc'ed to send large and regular con-
signments of his earthenwares to Liverpool, to be printed
by Sadler and Green with their patterns on his account.
In the beginning of this branch of his trade he doubtless
accepted such stock patterns as the printers already
possessed, and which they were prepared to apply to
the pottery which any manufacturer might forward to
Liverpool for that purpose. Wedgwood, however, was
not a man who would easily rest content with the general
patterns of the trade which were equally at the service
of any other potter, after he had proved the value of the
process in his own business. He soon commenced, there-
fore, to furnish the printers with his own patterns, and
owned, even if he did not supply, the engraved copper-
plates used in the process.
For some thirty years the only colours that were in
use for printed patterns were the enamel-colours, black,
red or purple, applied to the fired glaze (hence the term
•' overglaze " colours) ; for printing in blue, underglaze,
which ultimately became the most popular method of
8o Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
all, was only introduced into Staffordshire about 1780,
when Josiah Spode, who had worked under Wedgwood
at the Whieldon factory, introduced blue-printing with
such great success at his own factory at Stoke-on-Trent,
in rivalry with the china factories of Worcester, Caughley
and Derby.
In initiating and for so many years pursuing this
course of sending his glazed earthenwares to Liverpool
to receive their printed enrichment, Wedgwood remained
true to the general business-policy which he had adopted
so soon as he had to manage a factory on his own account,
and he never departed from this sensible course so long
as he lived. He was at all times prepared to avail him-
self of all the suitable assistance he could secure from
outside his own works,1 so long as such a course would
answer his immediate purposes with any degree of mutual
advantage and satisfaction. By availing himself of such
assistance or co-operation, some of the subsidiary pro-
cesses of decoration and so forth could be left to others,
while he remained as free, as such a busy man could
ever be from those details, to pursue his more immediate
and important labours as a master-potter.
He had adopted the plan of sending his earthenwares
to Liverpool to receive their printed decoration while
he was still conducting his factories at Burslem and
long before the works at Etruria was in existence, while
it can be shown that Green (the surviving partner in
the firm of Sadler and Green) continued to print some
of Wedgwood's earlier patterns, which had become a
1 Some of his " lustre " decorations in gold and platinum were carried out for
him by Steele, of Hanley, even to the end of his life ; as is shown by letters and
invoices which are preserved in the museum at the Etruria works.
COFFEE POT AND TEAPOT
Cream-colour Ware with printed designs
Coffee Pot — Height 5 in., diameter 3| in.
Teapot — Height 5| in., diameter 4J in.
Schreibcr Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum.
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Wedgwood's Printed Earthenwares 81
regular feature of his trade, as late as 1784, or more than
thirty years after they had first embarked on their business
as potter's engravers and printers. In proof of this
it is possible to point to an existing memorandum of the
year 1783, which is preserved among the historical
documents at Etruria and which has reference to a service
of dinner and tea ware made by Wedgwood for David
Garrick, the famous actor. This service was sent to
Liverpool in order that it might be printed at Green's
works with a selected border pattern and a cipher com-
posed of the initials D. G., and the invoice shows that
the cost of this work, as charged to Wedgwood, amounted
to the sum of £8 6s. l£d.
Furthermore, a large number of Wedgwood's earthen-
ware dinner plates, mugs, jugs, teapots, and similar
articles are still in existence which display the identical
printed designs that are found on some of the contem-
porary Liverpool tiles. In the collections of the Victoria
and Albert Museum, as well as in those of the Liverpool
Museum, there are fine series of both the Liverpool tiles
and of Wedgwood's dinner plates and other service-
pieces which were printed in Liverpool. Among these
collections anyone may soon discover instances where
the same pattern, obviously designed in the first place
for use on a square tile, is made to do duty on a plate
also. In such a case, when the pattern of a square tile
design was applied without alteration in the centre of a
plate or a dish, it was so obviously incomplete as a piece
of appropriate decoration that Wedgwood felt compelled
to draw it into some sort of relation to the shape of
his plate or dish. He achieved this end by framing
the print with an elaborate enamelled decoration, painted
82 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
by hand, of looped ribands, pendent strings of husks,
or other popular devices of the style. The framed print
occupied the centre of the plate or dish, while on the
broad rim little scattered sprays of flowers and foliage
were painted by the enamellers ; though they bear no
sort of relation in character or style to the central printed
design. Table services of this description must have
been rather troublesome and costly to produce, especially
in the days when they had to be conveyed to Liverpool
and back to receive the fired printed-decoration.
One imagines that when Wedgwood came to regard
such examples dispassionately at a later time, he must
have felt that they furnished a curious record of the
popular English taste (his own included) at a period
when the older traditions of pottery decoration had
been forgotten or deliberately abandoned, and no sure
principles of decorative art as applied to pottery, porcelain
and the other common everyday things had been re-
established among us.
From about the year 1784 (the date is not certain
to a few months, though that is not really material)
all the new designs of printed patterns for Wedgwood's
general trade, as well as the printed outlines of the numerous
patterns that were intended to be filled in by the enamellers,
were printed on the works at Etruria, so that the sending
of pottery forward and backward between Staffordshire
and Liverpool was brought to an end. How rapidly
this type of decoration with the enamelled borders and
so forth had come into general use is revealed in a somewhat
curious way. When Thomas Wedgwood, Josiah's cousin
and his partner in the " useful " branch of the pottery
business, died in 1787, it became necessary to draw up
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Wedgwood's Printed Earthenwares 83
a complete inventory of the stock of pottery, plant
and tools of that section of the joint affairs, and so it
comes about that we possess a complete memorandum
of the engraved plates which the firm owned at that
date, and we find that they made up an extensive and
miscellaneous range of subjects of very varied types.
It is not easy in some cases to identify some of the
patterns with certainty when we have no other
guidance than such as is furnished by the titles used
in this list. Here we find a great abundance of pat-
terns which are merely described as " Antique," " Greek "
and " Etruscan " borders. In another class we have
some curious works-names such as " Calico pattern and
springs 5: [? sprigs], " Printed bird pattern," " Queen's
pattern," " Red birds " (both evidently versions of the
popular " Exotic birds " which were in use at many of
the principal European factories about this time), and
" Enamelled shagreen " (a veined or marbled decoration
obviously). Other patterns that are mentioned in this
list seem less difficult to identify with certainty, as, for
instance, " Honeysuckle in several colours," " Red and
black strawberry-leaf with drop," " Light green bell
drops," and " Blue convolvulus with green leaves," for
such titles explain themselves in any collection of the
enamelled patterns, and several of them will be found
in use on the examples of the earthenwares of this class
which are given in this book.1 (See Plates facing pp.
16 and 78.)
These border patterns were used and adapted in such
a variety of ways that their history would form an inter-
1 A large assortment of these patterns, reproduced in colours and gold, will be
found in Miss Meteyard's " Life of Josiah Wedgwood " (I.e.).
84 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
esting study in the evolution of pattern on our late
eighteenth - century pottery, for other manufacturers
used them extensively in addition to Wedgwood. When
the simpler types had proved their merits on the plain
earthenwares, they were relieved over bands of bright
solid colour such as light Indian red, bright pale yellow,
crimson and purple of several shades, while the general
effect was heightened by the introduction of a little
gold burnt into the glaze. This elegant style of decora-
tion, in which the painted colour became more and more
important and the printed outlines served mainly for
emphasis or definition of pattern, was at once received
into popular favour, and though the style passed almost
into oblivion in the last century it has been successfully
revived in recent years, and now all who appreciate
such fine and unpretentious things may have services
decorated in this way in daily use in their own homes.
Other potters in Staffordshire and some of the leading
porcelain makers also adopted these methods, and beau-
tiful examples made by Elijah Mayer, by Spode and
others, are well known.
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CHAPTER IX
THE WEDGWOOD " RUSSIAN SERVICE "
THAT extraordinary and masterful woman, the
autocratic ruler of a vast semi-barbaric empire,
Catherine II. of Russia, appears to have ordered her
life on the principle enunciated by the French marquise
who said of herself : " The great God would never lightly
damn a person of her quality." The ambitious state-
craft and tortuous, insincere and opportunist diplomacy
which Catherine displayed throughout her reign wrought
untold suffering and misery among her own subjects
and those of the neighbouring territories, from the Baltic
to the ^Egean. It is not a matter for surprise, there-
fore, that in her business dealings with the most renowned
porcelain makers and potters of Europe, she appears
to have treated them precisely as she would have be-
haved had they been subjects of her own dominion.
Thus, she commissioned from the Royal porcelain
works of Sevres and of Copenhagen the most extensive,
elaborate and costly table-services that they could devise,
and if we may base an opinion on the profound differences
in the styles of decoration displayed on these two services,
it would seem as if each establishment must have been
left free to choose its own ideas and decorative methods.
The celebrated French service was completed and deliv-
ered,1 though, so far as can be ascertained after this
1 Odd plates of this service have since found their way abroad, and there are
three plates in the collections in the Victoria and Albert Museum.
85
86 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
lapse of time, Catherine never paid for it, as the out-
break of the French Revolution furnished her with a
pretext for breaking off the negotiations that seem
to have been spun out for several years by disputes
as to the exact method in which her payments should
be made. The Danish service, which is usually known
as the " Flora Danica " service, because it was painted
in enamel-colours with meticulous drawings of the flowers
and plants of the country which recall the illustrations
in famous botanical works of the period, was never
delivered to Russia, for so many years were taken in
its execution that Catherine II. had died before it could
be completed, and the bargain was repudiated by her
successor, the Emperor Paul (1796-1801). A great number
of the pieces of this service are still preserved in the
Danish royal palaces and museums. The English student
will find a number of excellent reproductions of individual
specimens in Mr. Arthur Hay den's " Royal Copenhagen
Porcelain."
Josiah Wedgwood, or, rather, the firm of Wedgwood
and Bentley, as it then was, was commissioned to manu-
facture for the use of the Empress, at her country seat,
" La Grenouilliere," x which now forms part of the
buildings of the palace of Peterhof, near Petrograd,
an extensive table-service in their celebrated cream-
coloured earthenware. This admirable domestic pottery
had already won the highest repute throughout the
length and breadth of Russia, where the firm had their
own appointed agents, who travelled to the principal
towns and fairs of Russia and Eastern Europe — importing
1 Hence the badge of a " frog " — which was painted in enamel-colours on the
border of each piece.
GUP, COVER AND STAND
Jasper Ware
Cup — Height 3£ in., width 3J in.
Saucer — Diameter 4J in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
SLOP BASIN
Jasper Ware
Diameter 7| in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
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The Wedgwood " Russian Service '; 87
their manufactures by way of Reval and the other Baltic
ports. The testimony of a celebrated foreign traveller
and observer is of the greatest interest in this connexion,
and Mr. Faujas de Saint-Fond, Professor of Geology
in the Museum of Natural History, Paris, writing in his
*' Travels in England," which was published in 1797,1
extols the merits of Wedgwood's cream-coloured earthen-
ware in terms which are deserving of remembrance.
He writes : —
" Its excellent workmanship, its solidity [durability ?], the advantage
which it possesses of withstanding the action of fire, its fine glaze im-
penetrable by acids,2 the beauty, convenience, and variety of its forms,
together with its moderate price, have created a commerce so active
and so universal that in travelling from Paris to St. Petersburg, from
Amsterdam to the furthest point of Sweden, from Dunkirk to the southern
extremity of France, one is served at every inn from English earthenware.
The same fine article adorns the tables of Spain, Portugal, and Italy ;
and it provides the cargoes of ships to the East Indies, the West Indies
and America."
When Wedgwood and Bentley secured the commission
for their " Russian Service " they were well aware that
its execution would prove a strain on their organization
at Etruria if they were to maintain their ordinary business
in the British Isles and abroad as well, but they can
never have imagined what worries, labours, and anxieties
were to accumulate upon them before it was completed.
A considerable portion of the first three years of the
time was occupied in the task of gathering together,
at the workshops in Chelsea and at Etruria, a huge
1 This work was entitled " Voyage en Angleterre, en Ecosse et aux lies Hebrides,"
and appeared in an English translation, in two volumes, published in London in
1799.
2 In marked contrast to the ordinary domestic pottery and faience of Europe^
the glazes of which were attacked even by the feeble acids, vinegar, etc., used in
cooking.
88 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
collection of prints and drawings, many of which could
not be used for the service after all, though they seem
to have been brought into use for the ordinary table
services which the firm manufactured in such vast
quantities for their home and foreign trade. This
collection comprised etchings and engravings of every
kind, such as appeared in books of family or county
history, and a large assortment of the popular prints
of the day. Various London print-sellers were just
then publishing illustrations of the town and country
mansions, with their parks and gardens, belonging to
the nobility and landed gentry of the British Isles, for
this was the era when Capability Brown, who laid out
the grounds and gardens at Etruria Hall for Wedgwood,
was busy in the land making new gardens or transforming
old ones in every part of the country.
Besides drawing freely on all these fountains of supply
Wedgwood and Bentley purchased water-colour draw-
ings and sketches from some well-known British painters,
such as George Barret, R.A., who prepared a number
of the London drawings. This artist is believed to have
made the drawing of old " Northumberland House,"
which stood near Charing Cross at the corner of the
present Northumberland Avenue, as well as for some of
the river landscapes about Chiswick Reach. Views of
Hampstead were taken from designs which had been
engraved by J. B. C. Chatelaine for Boydell, the print-
seller, and it has been suggested that some of the drawings
which he made for this purpose, and from which he
had prepared plates for Boydell, may have been acquired
subsequently for the collections at Etruria.
In addition to availing themselves of all such sources
JARDINIERE
Light blue jasper
Mark: Impressed " WKDGWOOD"
Height 6? in., diameter 7'\ in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
PEDESTAL
White and green chequer
with lilac quatrefoils on
white squares
Height 4.1 in., diameter 5 in.
The Wedgwood " Russian Service " 89
of supply or those brought before their notice by eager
agents among the booksellers and print-sellers, Wedg-
wood and Bentley employed a number of architectural
and topographical draughtsmen, particularly a Mr.
Stringer, of Knutsford, Cheshire, who appears to have
been most actively engaged on the task of securing
further illustrations which could not be obtained other-
wise. Stringer travelled through many parts of Great
Britain, almost literally from John o' Groat's to Land's
End, to procure sketches of the most famous buildings,
gardens and scenes, and was employed in this way from
start to finish of the laborious undertaking.
Among the papers preserved in the museum at the
Etruria works there is a draft of a letter in Josiah Wedg-
wood's handwriting, and dated December, 1773, addressed
to a Mrs. Talbot, which shows one of the methods he
used in securing the " views " of such places as he
required. The draft runs :—
We are now executing a commn for the Empress of Russia. It
is for a Table service consisting of more than 2,000 pieces upon each
of which is to be a real view from English Gardens & pleasure grounds
painted in Enamel. We are to no each piece & send a Catalogue to the
Empress saying from whose seat each view is taken. May I beg the
favor, Madm, of enriching our collection with a few of these views from
your beautifull Park & Gardens. A Painter (Mr. Stringer of Knuts-
ford) will wait upon you in a few days to ask this favour & if you please
to indulge him with the permission it will be gratefully acknowledged
by Mad»» &c.
By means of such letters, by personal interviews,
and by the interests of many influential friends, Wedg-
wood was able finally to secure many of these " views,"
for the project was so warmly received among the great
landowners of the Midlands that it developed into a
sort of competition as to the mansions that were to be
90 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
distinguished by making their appearance on the more
important articles of the service. Two letters which
Wedgwood wrote to Bentley at this time refer to the
difficulties in which they had become involved in attempt-
ing to reconcile so many conflicting claims : —
Nov. 23, 1773.
I think, by what you mention in your last, & by what I have seen,
and learn'd lately, we shall do much better in every respect than we
have hitherto done, & by the time this service is completed we shall
be about prepared to execute such an order from our own Good K. & Q.,
but this is under the Rose. The line we have thus got into is very
promising, & I hope will succeed. ... I am most afraid of our not
having large Dishes & other large pieces enough left to oblige our Friends
who shod be put into capital situations.
A week later he returns to the subject again :—
December 1st, 1773.
It is a Pity but we had more large Dishes in the service. As it is,
it will soon be in reality, too great a partiality for a Country Esqr though
he does happen to be ones neighbour, & a good man, to occupy so Capital
a situation as a large Dish when there is but 2 or 4 in the whole Service.
If we can afford one of them to Ld Gower will be as much as the Bargain,
for we have in my opinion been guilty of a Capital omission in not
writing to His Majesty to know his Maj — s pleasure if he would permit
us to take any vie\vs from the R — 1 Palaces or Gardens — but it is better
late than never & I am firmly of opinion it ought to be done & beg leave
to submit it to your consideration.
It certainly appears to be clear from these two letters
that the partners had neglected to approach the King
and Queen, or to obtain views of the Royal palaces,
up to this time. That this omission was repaired is
proved by numerous subjects which appear in the final
list of illustrations, and which are quoted here in orderly
sequence for facility of reference : —
No. 5, View, with a portion of the Palace of H.R.H. the Dowager
Princess of Wales, in the County of Middlesex ; No. 7, View of the Moat
FRUIT DISH
Painted in colours and gold
"Arms of Dorrien" in centre
Length 9f in.
PERFORATED CHESTNUT BASKET
Height 7| in., diameter 7 in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
COFFEE JUC
Jasper. Lilac ground
Figure of "Time" in medallion
Height 8.1 'in., width 81 in.
Victoria and A Ibert Museum.
The Wedgwood "Russian Service" 91
Island in the Royal Park at Windsor ; No. 9, View in the Royal Gardens
at Kew ; No. 14, View of Denbigh Castle, in the County of the same
name, the property of the Crown ; No. 28, View of Hurst Castle, Hamp-
shire, the property of the Crown ; No. 30, View of Brivals Castle, Glouces-
tershire, the property of the Crown ; No. 33, View of Rhudland Castle,
Flintshire, the property of the Crown ; No. 34, View of Flint Castle,
Flintshire, the property of the Crown; No. 41, View of Chester Castle,
Cheshire, the property of the Crown ; No. 45, View of Lanstephan Castle,
Carmarthenshire, the property of the Crown ; No. 92, View of a part
of the lake and island in the Royal Gardens at Kew ; No. 95, View of a
part of the Stables of the Lodge, Windsor ; No. 96, View of the Lodge
in the Great Park at Windsor ; No. 115, View of a part of Moat Island
in the Great Park at Windsor ; No. 134, View of Virginia Water, Windsor ;
No. 135, View of the Cascade, Windsor ; No. 136, View of the Grotto,
Windsor ; No. 144, View of the Mosque in the Royal Gardens at Kew ;
No. 196, View of Virginia Water, Windsor ; No. 204, View near the Lodge
in the Great Park at Windsor.
The actual enamelling of the service, together with
the borders, and the frogs, which were painted separately
as a badge on each piece, was executed by a number of
enamellers working under the general direction of Bentley
in the London workshops. After the completion of the
service some of the best of these enamellers were employed,
either in London or at the Etruria works, in painting
the earthenware services with the various types of
enamelled borders to which we have already referred
(see pp. 83-84).
The progress of Wedgwood's ideas and methods
in the decoration of his general earthenware services
is shown in the most interesting and instructive manner
when we compare the designs which were used on his
table-ware printed in Liverpool by Sadler and Green.,
with the simple floral borders based on our common
English flowers that were so extensively used, and as
a third style the heavier and more ornate border patterns
copied or adapted from Greek and Roman pottery which
92 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
were~successively introduced. Each of these styles was
widely popular in its time, and they were all applied
to the table-services in such a way as to bring fresh
reputation to Wedgwood's domestic pottery.
When the Russian Service was completed, in 1774,
it was exhibited for some time in the London show-rooms
of the firm in Greek Street, Soho, and the well-known
gossip, Mrs. Delany,1 left a brief account of it which
is worth quoting for its liveliness of description : —
" I am just returned from viewing the Wedgwood ware that is to
be sent to the Empress of Russia. It consists, I believe, of as many
pieces as there are days in the year, if not hours. They are displayed
at a house in Greek Street, Soho, called Portland House. There are three
rooms below, and two above, filled with it, laid out on tables ; everything
that can be wanted to serve a dinner. The ground, the common ware,
pale brimstone, the drawings in purple, the borders a wreath of leaves,
the middle of each piece a particular view of all the remarkable places
in the King's dominions, neatly executed. I suppose it will come to a
princely price ; it is well for the manufacturer, which I am glad of, as
his ingenuity and industry deserve encouragement."
There can be no doubt that the exhibition of the
service in London was a fine advertisement for the manu-
facturers of Etruria, for many other splendid things
were on view in the rooms as well as the service, so that
if Wedgwood's pottery had been popular in England
before, it gained immensely in reputation in the fashion-
able world by this display of the extensive and extra-
ordinary service made to the commands of an Empress.
The service was dispatched to Russia in 1774, at the
close of this exhibition in London, and the Empress
Catherine is said to have shown it with pride to Lord
1 Mary Granville Delany (1700-88), wife of Patrick Delany, a friend of Swift's.
She was a great favourite with George III. and Queen Charlotte, who gave her a
small house at Windsor and a pension after the death of her bosom friend the Dowager
Duchess of Portland.
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The Wedgwood " Russian Service ': 93
Malmesbury, the British Minister, when he visited the
Palace in 1795. It may be added that some few years
ago (1909) the late Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II., lent a
large portion of the service to the firm of Josiah Wedg-
wood and Sons, Ltd., and its exhibition in Conduit Street,
London, attracted almost as much interest and attention
as its first public display in Greek Street, in 1774.
CHAPTER X
THE STAFFORDSHIRE LUSTRE POTTERY
THE Wedgwoods of Etruria, as well as a number
of other potters in Staffordshire, made extensive
decorative use of platinum — a metal which attracted
considerable attention in scientific circles in England
and other countries during the latter half of the eighteenth
century, in consequence of the exploitation of the mineral
deposits containing platinum and some of the rarer
allied metals usually found in association with it, which
occur in various regions of South America. It was first
described as a compact metal by William Watson,1
who had been able to conduct experiments on some
samples obtained by an explorer, Charles WTood, who
had acquired a number of specimens at Carthagena,
in Colombia, South America, probably as a scientific
curiosity. It was more exactly and fully described
by Scheffer, in the Memoirs of the Stockholm Academy
for 1752, in a communication entitled " On White-gold,
or the seventh Metal, termed in Spanish ' platina del
Pinto,' ' that is, small silver of Pinto (platina, diminu-
tive of plata, the Spanish for silver, while the term
del Pinto had been added to signify its place of origin,
because it had been first discovered in the gold-bearing
sands of that river).
The South American deposits of platinum appear
1 " Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London," 1750.
94
COVERED CREAM BOWL AND LADLE
Gold lustre on "pearl" body
Height 6 in., width 7£ in.
Ladle— Length 6 in.
GOLD LUSTRE TWIG BASKET
Height 3£ in., diameter 7| in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
nytuif///
The Staffordshire Lustre Pottery 95
to have been the only sources of supply until the important
deposits were discovered in Russia and Siberia about
1823. An important scientific expedition sent into the
Ural Mountain regions by the St. Petersburg Academy,
and conducted by the celebrated Alexander Humboldt,
with the chemists Gustave Rose and Ehrenberg, in 1829,
fully investigated these deposits, which in due course
were exploited for their wealth.
One of the earliest industrial applications of this
rare metal, platinum, was its use by various English
potters in the production of all kinds of pottery articles
for domestic use, enriched with a thin deposit of shining
metallic platinum, so that at a cursory glance they might
easily be mistaken for vessels of silver-plate. In an
earlier chapter we have referred to the constant and
systematic borrowing by the potter, of shapes and designs
invented by the metal - worker and most appropriate
to his technique. Now the way was clear for the pro-
duction of pottery candlesticks, teapots, jugs, coffee-
pots and similar articles for domestic use, which were
thinly coated with bright platinum, fired to the glaze,
so that they almost require to be handled in order to
distinguish them from the metal pieces they simulate,
when their weight at once betrays them. (See Plates
facing pp. 96 and 98.)
For its use in this method of pottery decoration the
platinum was prepared in a condition of minute sub-
division by precipitating it from its solution in aqua-
regia. This finely divided platinum was repeatedly
washed in water to remove all traces of acid, and was
then poured into an oily fluid or menstruum (prepared
by dissolving sulphur and Venice turpentine in ordinary
96 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
turpentine), to which oil of lavender was added, as re-
quired, to thin the mixed fluids to a suitable working
consistency for the pottery decorator.
Such a preparation can be applied to the surface
of finished glazed pottery with a camel-hair pencil, and
after this painted or coated pottery has been fired to
a low red heat in a potter's muffle-kiln (just as ordinary
gilding is fired), the glaze is completely covered and dis-
guised by a solid brightly reflecting film of metallic
platinum burnt into its surface.
By such means the entire surface of the article could
be coated with metal if desired, but an interesting depar-
ture was taken in the introduction of patterns to diversify
the metallic surfaces. The simplest patterns used for
this purpose consisted of little more than a series of wavy
or interlacing lines (recalling the fashion of the vermicelle
gilding on the porcelains of Sevres), where the applied
platinum preparation had been wiped out with a sharpened
stick before it was fired to the glaze. More definite and
elaborate patterns of trees, with birds in their flowering
branches and so forth, were contrived by the aid of what
is known as a " resist." When this last - mentioned
method is followed a pattern is painted on the fired glaze,
or it may be transferred from a print taken off an engraved
copper-plate, in a " resist " medium of honey or sugar
syrup (glycerine was often used for this purpose in later
days), and the platinum preparation is applied over this
in a thin and even layer.
The piece of pottery which has been so far prepared
is afterwards washed m a bath of water and gently
rubbed with a flock of cotton-wool while it is immersed,
when the coating of platinum preparation peels away
'SILVER LUSTRE1' CANDLESTICK
"Pearl" Ware with platinum
Pattern scraped out before firing
Mark : Impressed " WEDGWOOD "
Height 6 in., width (base) 3 [ in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Staffordshire Lustre Pottery 97
exactly where the " resist " had been applied. The article
is then dried in a gentle warmth, in a place as free from
dust as possible, and is finally fired in the ordinary
muffle-kiln. After the kiln has cooled the pottery is
found to be coated with a solid film of bright platinum,
except where the " resist " had been applied, for those
features of the design still exhibit the unaltered colour
of the glazed pottery.
In addition to its widespread use on the cream-colour
and " pearl " wares during the later years of the eighteenth
century, this silvery looking film of platinum was fre-
quently applied over a canary-yellow glaze, one of the
popular inventions of the period. The simple jugs,
teapots, and similar examples decorated with this com-
bination are esteemed among collectors of the minor
earthenwares of the period — more, I think, than their
merits or beauty warrant.
Another of these popular shining metallic effects,
this time resembling brightly burnished copper, was
obtained by the application to the pottery of a solution
of gold l prepared by a similar method to that used
for platinum. By its application to the ordinary glazed
red terra-cotta pottery all kinds of table ware, but
especially teapots, jugs, and coffee-pots — which present,
at the first glance, the most deceptive resemblance to
vessels fashioned in bright copper — were manufactured
in the Staffordshire and other British potteries, in great
quantities. Usually the entire surface of such articles
1 This preparation was the stepping-stone to the production of what is known
as " liquid " gold, which has now replaced, to a very considerable extent, the older
methods of gilding for all but the more expensive kinds of pottery and porcelain.
Even the Chinese and Japanese potters make great use of " liquid " gold in the
decoration of their contemporary pottery.
H
gS Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
displays this brilliant sheen, though there are many
specimens to be met with (still, I fear, manufactured,
for they abound everywhere) in which one or more
bands of white slip have been applied on the red clay
before the pieces were fired to the " biscuit " state.
After they had been glazed and fired, fine patterns in
simple open scrollery or in interlacing meanders were
painted over the white bands in the " lustre " preparation,
and when this was finally fired in the muffle-kiln, a purple
stain was produced over the white, which modifies and
softens the tone of the golden or copper-coloured films.
Excellent examples of all these varieties of the
Staffordshire " lustre " pottery have been conveniently
grouped in wall cases in Room 138 of the Ceramic Depart-
ment of the Victoria and Albert Museum. This choice
and instructive collection will repay the most careful
examination, as it comprises examples of practically
all the types and forms that are known. Such an assem-
blage of selected examples deserves to be better known
among collectors of our English wares, for it illustrates
the history and development of this simple but intriguing
branch of our decorative pottery as no verbal description
could conceivably do. Moreover, such collections are
of importance as a standing testimony to the skill and
resource which these Staffordshire potters and decorators
displayed in the use of somewhat unpromising materials,
during the first glow of their invention and before they
had become hackneyed by trivial or unworthy use.
An additional application of the " gold lustre " which
merits attention is its use on the ordinary cream-colour
and " pearl ': wares. In these examples the purple
stain which the gold imparts to the glaze is more evident
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The Staffordshire Lustre Pottery 99
than in the metallic-looking specimens produced on a
red body. The bulb pots, shell dessert dishes and plates,
and the " twig " baskets and " nautilus " centrepieces
provide us with many favourite and beautiful examples
of this use of " gold lustre." The general effect pre-
sented by such pieces is that of a rich but subtle purple
ground colour (the stain) with iridescent films of " shot "
metal gleaming upon it. The rounded or softly modelled
surfaces of the pottery in these shapes lend additional
value to the lustrous effect, and when such dishes and
open-work baskets, filled with fruit and nuts, appeared
on the dark polished table or snowy napery they were
charming objects indeed ! (See Plate facing p. 94.)
CHAPTER XI
WEDGWOOD'S PUBLIC WORK
THE labours and triumphs of Josiah Wedgwood as a
potter which exercised such a far-reaching influence
on contemporary pottery manufacture at home and
abroad, though they represent the main streams of his
activities, were diversified by much patient and valuable
toil in a number of public services to his native district
of North Staffordshire and to the country at large, which
merit consideration from all students of the man and
his epoch.
The vital question of education in the widest sense
as it concerned himself and his children seems to have
been ever present to his mind. His numerous note-
books and his correspondence abound in references to
the subject, as well as to the plans he so persistently
carried into effect for acquiring a library of scientific
books, collections of shells, fossils, seaweeds, and other
specimens of natural history.
While he was so fully alive to the value of the widest
education for himself and his children he seems to have
been equally desirous that his workpeople and the
labouring population of the district generally should
share in these advantages as far as possible. He realized
more fully than the majority of his compeers in England
that a workman whose natural powers had been developed
by learning to read, write, and cipher would be more
100
A MADONNA
"Pearl" Ware, tinted
Height 14? 'in.
Victoria and Albeit Museum.
Wedgwood's Public Work 101
competent to make and decorate the superior pottery
he desired to send out into the world, and in spite of
much discouragement such as usually attends the efforts
of pioneers he persevered in these labours to the end
of his life with ever-increasing success.
A free school for the children of Burslem had been
established in 1749, while Wedgwood was living at the
other end of the Potteries during his early partnerships,
and in 1760 the principal manufacturers petitioned the
Lords of the Manor for a piece of the waste land lying
near the centre of the town, on which they might erect
a school building, as it was found that two-thirds of the
children of the labouring population were put directly
to work, as soon as they were able to undertake the simplest
forms of labour in a factory, without book learning of
any kind. In furtherance of this project the principal
manufacturers in the town subscribed £10 each, and
Josiah Wedgwood, his elder brother Thomas, as well
as their relative, Burslem Wedgwood,1 each gave this
amount. For some reason which has never been clearly
explained, this project of erecting a schoolhouse seems
to have been abandoned at the time, and in its place
a new market hall or shambles was built in the central
square of the town.2
Fittingly enough, as testimony to the need of a school,
there is a reference in John Wesley's " Journal " which
mentions the impressions made on his mind during his
visit to the town in March, 1760, when he conducted
1 This Christian name, Burslem, has led to some confusion, but it is quite clear
that this well-known potter was so christened.
2 An illustration of this building, showing also a corner of " The Big House," the
residence of Josiah Wedgwood's cousins, will be found in Mr. Frank Falkner's work :
" The Wood Family of Burslem." Chapman & Hall, Ltd., London, 1912.
102 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
two open-air preachings in the market-place, in the
evening hours after the potters had ceased work :
" Deep attention sat on every face, though as yet accom-
panied by deep ignorance." Writing some four years
later during a subsequent preaching tour, he then con-
sidered the " poor potters more civilized people than the
better sort (so called) at Congleton."
Concurrently with these efforts for the provision of
some better education for the labouring population of
the district, in which Wedgwood's interest never slackened
and which has been transmitted to his descendants in
full measure, his mind was busied in devising schemes
for the improved technical training of all his work-
people, such as the plate and dish makers, but more
especially those who were intended to become painters
and modellers. In a letter to Bentley, written about
this time, he makes some pregnant observations on these
matters :—
" A waking notion haunts me very much of late, which is, the be-
ginning of a regular drawing and modelling school to train up artists
for ourselves.1 I would pick up some likely boys of about twelve years
old, and take them as apprentices until they are twenty or twenty-one,
and when they had made some tolerable proficiency, they should practise
with outlines of figures upon Vases which I should send to you to be
filled up. . . . When you wanted any hands you could draft them out
of this School."
Meantime their only course was to follow the example
of the earlier English porcelain factories, such as those
at Bow, Chelsea, and Worcester, and employ such suit-
able workers as could be secured from among the Bir-
mingham japanners or the fan-painters, coach-painters
1 The same idea was acted upon at Worcester and Derby, as well as at Sevres,
Vienna, Copenhagen, St. Petersburg, and other famous porcelain works in Europe.
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(To he used as bulb pot)
" Pearl '' earthenware, with grey
mottled stripes, black bands
and gilt ornament
Height 6[ in., diameter 4;j in.
Victoria and A Ibert Museum.
Wedgwood's Public Work 103
and letterers of London. Quite a considerable number
of male and female painters were from time to time
recruited from among those who were already experienced
in such callings, and they were employed in painting
the " encaustic " vases and other ornamental pottery
of that type on the black, buff, and red bodies, but more
especially for enamelling the coloured borders and other
excellent patterns with which his fine earthenware services
were decorated when that important branch of his
business was fully developed.
Another branch of Josiah Wedgwood's public activities
which was of the first importance to the thriving industries
of North Staffordshire, and incidentally brought about
something like a revolution in the social life of its people,
was concerned with the construction and maintenance
of better means of communication. There were two
related branches of this question : (1) the construction
of better roads between the various pottery towns so
as to link them into a whole and include the immediately
surrounding agricultural and mining districts, and (2)
the improvement of means of communication with the
principal seaports, particularly those on the west coast,
as well as with the more important manufacturing and
commercial centres, so that Stoke and Burslem should
be brought nearer to Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham,
Bristol and London. All the important pottery manu-
facturers of North Staffordshire, who were striving so
assiduously at this time to increase their business with
the important commercial centres in the British Isles
or overseas, had become convinced by actual experience
of the imperative necessity for much better means of
transport for their imported clays, flints and other essential
104 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
materials, as well as for their own finished and fragile
manufactures which had become an important feature
of our international commerce and were soon to be
known all over the world.
Ways and communications between the various
pottery towns and villages were thoroughly bad, while
the shortest route from the important town of Burslem
to any principal turnpike road was either to join the
through road from Liverpool to London at the hamlet
of Lawton on the borders of the Cheshire plain, or the
Newcastle and Uttoxeter turnpike at Stoke-on-Trent—
an important artery of traffic which was continued
beyond Uttoxeter by way of Derby, Leicester, and Bedford
to London. The ancient bridle - lanes and roadways
to Bewdley and Bridgnorth, on the banks of the Severn,
were still extensively used for the pack-horse traffic
by which goods were conveyed in either direction. From
contemporary records left by Wedgwood and his fellow
manufacturers it appears that the journey from Burslem
to the Severn valley at either of these places and back
again occupied four days, and was by all accounts a rough
and exhausting business for man and beast.
Northwards from the district the roads appear to
have been in an even worse condition, if such a state
of things could be possible, for Arthur Young, the famous
agriculturist, writing of his " Tour into the North of
England," in 1768, says :—
" At Knutsford, it is impossible to describe these infernal roads in
terms adequate to their deserts.1 . . . The road thence to Newcastle-
under-Lyme is in general a paved causeway, as narrow as can be con-
1 It was on this roadway between Knutsford and Warrington that Josiah Wedg-
wood had his leg injured ; and it was while he was confined to bed, in Liverpool,
with this injury, that he made the acquaintance of Thomas Bentley.
: I
H 41
Wedgwood's Public Work 105
ceived, and cut into perpetual holes, some of them two feet deep measured
on the level ; a more dreadful road cannot be imagined, and wherever
the country is the least sandy the pavement is discontinued and the
ruts and holes are most execrable. I was forced to hire two men at one
place, to support my chaise from overthrowing, in turning out for a cart
of goods overthrown and almost buried. Let me persuade all travellers
to avoid this terrible country, which must either dislocate their bones
with broken pavements, or bury them in muddy sand."
He likewise describes the road from Newcastle-under-
Lyme to Burslem, via the ancient church at Wolstanton
and the descent to Longport, as being full of muddy
ruts cut deep in the clayey soil, while, as a general state-
ment of the conditions which prevailed throughout the
country, a writer in the Gentleman's Magazine declares
in 1752 : " A gentleman in the country, or a citizen in
London, thinks no more of visiting his relations than
of traversing the deserts of Nubia."
Notwithstanding this almost incredible state of affairs,
the first proposals for improving the local ways (roads
they could hardly be called), and joining them con-
veniently to the principal turnpike roads which passed
through the district or in its vicinity, met with deter-
mined opposition. The innkeepers of Newcastle-under-
Lyme were vehemently opposed to any such project,
because the main stream of traffic would thereby be
diverted from this ancient borough, where almost every
householder held a drink licence and provided accommo-
dation for travellers ; while the stupid conservatism of
the district so far prevailed that Wedgwood was unable
to carry a resolution at a public meeting held in the
Burslem market-place, to construct only four miles
of good paved road from that town to the main turn-
pike road which ran from Newcastle-under-Lyme to the
106 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
North. In the course of a few years, however, his per-
severance and that of his party among the manufacturers
gained the support of some of the most important land-
owners in the district, and an Act of Parliament was
obtained in 1763 which authorized the construction
of a length of turnpike road connecting the various
pottery towns, and which also brought about the better
paving of the villages. Even to this day the condition
of the roads throughout the district leaves much to be
desired, and one would need to borrow the language of
Arthur Young to express a fitting opinion of them after
heavy rains or snow.
The construction of a canal which should link the
waters of the Mersey with those of the Trent and enable
barges to pass from one to the other by way of " The
Potteries," had been under consideration for several
years before this time, and a preliminary survey to deter-
mine its most suitable course was carried out by James
Brindley (" the navigator," as he was commonly called
—hence our word " navvy ") in 1760, at the joint expense
of Earl Gower and Lord Anson, the most important
territorial magnates of North Staffordshire. The survey
was made and approved, but it was not until about
1765 that serious attempts were made to enlist public
support for Brindley's scheme, when in the December
of that year an open-air meeting was held at Wolseley
Bridge, below Stafford, at which Brindley explained
his plans and surveys to an assembly of the county
gentry. These were discussed and adopted by this
influential gathering, while it was at the same time resolved
that a Bill should be promoted and brought before
Parliament during its next session, in order to secure
vY\\\\\Ulllll Hfff//////
EMBOSSED AND PIERCED FRUIT DISH
' 'Pearl" body
Height 21 in., width 8 in.
LEAF PLATE
"Pearl" body, traced in green (under glaze)
Diameter 8 in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Wedgwood's Public Work 107
the necessary powers. Wedgwood, who was appointed
" Honorary Treasurer of the Undertaking," gave £1,000
as a contribution towards the preliminary expenses, and
further promised to subscribe for a large number of shares
in the " Grand Trunk Canal," as the waterway was to
be called. The Bill was passed through both Houses
of Parliament, in spite of somewhat formidable opposition,
and received the Royal Assent on May 14, 1766.
To inaugurate the actual work of construction with
fitting ceremony a general holiday was observed in Burslem
on July 26th of the same year. The first sod of the canal
on the Staffordshire section was dug by Wedgwood
on the hillside at Brownhills, below Burslem, amid
general rejoicings and festivities. A sheep was roasted
in the Burslem market-place for the poorer workpeople,
and at night there were bonfires for the populace and
many supper parties among the manufacturers — with
as much excitement and jollification as would have greeted
the announcement of a great naval victory over the
French or the Spaniards. The piercing of the canal
tunnel at Harecastle was a formidable undertaking for
those days, and proved a great hindrance to the work,
for the tunnel and its approaches were about eleven
years under construction before barges could pass through
it, so that Wedgwood must have been heartily relieved
when the canal was finished and open for regular traffic
through all its course.
In the intervening years he had bought the Ridge
House Estate and built on the lower part of it the works
at Etruria, with its extensive range of wharves for the
transport of his raw materials and finished pottery,
together with ample workshop accommodation, the best
Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
machinery, kilns and ovens and all other necessary
appliances. In addition he had completed a series of
catacombs where all the prepared clays could be " aged,"
each in its own place, from the simple red and buff terra-
cottas to the precious " jasper." At the time of its com-
pletion this Etruria factory was the most commodious
and convenient as well as the best planned and equipped
pottery manufactory in England or, probably, in Europe.
The business was partially removed to the new works
from the Burslem factory in 1769, but its transfer was
not completed until 1771. This was some few years
prior to the completion of the canal, which had brought
about the removal of the works to this more open and
advantageous site, where there was ample space for
such future extensions of the workshops as Wedgwood
and his partners could secure business to justify.
As a natural consequence, from the position which
Wedgwood had by this time attained as one of the principal
pottery manufacturers in the kingdom, and, indeed, in
Europe, he was impelled to expend much of his strength
and energy in conferences and negotiations, parliamentary
and extra-parliamentary, on the vexed questions which
concerned the commercial relations between Great Britain
and Ireland (at this time Ireland had its own parlia-
ment, sitting in Dublin, with separate Customs and
Excise duties) and those between Great Britain and
France. The hopes of men just then took on a most
roseate hue, for the more sanguine spirits among the
promoters of these measures looked forward to further
extensions of such a policy to all the nations of Europe
in succession.
In these important and intricate public affairs Wedg-
"MARBLED" VASE
Height lOf in.
Falcke Collection, British Museum.
Wedgwood's Public Work 109
wood represented, primarily, the general interests of
all the important pottery and porcelain manufacturers in
England. He had to work, in conjunction with others
who represented the textile trades of Lancashire and
Yorkshire, with the great ironmasters and those who
were concerned in the varied industries located in the
districts round Birmingham and Wolverhampton, and
the glass-makers of Stourbridge and Brierley Hill, as
well as with representative manufacturers from the lace
and hosiery trades of Nottingham and Leicester.
The individual interests of the members of such
a composite body of business men, drawn from a varied
assortment of trades which were located in different
parts of the country, were not to be reconciled very readily.
Much preliminary discussion and adjustment of ideas
had to take place before the various local Chambers
of Commerce could present a united front on these pro-
jected measures. Even the philosophic James Watt,
averse as he had always been to any active participation
in political agitation, came forward with a pamphlet
on the rational course of trade relations between Ireland
and Great Britain.
As we view this question now in long retrospect,
the gist of the difficulty would appear to have lain in
the fact that the Irish Parliament, sitting in Dublin
and legislating for Ireland alone, was determined to
pursue the policy of imposing highly-protective duties
on all imported manufactured goods from Great Britain.
By such measures it was believed that the existing Irish
manufacturing industries, with some others which it
was thought might be established, would be stimulated
and encouraged into prosperity, but, if these protective
no Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
duties alone should not prove sufficient for the purpose,
all the Irish manufacturers were to be still further en-
couraged by liberal bounties on all the manufactured
goods they could find markets for outside Ireland. Some
such alluring vision of the advocates of high protection
is as old as the kings of ancient Egypt, and has proved
an underlying cause of wars from the very dawn of
civilization. International commerce is viewed as a
bargain in which the advantages are to be mainly reaped
by one side, rather than as a free interchange of natural
products and manufactured goods to the reciprocal
advantage of both the peoples concerned, and the question
has to be fought out and determined afresh after every
period of international war or revolutionary turmoil.
The clamant difficulties and perplexities under which
the commerce of Europe is languishing at the present
moment, enable us to understand with greater clearness
what might otherwise seem obscure and devious in the
ideas and policy of Wedgwood and his colleagues during
the course of these negotiations.
The scheme which was finally elaborated by William
Pitt for the settlement of the trade relations between
Ireland and Great Britain had been under consideration
from the early months of 1784, and in January, 1785,
the " Eleven Resolutions " of the British Ministry were
forwarded to Dublin for consideration by the Irish
Government. They were laid before the Irish Parlia-
ment early in February, 1785, and were brought before
the British Parliament on the 22nd of the same
month.
Meantime, Wedgwood had discussed with many in-
fluential manufacturers and merchants the probable
"TERROR
White jasper bust on
pedestal of black basalt
Height 7 in.
Victoria and A Ibert Museum.
Wedgwood's Public Work in
effects which these resolutions might entail on the more
important of those English industries which felt their
position threatened.1 A working agreement was gradu-
ally arrived at among the manufacturers whose interests
were focused in Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Bristol,
Nottingham, and the other important commercial and
manufacturing districts, as to the line of action they
should pursue in opposition to these " Irish Resolutions."
In order that he might conduct these labours in the most
effective manner, Wedgwood left his works in charge of
his partners and settled himself for several months at
10, Great George Street, Westminster, in preparation
for the contest which was about to open before the Par-
liamentary Committees. Here he had the assistance
of one of his sons and of Alexander Chisholm, who acted
as his secretary in the countless interviews and discussions
that took place.
He seems to have been troubled and annoyed by the
supineness or selfishness of some of his colleagues who
returned home to attend to their businesses, or, like
Matthew Boulton, proposed to set out on lengthy tours
of pleasure and business. Wedgwood wrote to Boulton
on May 1, 1785 :-
" We all know any house may be brought to remove, if those who
made it will come forward as they ought to do. For myself I have
only one plain simple line of conduct to pursue. I have promised those
who sent me hither to do my best to prevent the Irish Resolutions passing
into law. I have done so hitherto & will continue in the same, though
I am even left to do alone."
1 The readiness of the manufacturing interests to feel or counterfeit alarm at any
proposal to reduce the existing duties on foreign goods is shown by a circular issued
by some of the master-potters in 1803. The heading of this document reads :
" Some Reasons for the Alarm taken by the Manufacturers of Porcelain and Earthen-
ware on the occasion of the proposed reduction of £59 8s. 6d. per cent, from the
duty on the importation of Oriental Porcelain, leaving it 50 per cent."
ii2 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
Wedgwood appealed to some of the principal London
merchants and traders, but without much success, and
the reasons he gives for his failure are illuminating as
well as amusing :—
" The principal glover has a contract under Government and does
not appear. The button-maker makes buttons for his Majesty &
therefore he is tied fast to his Majesty's minister's button-hole. In short
the minister has found so many button and loop holes to fasten them
to himself, that few of the principal manufacturers are left at liberty
to serve their country." x
In spite of Wedgwood's efforts the twenty resolutions
were passed through both Houses of the British Parlia-
ment, but, as it happened, they \vere bitterly opposed
in Ireland, and only passed the Irish House of Commons
by a majority of nineteen, and the Government, regarding
this as a rebuff, abandoned the Bill for the time being.
Incidentally, Wedgwood's public activity in these
matters had been so important that it temporarily
ruined his trade over the greater part of Ireland. His
Dublin agent, Esau Clarke, declared that his business
was ruined. " Many of the people of quality that formerly
dealt with me will buy no more on account of your opposing
the Irish Propositions, and many others will not buy
from me because I cannot sell as cheap as the other
houses," while one nobleman said " that if more of Wedg-
wood's ware came to Ireland, if the public did not break
them he would," a truly Irish form of revenge, seeing
that the Irish Government would have had to pay for
the damage.
1 Wedgwood to Boulton, May 1, 1785. See Miss Meteyard's " Life of Josiah
Wedgwood," vol. ii., p. 547.
GUP AND MlLK.JUG
Floral decoration in enamel colours
Cup — Height 2f in., diameter 3 in.
Jug — Height 5£ in., diameter 4 in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
•
•
CHAPTER XII
WEDGWOOD AND HIS PARTNERS
WHEN Josiah Wedgwood, as a youth of nineteen,
and hardly recovered from a serious attack of
smallpox and its wearisome sickness, left the paternal
factory by the churchyard at Burslem on the conclusion
of his term of apprenticeship to his elder brother, Thomas,
he is believed to have commenced in life as a manu-
facturer by entering into a partnership with John Harrison
and Thomas Alders l (whose name is quite as frequently
given as Aldersea). At this time (1752) the firm carried
on a business as potters in one of the hive of small pot-
banks clustered together about Cliff Bank — which affords
a wide prospect over the town of Stoke-on-Trent, past the
old church and across the district called Fenton, from
the north-west, where the main road climbs up to Harts-
hill on its way to Newcastle-under-Lyme and the North.
In this insignificant factory, which can have consisted
of little more than a couple of small ovens, together with
the necessary sheds and drying kilns for preparing the
clay, and others which served as workshops for the potters,
the partners are reputed to have manufactured, as the
staple of their business, the ordinary scratched-blue
salt-glaze pottery which, though fallen from its high
1 " Mr. John Aldersea, at the manufactory at Stoke, where is now the Top Square,
and his brother, Thomas, of the Honey Wall, were successful in making Mottled and
Cloudy and Tortoise-shell, with lead ore and salt-glaze, and Shining Black of a very
good quality." Shaw, Simeon : " History of the Staffordshire Potteries," p. 175.
I 113
ii4 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
estate, retained some of its popularity in the country
districts of England and Wales. Wedgwood's inbred
passion for experiment and innovation would seem to
have shown itself prominently even amid such unpromising
surroundings, for this partnership, after enduring for
some two years (1752-4), is believed to have come to
an end because Harrison, the moneyed partner, was
unwilling to provide the additional capital required in
the business if it was to make further growth. He was,
by all accounts, too eager for immediate profits, and
quite unable to appreciate the ultimate value to the
business of Wedgwood's skill, industry and enterprise.
Very fortunately for Wedgwood, as it proved in the
sequel, as well as for the growing industry which had
become centred in North Staffordshire, a much more
satisfactory and valuable opening for his talents and
energy was ready to his hand. Thomas Whieldon, of
Fenton Low, one of the most skilful and intelligent
potters of his generation, and a man whose integrity
was proverbial in the district, invited young Wedgwood
to join him as a working partner in his business at Fenton.
The agreement which was entered into for this partner-
ship has been preserved, and has been deservedly reprinted
many times, as it is a fine testimony to the character
of both men. It sets forth how Wedgwood was to have
full liberty to experiment and to practise such secret pro-
cesses of the craft as he might desire to keep to himself ;
a stipulation which might soon have led to friction, or un-
pleasantness at least, between lesser men, whereas this
partnership seems to have been a happy one, successful in its
working and prosperous in its results, from beginning to end.
The Whieldon-Wedgwood partnership lasted for its
WINE COOLER
Grey stoneware with
black bands and handles
Height 7 in., diameter 8 in.
British Museum.
Wedgwood and His Partners 115
agreed term of five years (1753-8), and every studious
admirer of Wedgwood and his pottery sees in their
fruitful collaboration one of the determining factors
in Wedgwood's opening career as a master-potter.
Now, at last, he was able to give free rein to his ideas
and experiments with the certainty that they would
gain in value from the sympathetic but more mature
mind of his senior partner. Whieldon was many years
older than Wedgwood (though he actually outlived him),
and had been established in business at Fenton Low
for some twenty years before this partnership was entered
upon — indeed almost from the time of Wedgwood's birth.
He had already secured a thriving and prosperous business
as a potter, for, in addition to his manufacture of all
sorts of domestic wares for local consumption, an important
section of his trade consisted in the production of a great
variety of little personal trinkets and other ornamental
articles such as dainty snuff-boxes, tobacco-boxes, shoe-
buckles, handles for knives and forks, small perforated
strainers for liquids, tea-caddy spoons, and an endless
variety of such pottery small-wares. He carried collec-
tions of these articles in his saddle-bags when he rode
on his business journeys to Birmingham, Walsall, Wolver-
hampton, and other towns in the Black Country, where
he vended them, personally, among the metal-mounters
and other tradesmen by whom they were completed.
They were skilfully mounted in white metal, in gilding
metal, or in pinchbeck,1 and other golden-coloured alloys,
1 A word now generally used to designate a cheap imitation of any material or
person of solid worth. The name was coined from that of a Christopher Pinchbeck,
of Birmingham, to describe an alloy, consisting of 9 parts of copper with 1 part of
zinc, which was extensively employed in the manufacture of watch-cases, jewellery,
and small ornaments and trinkets of every kind. It was, in a word, a popular
" imitation gold " of the day.
n6 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
or they were set in light open-work frames of faceted
and burnished steel. The variety and beauty of such
articles as they were made by Whieldon and Wedgwood
are said to have increased this branch of their business
to a very considerable extent. This was due not only
to the novel effects of colour and surface-marking dis-
played on the pottery, but to the precision and accuracy
with which the pieces were manufactured — a qualifica-
tion which is of the first importance in such articles as
are intended for " mounting " in metal, unless an undue
proportion of the pieces is to be broken in the process
of mounting.
It is to the period of the Whieldon partnership, too,
that writers have generally attributed the experimental
work by which WedgAVOod brought his famous " green
glaze " to perfection. The snuff-boxes, tobacco-boxes,
and spectacle-cases for personal use, and the modelled
leaf-dishes used for presenting pickles, sweets, and pre-
serves at the table, together with the neat and precisely
fashioned tea-caddies, teapots, cups and saucers, sugar-
basins, jugs, and other small articles, are fortunately
too well known to call for detailed description here.
Sometimes these articles were left quite plain, with no
other enrichment than that provided by the coloured
glazes, but the more popular types were those decorated
with " sprigged " or embossed ornament, and then gaily
enlivened by a coating of bright green glaze, or with
yellow and amber glazes (each used in two or three
shades) in addition. Surviving examples of these popular
"cauliflower" and "pineapple" earthenwares, as they
were called, are greatly prized even yet by admirers
and collectors of the Staffordshire pottery of the eighteenth
'.1
2
~
5.
u
o
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u
~
5
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Wedgwood and His Partners 117
century, and they deserve to be so treasured, for they
represent the worthy first-fruits of Wedgwood's taste
and skill. (See Plate facing p. 30.)
All these kinds and descriptions of English pottery
have enjoyed the widest popularity from the time of
their first introduction, for besides their widespread use
in these islands they were exported in vast quantities
to almost every part of the world, so that they proved
a valuable addition to the stock-in-trade of pottery
types made by the Staffordshire potters. It is both
amusing and interesting to speculate now on the quan-
tity of such articles, mostly of the " useful " kind, that
must have been sent forth from the Staffordshire kilns
since the time when the wares of this class were first
manufactured on the commercial scale. Wherever
English earthenware has penetrated as an article of regular
trade these bright and simple productions have been
in the forefront of the invasion ; indeed, many of the
specimens which are now treasured in the private col-
lections and museums of these islands have been brought
back to the land of their origin from various parts of
Europe and from still more remote places in Asia and
America.
The varieties of gaily coloured pottery with which
the honoured name of Thomas Whieldon is emphatically
associated include the several kinds which were produced
by the skilful application of bright and richly variegated
parti-coloured glazes on white or light buff pottery.
These are commonly spoken of by their old names as
" clouded," " mottled," or " tortoise-shell " wares because
of the rich dappled effects of broken colour in which their
charm resides and which have brought them such lasting
n8 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
popularity. " Whieldon ware " has become the accepted
designation among collectors and dealers for the earthen-
wares which are glorified by this style of decoration,
no matter who may have been the actual maker of .any
particular example, and though there are many instances
in which the crude colour or the imperfection of the glazing
ought to forbid such an ascription. Unfortunately this
loose nomenclature is almost unavoidable, for potters*
marks are all but unknown on articles of this class, and
without their aid it is impossible for us to name with
certainty the maker of any given specimen. The usual
consequence has followed that the best makers of the
wares of this type have had many inferior specimens
" fathered " upon them ; but so many choice specimens
have been safely handed down to us and are now accessible
in museums that we need not dwell further on the merits
of the wares.
Before taking our final leave of this interesting branch
of the English pottery with which Wedgwood was closely
concerned, we ought to mention the modelled animals
and birds, which sometimes recall rather comically the
well-known Oriental examples from which they seem
to have been imitated, and the homely and jolly old
" Tobys," for these were frequently coloured in this
style with great skill and the most harmonious effect.
Whieldon, with his modelled " Squires " and other fine
gentlemen, was a famous maker of these popular drinking
vessels, and Wedgwood must have had a hand in their
production. Who does not recall the exclamation of
Gabriel Vardon in " Barnaby Rudge " when anything
disturbed his jovial equanimity, " Pass me Toby, my
dear ! "
VENUS OR SUSANNAH AT A
FOUNTAIN
Height 3| in.,
width 2$ in.
OMPHALE
Waxen white biscuit
(Circa 1775)
Height 32 in., width 2\ in.
FEMALE FIGURE
Waxen white biscuit
(Circa 1775)
Height 32 in., width 2\ in.
British Museum.
Wedgwood and His Partners 119
To return to the personal history of the potters.
When the agreed term of partnership came to an end in
1759 Whieldon and Wedgwood decided to separate,
one likes to believe, with mutual esteem and some regrets
on either side. The more cautious or more conservative
senior partner continued the business he had established
at Fenton. Here he lived and worked to a ripe old age,
in growing prosperity and repute. He filled the office
of High Sheriff for the county of Staffordshire in 1786,
and on his death in 1798 he was buried at Stoke-on-Trent.
He had lived to see a number of the young potters he
had helped to train and launch into the trade, such as
Josiah Spode, Robert Garner, John Barker, and William
Greatbach, established in thriving works of their own.
Josiah Wedgwood, revolving in his mind the prospect of
fresh fields of invention and research, settled once again
in Burslem, the home of his youth, and now to become
the scene of his labours and inventions until after he had
built the model works at Etruria, where his descendants
carry on his traditions and still manufacture the "green-
glaze " ware of his youth.
Josiah Wedgwood's manufacturing enterprise at the
Ivy House works, Burslem, appears to have flourished
from its inception, which can occasion no surprise when
we bear in mind the practical and commercial experience
he had acquired during his partnerships at Stoke and
at Fenton. During the latter, especially, he had travelled
about the country in order to extend the Whieldon-
Wedgwood business and that he might acquaint himself
at first hand with the requirements of the metal-mounters
and pottery dealers in the important towns of the Mid-
lands, with whom their trade was chiefly conducted.
120 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
So rapidly did his trade increase from the time of
this new foundation that in 1762, only three years after
he had entered upon the occupation of the Ivy House
premises, he rented a more commodious and better-
equipped factory in close proximity, called the Brick
House works. Shortly after this extension of working
room he was joined by a first cousin, Thomas Wedgwood,
who some years before had migrated from Staffordshire,
and had worked as an operative potter at the Worcester
China Manufactory (founded 1751) during the eventful
opening years of that famous undertaking. Thomas
Wedgwood became a partner with Josiah in one branch
of the business only, viz., that concerned in the pro-
duction of " useful ' pottery. He appears to have
been a valuable ally in the experiments for the manu-
facture of the improved cream-coloured earthenware
which was of almost paramount importance to them
both, for within a few years it became the backbone
and mainstay of their enterprise. Both men were practical
potters, noted for their manufacturing skill, and each
of them had already gained a wide and varied experience,
so that their friendly rivalry quickly bore fruit in the
forms and decorations of the table adjuncts and services
with which they sought to win the patronage of the
well-to-do classes.
It must always be a matter for regret that no marks
have been recorded by which the pottery made by Wedg-
wood at this period of his career can be absolutely
identified.1 A distinctive mark, stamped in the ware,
does not appear to have been used by Wedgwood until
1 Some of the large red-ware teapots with bands of engine turning made at this
time by Wedgwood bear sham Chinese seal marks impressed under the base.
TABLE-CENTRE
Cream colour, enamelled
Height 23f in., diameter 14£ in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
"
':!-.i.vJ:
Wedgwood and His Partners 121
a later time, and we are forced to rely more than we
like on gossip and tradition for our ideas of wiiat was
actually accomplished during the early years of the
Burslem business. The relief tiles in white stoneware,
mentioned by Simeon Shaw, have never been identified,1
and they are probably no longer in existence, for the
old works and residences in which they might have
been found have long since been swept away. That
Wedgwood continued the manufacture of salt-glazed
pottery both in plain white finish on embossed shapes
as well as with scratched-blue decoration seems undoubted,
while the embossed patterns on the rims of some of the
plates and bread trenchers in his early cream-coloured
earthenware are similar to those which were in general
use on the white salt-glaze wares of Staffordshire at the
time.
The workshop methods that Wedgwood had observed
in use in other trades as he had journeyed about the
country in pursuit of his business were, to some extent,
introduced in his own factories as soon as he was free
to organize the methods of work to his heart's content.
More and more, as we have seen, he strove to perfect
his workmen in some particular branch of the series
of operations, and then to retain them in full employment
in that branch. Thus, while the general manufacture
and finish of his pottery was improved, the output per
man was also increased in consequence of the greater
facility that was acquired in some particular task and
the saving of time that was brought about by there
being fewer changes in the day's work. Such im-
provements in organization, trifling as they may seem
i Unless the two lately in the collection of Dr. E. J. Sidebotham are examples.
122 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
in detail, made for greater economy and certainty of
production.
All Wedgwood's experience had taught him the value
of strengthening his position as a master-potter by securing
the co-operation of suitable men as partners in business
who could relieve him of a share of the duties and respon-
sibilities entailed by his numerous avocations, for he
generally had to act as first -workman, salesman, and
general manager in one. By this time his skill and
repute as a potter had begun to be noised abroad beyond
the borders of Staffordshire, and he rejoiced greatly
when he was able to secure the help of Thomas Bentley
who was to become his life-long partner and most in-
timate bosom friend. Bentley possessed no knowledge
of pottery manufacture except such as he may have
acquired from books, for at this time he was a merchant
trading and residing in Liverpool. He was a notable
man of affairs among the public-spirited Liverpool
citizens of the day, and had a local reputation as a
scholar, for he had read widely in European literature
and was fairly proficient in the use of several European
languages, and what was remarkable in a man of this
type, he afterwards proved himself as keenly interested
and as acute in some branches of natural science and
invention as Wedgwood was.
The circumstances which brought about this intimacy
and thus led to their close personal friendship and their
partnership in business are worth recalling. On one
of his numerous business journeys to Liverpool Wedg-
wood had the ill-luck to meet with an accident on the
road which caused him such acute suffering from his
" game " leg, as he often called it, that when he reached
IVORY BOX CONVEX MEDALLION GLASS SCENT-BOTTLE
With Jasper Ware (About 1786) Set with Jasper Ware
medallions Design by Miss Crewe cameos
Height 2^ in., Height 4 in. Height 4? in.
width 2] in.
BASALT PLAQUETTE
With encaustic painting
British Museum. Height 2!j in., width 3} in.
Wedgwood and His Partners 123
his inn at Liverpool he had to be assisted to bed. A local
surgeon of some celebrity was called in, and he, " pitying
the situation of Mr. Wedgwood, a stranger and so much
afflicted, introduced Mr. Bentley to him as a companion
whose intelligence, vivacity, and philanthropy would
quicken the lingering hours of pain." Bentley, with the
utmost good will and cheerfulness, did all that he could
to render the traveller's situation less uncomfortable
and lonely, and with such success that in the course of
a few days Wedgwood was able to get about a little
during the best part of the day and transact his more
urgent affairs. Such an abiding impression had been
made on Wedgwood's mind by the cheerful disposition
and engaging liveliness in conversation of his companion,
as well as by a considerable general agreement in ideas
and principles, that an enduring friendship seems to have
sprung up between them then and there, which finally
brought about their association in the making of pottery
and the other contingent businesses in which they became
partners.
For some years the principal business tie took the
form of a Liverpool agency for Wedgwood's import
and export trade, held by the firm of Bentley and Board-
man,1 in which Bentley was the senior partner. Before
this agency was entered upon this firm had been princi-
pally engaged in business as exporters and shippers of
Manchester textiles, and now the management of Wedg-
wood's shipping business in Liverpool was added, for
they negotiated the freights and managed the dispatch
of his consignments of pottery to Ireland, America, and
1 This firm Bentley and Boardman is described in Gore's Directory of Liverpool,
1766, as " Manchester warehousemen."
Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
elsewhere ; and attended to the unloading and forwarding
of the cargoes of clays and other materials from the south
of England.
From the time when Wedgwood had experienced
Bentley's friendly concern after his accident he appears
to have made various overtures in order to bring about
a closer business co-operation, and he finally proposed
that Bentley should leave Liverpool for Burslem, so that
he might join in the management of the works. Bentley,
as was but natural, expressed some hesitation in agreeing
to the proposal, for it meant that he must leave Liverpool,
where he thoroughly enjoyed his life among a wide
circle of friends and visitors who shared his tastes and
ideas. But Wedgwood was not to be denied in a matter
on which he had set his heart, and in 1768 Bentley became
his partner in the " ornamental " section of his business,
and removed to Burslem to live in order that he might
acquire a knowledge of the practical operations that
were used in the manufactory. Here they studied
and laboured together with the utmost intimacy and
harmony, so that they remained the closest friends
and associates imaginable, for nothing but a few
passing clouds seems to have disturbed their further
association.
Although hitherto Bentley had been a merchant
and shipper he had preserved an open and ingenious
mind, which had been cultivated by a wide course of
reading. He is said to have had a competent working
knowledge of French, German, and Italian, and seems
to have laid a solid foundation for Wedgwood's library,
while, doubtless to the surprise and delight of them both,
he developed considerable mechanical ingenuity in devising
POT-POURRI VASES
(Circa 1800)
Figures in dark blue jasper
on glossy white stoneware
Height (top) 4 in. and 5 in.
In the Collection of Mr. William Burton.
Wedgwood and His Partners 125
improvements to the tools and lathes used in the works.
Bentley's co-operation in the management of the business
at headquarters in Burslem proved so efficient and valu-
able that, when the new works at Etruria were in course
of erection, a house was built for him in the vicinity,
and just across the fields from Wedgwood's residence,
Etruria Hall.
As the works approached completion the partners
decided, in view of the trend of their trade, that Bentley
should fix his residence in London. He finally decided
on a house at Turnham Green, a suburb sufficiently
removed from the noise and bustle of town to offer
a desirable country retreat, yet near enough to permit
him to exercise a close supervision over the London
show-rooms of the firm, and to manage the workshops
for enamelling and decorating the pottery, which they
had just acquired in Chelsea. At this time there were
a number of shops of this class in different parts of London,
while painters who could turn their hand to the painting
and gilding of pottery were more plentiful than in Stafford-
shire. The partners decided, therefore, to acquire for
their own use premises suitable for such work in London,
and this seemed the likeliest district, for the Chelsea
china works had brought many such workers into that
part of the city. It certainly appears strange to us to
realize a time when it seemed better to bring the pottery
to the painters in workrooms more than 150 miles away,
but Wedgwood and Bentley pursued this course, at least
to the time of the completion of the "Russian Service"
in 1774, and many of the best decorators employed
on their general enamelled Queen's-ware services were
trained in these Chelsea workshops of the firm, and
i26 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
were not employed in Staffordshire, either at Etruria
or elsewhere.
After Bentley removed to Turnham Green he soon
made up his mind to reside there permanently,
as the partners agreed that it was necessary for
him to attend closely to the London show-rooms and
workshops, though Wedgwood jocularly complained in
his letters that it was impossible to drag him down
to Etruria. Wedgwood occasionally went to London
to discuss their business in detail, and during one of the
visits about the end of 1770 they appear to have taken
advantage of the delivery of some cameos which the
Queen had ordered to display some of their latest vases
to the" King and Queen. They were evidently delighted
with their reception and the recognition given to their
work, for Bentley wrote to his Liverpool partner, Board-
man, on the 17th of December, 1770 :
" The King is well acquainted with business, and with the characters
of the principal manufacturers, merchants, and artists ; he seems to have
the success of our manufactures much at heart, and to understand the
importance of them. The Queen has more sensibility, true politeness,
engaging affability, and sweetness of temper, than any great lady I
ever had the honour of speaking to."
Bentley died Nov. 26th, 1780, at his residence at
Turnham Green, and was buried at the parish church
at Chiswick on December 2nd, 1780. He had been
associated with Wedgwood in business for about twenty
years, and he undoubtedly did much to foster the classic
influence on the pottery made by the firm. He was
also extremely active in the business of the " Russian
Service " both in securing the commission and in obtaining
the illustrations from which the paintings were made.
Thomas Wedgwood | (the cousin) died in October,
BENJAMIN HRANKLIN
White Jasper relief on
light blue Jasper plaque
Height 10 in., width 7j in.
Falcke Collection, British Afu.s
Wedgwood and His Partners 127
1788, and the business was carried on by Wedgwood
alone for over a year. On January 18th, 1790, Wedg-
wood's three sons, John, Josiah, and Thomas, and his
nephew, Thomas Byerley, were taken into partnership,
the style and title of the firm becoming " Josiah Wedgwood,
Sons, and Byerley." In June, 1793, a further change
took place upon the retirement of John Wedgwood, and
the firm was entitled " Josiah Wedgwood, Son, and
Byerley" until Wedgwood's death on January 3rd, 1795.
From this time the business seems to have been conducted
by Byerley until his death in 1810, when it was continued
by Josiah II. alone until Martinmas, 1823, when his
eldest son, Josiah III. was taken into partnership, the
firm being known as " Josiah Wedgwood and Son."
In 1827, the other sons having joined the firm, the style
was again changed to that of " Josiah Wedgwood and
Sons," and so it remains to this day, except that the
business has been converted into a limited liability
company, and the present style is " Josiah Wedgwood
and Sons, Limited."
CHAPTER XIII
WEDGWOOD'S PRINCIPAL ARTISTS
A RELATIVELY large number of artists of repute
and distinction, some of whom gained enduring
fame by their work as painters, sculptors or architects
during the course of that general revival of the Arts
in England, which was such a significant and important
feature of our development at home throughout the
eighteenth century, likewise turned their attention in
serious earnest to the closely related question of design
for manufactures. The erection or the re-modelling
of a great many extensive mansions in London and its
outskirts, as well as in the favourite residential districts
of the country, gave rise to a lively demand for new
types of furniture, household fittings and appliances
of every kind. This, in its turn, called forth renewed
activities among all those craftsmen and manufacturers
who were eager to extend their businesses, and who were
competent to produce such articles of furniture, house-
hold-appointment or decoration as were called for by
these important and influential patrons and their clients.
The steady growth of the great industrial centres
of Great Britain and the movement which was in progress
among the more important manufacturers of the Midlands
and the North of England (for the textile industries
were also affected), afforded an extensive and valuable
field for cultured advice and assistance of this kind,
128
JASPER VASE
(Procession of Deities)
Height 13 J in., diameter 7£ in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
.
• -., ,1'KV:': 1
. .v,
, ,,hoV,-\
Wedgwood's Principal Artists 129
so that in due time the influence of that important
group of architects, who were also artists and designers
keenly interested in craftsmanship, bore its appropriate
fruit. This fertilizing influence was exercised primarily
and most directly upon the productions of a number
of active, enlightened and ingenious manufacturers, who
were not only ambitious to produce the finest articles
and domestic appliances that could be desired by their
patrons, but were prepared, if necessary, to risk their
fortunes in such enterprises. This courageous and
spirited self-reliance seems to have been the determining
factor which brought about the rapid yet sound and
durable expansion of that group of English industries
in which art and taste (by no means synonymous) are
of equal importance with manufacturing skill and the
power of commercial organization.
Matthew Boulton, of the Soho Works, Birmingham,
and Josiah Wedgwood of Etruria, with his partner
Bentley, were in the forefront of this movement among
our manufacturers, and it would not be easy to mention
their compeers in contemporary Europe, where similar
efforts to theirs were generally stimulated and financed
by the various sovereign princes or great nobles. We
have already seen in a previous chapter how these
two men could labour, both in conjunction and in
rivalry, but our immediate purpose in this place is to
trace the history of this movement as it affected more
particularly the numerous types of pottery made at
Etruria.
A fact which deserves to be emphasized in this con-
nexion is that the principal artist and originator of fine
results in the shapes, designs, and ornamental treatment
J
130 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
of the pottery manufactured by Josiah Wedgwood
throughout his career as a master-potter was the man
himself. He had been bred and trained in the earlier
traditions of the Staffordshire school, according to which
the proprietor of a pottery works was, as a rule, to which
we find singularly few exceptions, his own principal
modeller, designer and chief workman in one.
Although during what we may distinguish as the
middle period of Wedgwood's career many commercial
and public affairs, which were of the utmost moment
to all the industries of North Staffordshire and not to
its pottery industry alone,1 absorbed such an undue
share of his time and vigour, he yet remained as keenly
interested as ever in his own personal work and business,
as well as in the artistic aspects of his manufactures.
The set of the torso of a figure for his bas-relief ornament,
together with the exact disposition and weight of the
lines and folds of drapery that clothed but to reveal it,
the invention of the numerous coloured grounds for his
favourite jasper body, the precise shade or tint of colour
that would be likely to prove most popular in his several
kinds of domestic earthenware, the correct entasis for
the contours of a vase, of the rim of a dinner plate or
a meat dish were, each and all, as interesting and ponder-
able in his mind and as worthy a subject for experiment
as he knew them to be of value for the enduring success
of his business. In all these directions and in many
others of minor importance Wedgwood was undoubtedly
1 The construction of the canal through the district with its access to the Mersey
estuary and the navigable Trent ; the question of Champion's patent rights in the
Cornish clays and china stones ; the various Commercial Treaties and other labours
•which necessitated frequent residences in London to prepare the case for the manu-
facturers and lay them before the Parliamentary Committees.
FRAMED MEDALLION WITH FLAXMAN FIGURE
No. 154 in Wedgwood's Catalogue.
Mark: Impressed "WEDGWOOD & BENTLEY"
Dimensions 9 in. x 6i in.
Schrciher Collection, Vicioria and Albert Museum.
Wedgwood's Principal Artists 131
a real pioneer. At this juncture the great majority of
his fellow-manufacturers in Staffordshire, until they had
been quickened to emulation by his powerful example
and its obvious success, thought little of such details
of refinement, the minutiae of the potter's craft, which
alone can lead to perfection of manufacture.
The tradition which had passed into an article of the
true " Etruscan " faith in my time at the works, that
in the course of his daily rounds through the workshops
Josiah Wedgwood carried a stout walking stick, ostensibly
as a support on account of his lameness, with which he
would suddenly shatter a vase, a teapot, or any other
article that offended his eye by its indifferent execution
or finish, with the exclamation : " That won't do for
Josiah Wedgwood," is so true to nature that we can
regard it as a sudden spark which serves to light up the
inmost character of the man. No servant was allowed
to be slack or indifferent in his employ. Wedgwood's
boundless patience and perseverance in working out for
himself every detail of the methods which his workmen
must follow, and that passion (for it is worthy of the epithet)
for perfection of construction and finish which all his
work in clay reveals have, as they deserve, won the
praise of every writer on his craft and particularly of
those like Brongniart, Arnoux and Solon, who were
most competent to express an opinion on such matters
from the knowledge they had won by their own labours
in similar fields.
The time arrived when the continued expansion
of his business and the increasing demand for yet more
ambitious exercises of his skill as a potter warranted
him in securing the assistance of a number of distinguished
132 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
artists to supply fresh models and designs for his vases,
medallions and plaques made in the various hard bodies,
and particularly for his productions in black-basalt
or in jasper ware, as well as for his more utilitarian
works in the earthenwares. The personal skill, ingenuity
and knowledge which he had so assiduously won in
the course of his progressive labours played a great,
even a fundamental part in his selection of these artists,
as they prepared the way and made it possible for him
to compass those triumphs of craftsmanship that were
achieved at Etruria during the crowning years of his
life's work.
The first great contemporary artist whose name
rises in one's mind instinctively in this connexion is
John Flaxman, R.A., and it is but fitting that we should
sketch the main outlines of his career. He \vas born
at York on the 6th of July, 1755, during the temporary
sojourn of his parents in that city, for his father followed
the trade of a moulder of plaster casts which he prepared
and sold at the sign of the Golden Head, in New Street,
Covent Garden, London.1 While he was still little
more than a bright and precocious child, wistful and gentle,
his greatest delight in life was to be allowed to draw
and model from the objects exposed for sale in his father's
shop, so that some of the regular customers and visitors
encouraged the lad with advice, and by the loan of books
and prints, for everyone seems to have been attracted
by the grave precocity and shy but charming manners
of the child. Among his earliest helpers of this kind
1 It is of interest to note that Joseph Mallord William Turner, R.A., most
famous of English landscape painters, was born in Maiden Lane, Covent Garden,
in 1775, at the house attached to the shop of his father, -who was a barber.
w
D
o
C „'.» c
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*oC w 3
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oat
Wedgwood's Principal Artists 133
were George Romney, the painter (the two remained
friends to the time of Romney's death in 1805), and a
clergyman, Mr. Matthews, a well - read and cultured
man, who, with the assistance of his wife, had made
their house in Rathbone Place, Oxford Street, a famous
resort of the " blue stocking " fraternity of the day,
where budding artists and authors were lionized and
petted in the approved fashion. Mr. and Mrs. Matthews
were successful in attracting to their circle some young
men of genius, for John Flaxman made the acquaintance
there of William Blake and Thomas Stothard, and this
famous trio became the most intimate friends, working
together with great harmony of ideals in art and linked
in the closest comradeship, devoid of all traces of jealousy
of each other's success or discontent with their lot, the
true precursors of the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood of
the early Victorian days.
When he was only about twelve years of age Flax-
man had gained the first prize of the Society of Arts
in its annual competition, while at the age of fifteen
he again won a prize from that Society, and, in addition,
had a work exhibited by the Royal Academy which had
been recently founded in 1768. Flaxman gained this
distinction in 1770, and in the same year he was one
of the students who were enrolled in the Royal Academy
Schools, with the result that he won the annual silver
medal of that year.
In the competition for the coveted gold medal in
1772, Sir Joshua Reynolds and his colleagues awarded
the distinction to George Engleheart (1752-1829), who
justified their selection by developing into one of the
most popular miniature painters of his epoch and the
134 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
great rival of Richard Cosway in that branch of the
painter's art. This painful but transitory disappoint-
ment only seems to have incited Flaxman to still greater
diligence and closer study, so that he welcomed the
means of earning a regular livelihood on which he could
depend. It was about this time that Thomas Bentley
first commissioned him to supply some models for the
use of the firm of Wedgwood and Bentley.
Flaxman's first commission from the firm is attri-
buted to the year 1775, about the time when his father,
the image-seller, had recently removed to more com-
modious premises in the Strand (the place was then
No. 420, and the site is now covered by the buildings
of Coutts's Bank), and during the ensuing twelve years
John Flaxman's principal occupation, apart from his
drawings, studies and memorial tablets, seems to have
been the work he carried out for the potters of Etruria.
His industry during these years can only be described
as prodigious for, in addition to the great volume of
drawings and models he made for the firm of Wedgwood
and Bentley, the memorial bas-reliefs and monuments
he carried out at this time are to be found in many
English churches and cathedrals. Even at a later period
of his career, when his fame had become assured and
his numerous occupations left him but little time to
work for Etruria, directly, he continued to direct and
supervise the doings of a number of foreign artists,
adapters and copyists — Angelini, Dalmazzoni, Devere,
Pacetti, and Webber are the best known, though the
names of Manzolini, Mangiarotti, Frattodi and Cades
have also been preserved — who appear to have worked
under the general control of Webber, who acted as manager
JOSEPH PRIESTLEY
High relief; on glossy blue ground
imitating lapis lazuli
Height 9J in., width 7} in.
Faldfe Collection, British Museum.
Wedgwood's Principal Artists 135
of the school in Rome. After some years Webber re-
turned to work in England when an English resident
in Rome, named Jenkins, seems to have paid the wages
and generally attended to the affairs of the school, while
he also had an agency for the sale of the pottery made
at Etruria. These foreign artists were occupied in
working up or adapting and copying designs from ancient
buildings and remains, in procuring plaster-casts of
suitable objects and ornamental details, and also in
modelling designs of their own in a similar style. Some
examples of their work are of such excellence that it
is advisable to state in some detail what is known as to
the genesis of a few of the more important exercises
of their skill which appear in pottery.
What is always regarded as the finest example we
possess of the work of Pacetti, in this style, is the famous
jasper slab manufactured by Wedgwood and Bentley,
which bears a frieze of figures, splendidly modelled in
relief and known as the " Sacrifice of Iphigenia " (see
illustration facing p. 132). This choice and well-known
work is an adaptation on a reduced scale, taken from one
of the bas-relief sculptures on the sarcophagus in which
the " Barberini " or, as it is generally called in England,
the " Portland " Vase, was disinterred outside the walls
of Rome in the seventeenth century. The sarcophagus
itself is still preserved in the Museum of the Capitol
at Rome, and the reliefs of carved stone with which
it was adorned by the Greek sculptors evidently furnished
a number of the subjects and designs used for WTedgwood
and Bentley's relief-work in black basaltes and in jasper
ware. The companion plaque in jasper, " Priam begging
the Body of Hector from Achilles," was taken from the
136 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
carving on the opposite side of the sarcophagus to that
which furnished the " Iphigenia," while the subjects
on the two ends representing groups of Greek warriors
were adapted in the same way.
At the present time these rectangular slabs in jasper
ware are generally preserved, in simple frames of wood,
as cabinet-pieces and this was one of the uses which
Wedgwood tells us in his catalogues they were designed
for, but, from the time of their first introduction, they
were also freely used in the decoration of choice pieces
of furniture as inlays. We find them applied in this
way as framed panels in satin-wood cabinets, work-
boxes, jewel-caskets, cutlery cases, clock cases, and book-
cases, or used for the embellishment of fire-place mantel-
pieces and overmantels. For use in mantelpieces, more
particularly, they appear to have been made and sold
in " suites " which would comprise five or seven separate
pieces which could be arranged in several ways, though
the more general arrangement seems to have been to
place the largest and most important slab in the centre,
a smaller rectangular slab on each side of this, and a
circular medallion at each end over the jambs of the
mantelpiece. Favourite circular medallions for such posi-
tions as this last are the " Head of Medusa," a severe
and dignified work often ascribed to Flaxman (see Plate
facing this page), and the ever-popular " Bacchanalian
Boys." i
It may be added that there are a number of choice
examples of the decorated work-boxes, knife-cases, and
jewel-caskets in satin-wood and mahogany enriched with
1 Excellently reproduced in "Josiah Wedgwood," by Sir A. H. Church, F.R.S.
London, Seeley and Co., Ltd.
HEAD OF MEDUSA : MODELLED BY FLAXMAN
Mark : " WEDGWOOD & BENTLEY"
Diameter of frame S:' in.
British Museum.
Wedgwood's Principal Artists 137
" jasper " cameos to be seen in the collections of Wedg-
wood wares displayed in the British Museum and the
Victoria and Albert Museum ; while some larger articles
of furniture which are similarly ornamented are shown
in the collections of eighteenth-century furniture in the
latter institution.
The work which was forwarded to Etruria from Rome
by Webber — who seems to have been the general-utility
artist of the group employed in Italy — was mostly in
the form of plaster-casts taken from all sorts of artistic
treasures of Grseco-Roman or mediaeval workmanship.
He sent over extensive and miscellaneous collections
of " casts " taken from engraved gems or semi-precious
stones (sardonyx, bloodstone, agate, etc.), which had
been used as seals, signets, and other personal objects
of that order, and for which there seems to have been
an insatiable demand in the modelling-rooms at the
Etruria works and for Wedgwood's private cabinets.
When these objects reached Etruria they were adapted,
under Wedgwood's personal supervision and direction,
to all manner of current purposes. Finally they made
their appearance in reproduction as the applied relief
ornament of the little round or oval jasper-medallions
which were issued in an endless stream to the metal
mounters to be strung on muff chains (then largely used
by both sexes), watch-chains and watch-fobs with pendant
seals, and on the fashionable chatelaines, made to be
sported by fine ladies as they went about the super-
vision of their households. They were also mounted in
gold or silver settings on scent-bottles, opera-glasses,
brooches, hat-pins, cloak-pins and clasps, and many
similar personal trinkets or adornments. A few of these
138 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
varied applications of the smaller cameo ornaments
which were made in Wedgwood's jasper ware are illus-
trated opposite pp. 76 and 122, taken from specimens
in the Schreiber Collection in the Victoria and Albert
Museum ; where there is a series of wall-cases in which
the multifarious productions of this class, in the contem-
porary metal mounts, are most interestingly displayed.
In addition to the artists whose work has just been
described, a considerable staff of modellers and assist-
ants was, of necessity, engaged at Etruria. As we
have reviewed in some detail the works sent in by
the modellers who were regularly employed or were
commissioned for special purposes in London and abroad,
by Wedgwood and Bentley, we must, in fairness, men-
tion the work of the principal modellers who passed
their lives in Staffordshire. The most important workers
of this group were Hackwood and William Wood, both
natives of the district, who were employed by the firm
during the greater part of their lives. In addition,
many working modellers of various degrees of skill and
repute were employed for short periods. Of such men
the best known was the volatile and unreliable John
Voyez — over whose doings far too much ink has been
spent by various writers — with others of even lesser
note who came and went, perhaps more than once, as
there was need for their assistance to cope with a tem-
porary press of work, but of whose precise doings at
Etruria we have little information.
These men, in daily attendance at the works, were
expected to be able to turn their hands to any work
that was urgently required from their department. If,
for instance, a model or a plaster cast had been damaged
TOILET-BOX OF SATINWOOD
Inlaid with Jasper Ware
cameos set in steel
(Circa 1780)
Height 6| in., diameter 5? in.
Falc^s Collection, British Museum.
Wedgwood's Principal Artists 139
in transit to the works from London or abroad, they re-
paired or restored it, while they were always at hand
to " humour" a mould that would not deliver its clay
" press " smoothly, or to reduce or enlarge a band of
modelled ornament that Wedgwood might wish to apply
to another shape of vase or teapot than the one for
which it had been designed. Necessary and important
as such jobs are, it would be a great mistake to
suppose that these labours represented the whole of
their work, they were but the recurrent incidents of
their situation at headquarters, and such as happen
on every works of the kind, and we have ample
evidence that both Hackwood and William Wood carried
out a large body of original work with great skill and
competence.
Hackwood is chiefly remembered for his work in
jasper and the other " dry " bodies. He designed and
modelled many classic figures for the applied bas-reliefs,
for his constant presence at the works made him the
person to be called upon when an additional bas-relief
was required for the extension of a " suite " which had
been designed elsewhere. His portrait is preserved in
the museum at the works, and has been reproduced
in the volume on " Staffordshire Pottery and Its History,"
written by Josiah C. Wedgwood, M.P.
William Wood, the other regular modeller at Etruria,
seems to have been chiefly occupied in modelling the
" useful " articles which were manufactured in such
variety in the cream ware and pearl body and, as is
suggested elsewhere (see p. 38), doubtless had a hand
in producing the models of the large earthenware figures
and busts which were made at Etruria, such as those
140 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
reproduced opposite pp. 38 and 40. When we remember,
in addition, the considerable body of workers of both
sexes who carried out the enamelling, crest painting,
and so on at Chelsea and at Etruria, we obtain a good
idea of how Wedgwood was able to produce, year after
year, such an endless stream of gaily and appropriately
decorated services of excellent quality and appearance.
Height 3| in.
JELLY MOULD
"Pearl" body, enamelled
Height 5-J- in., length 8A in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
\
0
CHAPTER XIV
WEDGWOOD AND HIS FAMILY
JOSIAH WEDGWOOD occupies such an eminent
position in our English life and labour during
the eighteenth century that it is advisable to add some
brief record of his family history to any account of his
more immediate and personal activities. A numerous
clan of Wedgwoods has enriched and enlivened the local
history of East Cheshire and North Staffordshire, and
we propose to trace here, with brevity, the main
outlines of the family history in which he was directly
concerned.
When this prolific family first became of sufficient
importance to boast a recorded history its notable mem-
bers belonged to the landowning and farming class.
By the exercise of marked industry and thrift, as
well as by judicious intermarriages with different local
families of equal rank and similar position, several
related branches of the great Wedgwood clan became
of local importance in these contiguous districts during
the Tudor and early Stuart times.
The family connexion with the making of pottery is
of early origin, also, for a potter named John Colclough,
alias Rowley, living in Burslem, who died in 1656, de-
vised by his will " To Thomas Wedgwood of the Church-
yard of Burslem .... all my pottinge boards and
all other necessary implements and materialls belonging to
141
142 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
the trade of pottinge (lead and lead-ores onely excepted)." *
The Thomas Wedgwood here mentioned was the great-
grandfather of Josiah Wedgwood, and at this early date
in the history of Staffordshire pottery he evidently
occupied the " Churchyard Works," which will always
be held in remembrance because Josiah Wedgwood was
born in the master's house of that works, and afterwards
served his apprenticeship there to the art of pottery-
making, as we have already said in our introductory
chapter.
From this period, or, say, the middle of the seventeenth
century, Burslem and the whole locality as far round
as Tinkersclough on the side towards Hanley and away
to Chell and Red Street beyond Dimsdale and Bradwell
Wood to the north-west, was an important and thriving
centre of pottery manufacture. The large platters and
dishes of " combed " and " marbled " wares, or the
more elaborate productions of the " slip " potters,
with the famous Thomas Toft at their head, remain
to testify to the spirit of research and experiment
that was already manifesting its lusty youthfulness
and vigour.
Those Wedgwoods who were already established as
potters in the central part of this northern section of
the Potteries district must have been among the most
important master-potters there, for some of them not
only dug their own clays, as was the general custom,
but owned the mines and won the coal with which their
pottery was fired. First in importance among them were
the Thomas and John Wedgwood of the Big House,
1 This exception was probably due to the value of lead-ore at the time and
the ready sale it would command in the district for cash.
CANDLESTICKS
Blue and white jasper
(Circa 1780-90)
Height 10] in., base 3? in., square
falcke Collection, British Museum
Wedgwood and His Family 143
Burslem, who carried on an extensive pottery-making
business at several factories in the town, and, in addition,
owned mines of coal and fireclay which they worked
for their own use as well as for sale among the neigh-
bouring potters. While, therefore, Josiah Wedgwood
was a son, grandson and great-grandson of potters in
a direct line, his brothers, cousins, and uncles were
notable figures in the industry also, and some of them
owned and conducted businesses which were among
the best of their day and generation in Staffordshire.
When Josiah Wedgwood returned to settle in Burslem,
in 1759, after the expiration of his partnership with Thomas
Whieldon at Fenton (see p. 119), the paternal factory,
the Churchyard Works, remained in possession of his
elder brother Thomas, to whom he had been apprenticed.
He accordingly rented from his uncles of the Big House
a small factory which was commonly known as the Ivy
House Works, together with an attached dwelling-
house suitable as a residence for its proprietor or manager.
This house became his home for many years, and here,
within a little while, he installed his bride, Sarah
Wedgwood, the daughter and co-heiress of Richard
Wedgwood, of Spen Green, near Congleton, Cheshire,
a well-to-do provision merchant and a factor of corn
and cheese.
They were married at the fine old church at Astbury,
near Congleton, on January 25th, 1764, and their union
was soon blessed by a troop of happy children ; the eldest,
Susannah, was baptized at Burslem on January 2nd,
1765, John in 1766, Richard in 1767, Josiah in 1769,
and Thomas in 1771.
Susannah married R. W. Darwin, a son of Josiah
144 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
Wedgwood's intimate friend and physician, Erasmus
Darwin, who was at this time resident in Lichfield.
She became the mother of Charles Robert Darwin, the
naturalist and author of " The Origin of Species," while
subsequent marriages between Wedgwoods and Darwins
have maintained and extended the bonds of friendship
and truth-seeking that were woven between Josiah Wedg-
wood and Erasmus Darwin in the early days of their
intimacy.
John Wedgwood, the eldest son, seems to have been
a partner in the pottery business at Etruria for about
three years only (1790-93), as, in the latter year, he
retired from the firm to take up a partnership in the
London and Middlesex Bank. The affairs of this in-
stitution became seriously involved during the disastrous
years of the Napoleonic Wars, and in 1816 the business
was taken over by Messrs. Coutts. John Wedgwood
was an enthusiastic gardener and botanist, and is said
to have founded the Horticultural Society,1 which seems
appropriate when we remember his descent and his
relationship with the Darwin family.
Josiah Wedgwood II. was admitted to a partnership
in the business at Etruria when he came of age, in 1790,
and one of his early enterprises for the extension of the
business was to undertake a continental tour with Byerley,
in the course of which they were to exhibit a copy of
the famous " Portland Vase " and other notable pro-
ductions of Etruria at various European Courts. They
first travelled to The Hague, where, through the intro-
duction of Lord Auckland, the British Ambassador, the
specimen vase and other examples were shown to
1 "A History of the Wedgwood Family," loc. cit., p. 180.
COVERED SUGAR BASIN
Cane body with applied reliefs in red terra-cotta
Height 5£ in., width at handles 7f in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
TABLE ORNAMENT
Cane body with white jasper reliefs to imitate an iced cake
Height 5£ in., width 7$ in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
;•';., ' Ka/Of.
.BVfy:S !,-. flJi.V
;
i I '
;\{ >;•);
*
Wedgwood and His Family 145
the Prince and Princess of Orange, and afterwards to
the principal notabilities of the town. They proceeded
by way of Amsterdam to Hanover, Berlin, Frankfort,
and Dresden, doing business where they could, and
acquiring information which was of value in their future
relationships with dealers and agents in the important
towns. While they were at Dresden they visited the
famous porcelain works at Meissen, a visit which seems
to have given birth to a legend that the elder Josiah
Wedgwood once visited Dresden and offered to purchase
the porcelain works of Meissen. There is no evidence
that Josiah Wedgwood, the father, ever visited Germany ;
had he done so there would have been an account of the
journey in his journals or correspondence.
The times were anything but propitious for the
business success of such a journey, for all Central Europe
was still seething with the unrest and unsettlement
caused by the revolutionary outbreak in France. The
copy of the " Portland Vase " in Wedgwood's jasper
was naturally viewed with great admiration, as well as
the other examples of the ornamental productions of
Etruria that were displayed, but, in spite of the general
admiration and praise, it seems doubtful whether much
direct business was done on the tour, apart from a
strengthening of the various continental agencies and the
general advertisement of the Wedgwood manufactures,
which seems to have borne fruit in later days.
In 1793, when John Wedgwood left Etruria to enter
on the London banking business, Josiah II. took over
his shares in the pottery business as well as those of his
younger brother Tom, who was absorbed in his investi-
gations in photography, and when Josiah Wedgwood.
K
146 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
senior, died on January 3rd, 1795, Josiah II. succeeded
to the pottery works and the businesses at Etruria as
well as to the estates in Stoke and Hanley, which at this
time amounted to about 380 acres. At the end of
December, 1792, he had married Elizabeth Allen, the
eldest of the nine daughters of John Bartlett Allen,
of Cressilly, Pembroke, who could claim descent from
William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, the Lord High Treasurer
and principal minister of Queen Elizabeth. After his
father's death, Josiah II. removed from Staffordshire,
the works at Etruria being left in charge of Byerley,
and lived at Stoke House, Cobham, Surrey, and after-
wards at Tarrant Gunville, Dorset, for some years, only
visiting Etruria at intervals, and not more than two or
three times a year.
He had another residential estate, Maer Hall, which
lies just off the main road from Newcastle-under-Lyme
to Market Drayton, which had been acquired in 1802,
and the family removed to this seat to live in 1807,
but owing to the troubles consequent on the French
Wars the pottery business was in a very depressed and
unsettled condition, and from 1812 to 1819 the family
returned to Etruria Hall, partly from motives of economy,
but principally, no doubt, that Josiah himself might
exercise a closer supervision over the business. This
change was largely dictated by the death of Byerley,
in 1810, for it was necessary that Josiah should be in
close touch with the business, the main source of the
family wealth, and the family was only able to settle
again at Maer Hall in 1819.
Naturally Josiah II. was in a much better position
financially than some other members of the family, but
" HEBE"
Figure in white jasper
Pedestal in green and white jasper
(Circa 1790)
Height with pedestal 71 in.
British Museum. Presented hy G. H. Vize.
Wedgwood and His Family 147
he behaved in the most generous manner, regarding
himself as the steward of the family resources and credit,
while he made liberal provision for his less wealthy
relatives. He was as proud of the business at Etruria
as his father had been, and devoted great attention to
its progress, though it will always remain a mystery
why he parted with the cabinet containing the experi-
mental and early trial pieces, which had been so care-
fully preserved by his father, to Elijah Mayer of
Liverpool.1
In 1823 his eldest son, Josiah III., became a partner
in the firm, while his third son, Francis (Frank), joined
in 1827. It was through this son Frank that the suc-
cessive master-potters of Etruria have descended to the
present day. Josiah Wedgwood II. took little active
share in the management of the business for some years
prior to 1841, when he definitely retired, while Josiah III.
also retired in 1842.
Francis (Frank) Wedgwood then became the active
managing partner, and he took into partnership for a
short time (1843-5) a Mr. John Boyle, who had previously
been a partner in the firm of Mintons at Stoke-on-Trent,
while in 1846 he was joined by a Mr. Robert Brown,
who remained a member of the firm to the time of his
death in 1859.
Mr. Frank Wedgwood was then joined in the conduct
of the business by his eldest son Godfrey Wedgwood,
while his younger sons, Clement and Lawrence, joined
the firm within a few years, and the works are now con-
ducted by Mr. Frank Wedgwood (a son of the late Clement
1 This cabinet and its interesting contents are in the Mayer Collection in the
Liverpool Museum.
148 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
Wedgwood), Mrs. Cecil Wedgwood (the widow of Godfrey's
son Cecil), and Miss Audrey Wedgwood, daughter of
Mr. and Mrs. Cecil Wedgwood. Mr. Kennard Wedgwood,
son of Lawrence Wedgwood, is President of Josiah
Wedgwood (Incorporated) of New York, which acts
as American agent of the firm of Josiah Wedgwood and
Sons, Limited, of Etruria.
COVERED VASE
Cane-coloured Ware with encaustic painting
(About 1790)
Height 7f in.
Falcke Collection, British Museum.
CHAPTER XV
THE PRINCIPAL CONTEMPORARY POTTERS IN STAFFORD-
SHIRE
A THOUGH Josiah Wedgwood's widely varied con-
tributions to the successive developments of the
pottery industry in his native district were so important
and, in many respects, so decisive of its future course
and progress, a writer who essays to narrate the his-
tory of English pottery during the period of its exten-
sion covered by his lifetime finds it essential, as well
as just, to devote careful attention to the fruitful labours
of a considerable number of his contemporaries, whose
achievements would, in themselves, have sufficed to
render the district famous in the long annals of the
potter's craft. It should never be forgotten that many
of the important master-potters of North Staffordshire
were not only the neighbours and friends of Josiah
Wedgwood, but were in addition, in all the important
affairs of that day and generation, colleagues and co-
operators in those unremitting labours for the public
good by which Wedgwood so manfully served the imme-
diate locality in which he lived, as well as the larger
interests of the people of these islands through the
development of our manufactures and commerce.
Throughout the course of the eighteenth century
the virile and adventurous spirit which is such a pre-
cious birthright of our mingled race found, or created
149
150 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
by its native force, innumerable outlets for its prolific
energy and enterprise, both at home and abroad ; but
one of its truly vital manifestations will be found in
the steady and systematic expansion of the wide range
of our manufactures at home. The fundamental in-
dustries of mining and engineering, together with the
canal-system which they brought into existence, the
important textile industries which were principally
located in the busy northern counties and in the West
of England, along with that important group of in-
dustries which was concerned in the manufacture of
pottery, porcelain, and glass, were all brought to a pitch
of rare perfection during this period. In all these direc-
tions our people found abundant scope for their energies,
so that the achievements of the later eighteenth century
fulfilled the promise of its opening years in most
abundant measure when, as a result of our practical
accomplishments at home and in foreign lands, it
came about that the English fashions in domestic things
were widely adopted or imitated in every civilized
country.
Many valuable treatises have been written dealing
with the course of this evolutionary movement and its
effect on English industrial life,1 but our immediate
purpose is to narrate and explain the notable inventions
and achievements of the English potters in one locality
only, that of North Staffordshire, which became, from
this time forward, so renowned throughout the world
for its pottery of every kind and description, from the
simplest and most elementary crockery dish or porringer
1 See particularly " The Growth of English Industry and Commerce," by
W. Cunningham, D.D.
BALL-CLAY PROOF OF FLAXMAN'S MODEL OF PLAQUE, "MERCURY
JOINING THE HANDS OF FRANCE AND ENGLAND" (1787)
(Commemorative of the Commercial Treaty between France and England, 1786)
Mark : Impressed WEDGWOOD
Height 8} in., width (at base) 8 in.
Falcke Collection, British Museum.
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 151
to the most elaborate and costly vases and services
that could be devised.
The general review of the life history of Josiah
Wedgwood which is contained in the preceding pages of
this work has served to introduce the more important
of his fellows in the potters' craft who became notable
manufacturers in the district during his lifetime, such
as Thomas Whieldon, John Turner, Josiah Spode, and
a number of others, who are only less famous in degree
than the subject of this memoir. Such well-known men
as the Warburtons, the Baddeleys, and the important
families of Wood and Adams, recall the names which
are so familiar to every student as those who gained
both fame and fortune by their enterprise and skill
in the manufacture of the Staffordshire pottery of that
period, and whose descendants in so many instances
have maintained their repute in the craft alongside the
Wedgwoods of Etruria.
The achievements of Thomas Whieldon, who is so
worthy of remembrance as the father of the modern
movement in Staffordshire pottery, have been dealt with
in considerable detail in our account of the Whieldon-
Wedgwood partnership, so that they need not be referred
to in this place.
The name of that eminent potter, John Turner,
first appears about 1756, when he was in partnership
with Robert Bankes as a manufacturer of the white
stoneware pottery of the day, and they occupied one
of the many factories about the centre of Stoke-on-
Trent.1
1 The site is now covered by a portion of the factory of Messrs. W. T. Copeland
& Sons, the old Spode factory.
152 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
In or about 1762 Turner severed this connexion
with Bankes and established himself in the works that
was to become so famous at Lane End (now Long-
ton, the most southerly of the pottery towns), where
he manufactured the ordinary white stoneware and
cream-coloured earthenware on an extensive scale. His
standing and reputation in the district increased so
steadily that in 1775, as we have seen, he was selected as
the colleague of Josiah Wedgwood to voice the opposition
of the general body of the Staffordshire manufacturers
when Richard Champion, as assignee, sought to secure an
extension of Cookworthy's original patent for the use of
china clay and china stone.
John Turner's individual work in pottery was of a
distinguished order, for his finest productions have often
been mistaken for imitations of Wedgwood's jasper
ware. That Turner might never have made pottery of
this type but for the success of Wedgwood's previous
efforts may be probable enough, but I was able to prove,
nearly twenty years ago, that this particular ware of
Turner's is a fine stoneware, entirely different in com-
position from jasper ware,1 as it does not contain a
trace of barytes, the distinguishing ingredient in the
jasper body. This fine material is usually more glossy
of surface than Wedgwood's jasper, while it has, also,
a more vitreous appearance. Owing to the difference
in composition there is a decided contrast in the tints
which are produced by the same colouring oxides, though
the actual tints may be quite as beautiful. From this
material Turner made an abundance of cameos, seals,
1 " A History and Description of English Earthenware and Stoneware," p, 157.
Cassell & Co., Ltd., 1904.
AGATE WARE VASE
White plinth in "biscuit" jasper
Mark : " WEDGWOOD & BENTLEY "
Height 9.1 in., diameter 6 in.
Collection, British Museum.
.
. .
/l'-',jl
• . ' • i (
0
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 153
beads, shoe buckles, ear-rings, and suchlike articles, all
most skilfully wrought, which were used by the Bir-
mingham metal mounters and which are often confounded
with those made by Wedgwood.
The first John Turner died in 1786, but his business
was continued and extended under his sons John and
William, who manufactured earthenwares and stone-
wares, for which they secured a flourishing foreign trade,
the jasper-like wares, and an excellent " Egyptian Black."
Some time after 1790, when the composition of Wedg-
wood's jasper became common property by the gradual
leakage of his secrets, the Turners also manufactured
a jasper of identical composition.
Another " Turner " ware is a refined, hard, creamy-
white stoneware from which they manufactured great
quantities of jugs, dishes, wine coolers, bulb pots and
inkstands ; while they also made in it terrines or covered
dishes in the shape of fowls, capons, geese, etc., and there
is a fine and amusing collection of such pieces in the
Liverpool Museum, while there are a few examples in
the London museums. In this ware the jugs seem to
be most abundant now, and they are prized for their
decorations in applied low-relief, which include ships,
sporting subjects, and other topical devices. The belly
of these jugs, coffee-pots, chocolate-pots and other
useful articles is left in the creamy stoneware, while
the " ribbed " neck and upper portion of the handle
are usually coated with dark chocolate-coloured slip
or occasionally with a dark greyish-blue or black
glaze.
Few busts and statuettes are known of Turner's
make, but there is a fine portrait bust of the second
154 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
John Turner, nearly life size, which passed into the
possession of Mr. Bernard Moore, by whom it is highly
treasured. This bust, which appears to be -an excellent
example of portrait modelling from life, is inscribed at
the back " E. Ray, Modeller, Longton," and it seems
odd that we should know nothing further of such an
excellent modeller and his doings.
The business of the Turner family, obviously an
important and extensive one, was seriously damaged
and finally crippled by Napoleon's continental successes,
as large consignments of their pottery were seized in
several of the continental ports. William Turner crossed
to Paris in an attempt to secure some of the outstanding
debts, and was arrested as a spy and thrown into that
dread prison, La Force. He was released after a time,
through the representations of the British Ambassador,
and returned to England, but these losses had so under-
mined their commercial position that the brothers felt
compelled to give up the struggle, and they retired from
business in 1803. John Turner became potters' manager
for Thomas Minton, who was at that time laying the
foundations of the famous Minton potteries at Stoke-
on-Trent.
Marks. — The marks usually found are TURNER :
w. & J. TURNER or TURNER & co. The Prince of
Wales's feathers were also used as an addition, for
the factory was sometimes called " The Prince of
Wales's Works."
Another clever contemporary potter was Henry l
Palmer, who had a works at Hanley Green, about a
1 Many writers give the name as Humphrey Palmer, but, while there may be
some uncertainty as to the Christian name, there is none as to the man or his work.
FLOWER VASE WITH PERFORATED COVER
Light blue jasper with
white relief ornament
Height 8 in., diameter 6J in.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 155
couple of miles from Etruria. Palmer has frequently
been described as an unscrupulous imitator and copyist
of Wedgwood's vases, and there is no doubt that both
Wedgwood and Bentley regarded him for some years
as an unscrupulous and most objectionable pirate of
their finest productions, which is no mean testimony to
Palmer's skill. The trouble was accentuated by the fact
that Mrs. Palmer is said to have been the active com-
mercial manager of the business, and the firm at Etruria
did not find her easy to deal with. A further source
of friction was set up by that intractable artist, Voyez,
who, when he left Etruria or was discharged from his
engagement there, entered into business relations with
the Palmers. It would appear that Palmer and Voyez
successfully worked out the idea of ornamenting black
basalt vases with applied reliefs in the same material
before Wedgwood used the method. In the British
Museum there is a vase of this kind (K II),1 decorated
with figures in applied relief of " Venus and Cupid in
Vulcan's smithy," and bearing, on the reverse, a trophy
composed of a wreath, quiver, vase and ribands. This
piece is signed ^ °7e.z 1769," and under the base, on
an applied circular wafer, in capital letters, " Made by
II. Palmer." According to Miss Meteyard's notes of her
painstaking and valuable researches into the history of
Wedgwood's labours, this method of ornamenting the
black basalt vases with black reliefs does not appear in
use at Etruria until about 1775.
From all that we know of Palmer, he was a clever
i Reproduced on Plate xxxv* of Mr. Hobson's " Catalogue of English
Pottery in the British Museum."
156 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
potter but an indifferent man of business, so that after
1776 the works appear to have been conducted by a
potter named Neale, who did some distinguished work
in the subsequent years. He was Palmer's brother-in-
law (the men had married two sisters, daughters of
Heath, a delft-ware maker), and whether Palmer re-
mained a member of the firm or not is uncertain, for
the style and title of the firm was changed in that year
to Neale & Co., and was so continued for about eleven
vears.
v
The statement has often been made that Neale had
originally acted as London agent of the firm when he
entered into the partnership, but I have no means of
deciding as to the accuracy of this statement. In any
case, Neale became one of the most skilful potters of
the period, for between 1776 and 1786 he made much
ornamental pottery in the finest contemporary styles.
Palmer and Neale during their partnership and after-
wards Neale, when he conducted the business, made
jasper ware of great merit, as some of their examples
which are still in existence would do credit to any of
the contemporary masters of the craft. Choice specimens
of these productions may be seen in the collections in
the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
A small kettle in Neale's jasper ware is in the Hanley
Museum, and is illustrated in " Staffordshire Pots and
Potters." This example is a veritable little master-
piece for its proportions and ornament. Another kind of
ornamental pottery in which Neale did excellent work
was the " granite " and " marbled " wares, executed
on cream-coloured earthenware and tastefully enriched
with leaf gold. But for the impressed mark, i NEALE
J
w
OH
Qu
W
*
J
<
OS 4-.
3 S *
C/3 ^
3 | £
5 c
<U Ki u
i- ^™^ n
S W .^
• — *g <»
J3 O "3
"^ o c
0) CS «J
•Is I
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a> C -a
6 s -s
all
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 157
HANLY, it would often be impossible to distinguish
these pieces from those made by Wedgwood and Bentley
at Etruria.
Ultimately, the business passed into the hands of
C. Wilson, who is well known for his productions in a
fine red stoneware with applied black figures of the
same type as those used by the Turners on their white-
stoneware jugs. The ware by which Wilson is best
known, however, and which he manufactured extensively,
was what is called " chalk body," obtained by adding
a considerable proportion of washed chalk to the usual
ingredients of the cream-colour body. This addition
made the finished pottery whiter in appearance, lighter
in weight, and more favourable to the development of
a bright tone in the underglaze blue of the printed pat-
terns which the skill of the first Josiah Spode had made
an important and rapidly expanding branch of the
general earthenware trade. " Blue printing " became the
popular style of decoration for the bulk of the " useful "
earthenwares that were shipped abroad, and many
extensive collections of such things, made by the best-
known manufacturers of this period, are still treasured
in America, while there is an admirable collection of
examples in the museum at Stoke-on-Trent.
It should also be mentioned that the Wilsons were
among the later makers of Toby jugs and figures of that
kind, though their examples ("A Hearty Good Fellow "
is one of the best known) are usually decorated with
enamel colours which are sometimes too shiny of sur-
face from being over fluxed. Such specimens, interest-
ing as they may be as survivals, compare unfavourably
with the earlier pieces decorated with coloured glazes.
158 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
Another branch of decoration for which they are
noted was the manufacture of the Staffordshire lustres,
both in the copper-coloured gold lustre and in the
" silvery looking " platinum lustre. They must have
manufactured large quantities of well-turned cups and
saucers, goblets, and two-handled drinking mugs, as well
as many figures of animals and some statuettes with
these " lustre " enrichments, for examples seem plentiful
enough in the dealers' shops even to-day.
The business is believed to have come to an end
about 1820, on the death of Charles Wilson. The only
mark I am acquainted with is the name WILSON im-
pressed in the clay generally, though not invariably,
under the base of the piece, while the marks ^gfcfc-
and /&) f* are also known. s f
*& fy
(f
Among the notable potters who contributed most
actively to the extension of the industry in North Staf-
fordshire during the whole course of the eighteenth
century the Mayer family will always be held in re-
membrance, for it numbered in its ranks several potters
who were distinguished by their taste and skill. The
surname, Mayer or Meir, is of frequent occurrence among
the early potters of Staffordshire and of Derbyshire
(Cockpit Hill group), and men of that name were active,
in both districts, from the days of the slip potters.
Simeon Shaw states that an Elijah Mayer was a pot-
maker at Red Street during the early part of the eigh-
teenth century and that he was the father of the Elijah
Mayer who made such fine and elegant pottery in the
last quarter of that century. This potter occupied the
High Street Works in Hanley, where apparently he at
"CLEOPATRA BEFORE AUGUSTUS"
(From a print by Burke after Angelica Kauffmann)
Cream-\vare plaque
Painted in sepia colour
Circa 1786
Mark: Impressed " WKDGWOOD "
Diameter 13 .V in.
British Museum.
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 159
first conducted a business as an enameller for the trade,
for in a list of manufacturers at that period (1786) he
is not described as a potter but simply as an enameller.
Though he soon commenced to manufacture his own
pottery he was always famous for his enamelled decora-
tions of various kinds, and one ought to single out for
especial commendation the series of enamelled borders
\vhich he designed for his cream-coloured earthenware
services. These are always lightly potted and skil-
fully finished in manufacture, while the enamelled borders
and other decorations are excellent in their proportion
and execution. Elijah Mayer's examples in this kind
belong obviously to the school of Wedgwood, but they
are so well wrought and so skilfully and tastefully
enamelled that they would do credit to any potter.
Fortunately, all our principal museum collections con-
tain many specimens of this type in delicate schemes of
colour, which are handled with skill and distinction, the
admirable use of a rich black enamel, in conjunction with
broad bands of bright yellow, being especially noteworthy.
Another style of production in which Elijah Mayer
contrived some interesting things is seen in his cane-
coloured and buff terra-cottas. The majority of his
examples of this kind are excellently thrown and turned
in the usual neo-classical shapes that were in vogue,
or they are contrived in the shape of three or four joints
of bamboo, stood on end and supported on a rustic
base. The bamboo joints are, as a rule, lightly and
skilfully decorated with foliage, tendrils and tracery in
glossy enamel colours, usually bright blues and greens,
outlined in black and with touches of white enamel
to heighten the effect.
160 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
Elijah Mayer appears to have carried on these well-
known eighteenth-century styles long after they had
been generally abandoned, for he was still active as a
master potter in 1820, when he took his son Joseph
into partnership and the title of the firm became " Elijah
Mayer and Son." After the death of Elijah Mayer the
title of the firm became " Joseph Mayer " for some years,
and then " Joseph Mayer and Co.," the business and its
productions gradually declining after the death of the
father. Joseph Mayer purchased the Church Works in
Hanley in 1831, but he soon rented them (1833) to his
cousin, William Ridgway, who eventually owned no
fewer than six factories in the district, so that the
name Ridgway became almost as famous as the name
Wedgwood among potters and pottery dealers.
Marks: E. MAYER and after 1820 £ fjaye *•&•&*,
Jbsefih, May* r &-&
Another family of potters named Mayer owned
and conducted a pottery at Dalehall, near the present
railway station at Longport, down the hillside from
Burslem on the way to Newcastle-under-Lyme. Three
brothers were engaged in this enterprise, Thomas, John,
and Joshua or Josiah (the name is commonly given as
Jos.). The last named is said to have been the prac-
tical potter of this family and he is credited with the
production of an excellent white stoneware, very similar
to that made by the Turners of Longton (q.v.). The
title of the firm was T. J. & J. Mayer, but it became
Mayer & Elliot, Liddle Elliot & Co., Bates, Walker
& Co., and Gildea & Walker, a firm which was still in
existence forty years ago. The changes are noted, as
they may prove of use in the identification of specimens
AGATE WARE VASE
Mark on applied medallion : " WEDGWOOD &
BENTLEY. ETRURIA "
Height 12 J in., diameter 8| in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
•
• -', ' :'<;
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 161
of an early type which were really made by some of
these later owners of the factory.
It seems unlikely that we should have heard any-
thing of the doings of this branch of the Mayer family
but for the name they bore, for this, stamped on the
ware, has sometimes caused their productions to be
confounded with those of their famous namesake Elijah
Mayer. He married a Miss Mayer of Dalehall, who was
probably a sister of the three brothers mentioned above,
and that seems to have added to the confusion some-
times found in correctly attributing to the various
potters of this name what each of them made.
The family of Adams,1 with its many branches and
ramifications, has been well matched with the Wedg-
woods in the making of pottery for more than two
centuries. This family settled in Staffordshire from the
adjacent county of Shropshire at the time when the
spread of pottery-making attracted immigrants into
North Staffordshire from all the adjacent districts, and
a John Adams, described by Ward, the local historian,
as a maker of the primitive black-glazed and mottled
wares, is on record as having married a Mary Lead-
beater 2 in 1654. This John Adams must have been a
man of spirit and enterprise, for he built the first pottery
works in Burslem, which was built of bricks instead of
the half-timber construction generally used at that time,
1 An admirable history of this famous family of Staffordshire potters has been
prepared by Mr. Percy W. L. Adams, under the editorship of Mr. William Turner,
F.S.S. London : Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1904.
2 This surname is still quite common in the district, and it may have been first
bestowed on some of those who pounded the lead ore used for making the old
galena glaze.
L
162 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
and so founded the famous " Brick House Works."
According to family tradition, this was about the time of
his marriage or shortly afterwards, for he is described as
the occupier of the house attached to this factory when
he was chosen churchwarden of St. John's Church,
Burslem, in 1657. John Adams was succeeded by his
son Ralph, who is reputed to have been successful in
improving the old productions and introducing the manu-
facture of other kinds of pottery, so that, about 1718,
this factory was enlarged and another was also acquired
in the vicinity. There were so many families named
Adams in or about Burslem at this time that they are
described in the church registers as " Adams de Holdin,"
" Adams of Sneyd Green," " Adams of the Brick House,"
and so on, according to their place of residence.
About 1730, just before Josiah Wedgwood was born,
John Adams, the son of Ralph, must have been an
important master-potter, for in addition to the Brick
House he conducted a pottery at Cobridge, a mile or
so away, where he manufactured principally the white
salt-glaze ware and some other wares of the time. This
John Adams died in 1757, leaving his heir a minor, and
the Brick House was leased to Josiah Wedgwood,
and was his principal manufactory until he built Etruria,
when the moulds, plant, and workmen of Wedgwood &
Bentley were gradually transferred to that place, and
the Burslem factory was handed back to its owners
about 1773.
The friendly connexions between the Adams family
and Josiah Wedgwood were not severed when he relin-
quished his tenancy of the Brick House Works, for it
appears probable that William Adams went with Wedg-
JOHN WESLEY
Black basalt
Height 81 in., width 5,2 in.
Victoria and A Ibert Muse um.
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 163
wood to Etruria when that famous factory was opened
for work, although its buildings were incomplete, in
1769. With two factories and this transfer to carry
out while the new works were still a-building, Wedg-
wood must have been glad of his assistance. It is an
oft -told story how William Adams became in this
way the favourite pupil of Josiah Wedgwood as well as
one of his intimate friends, for he remained at the
Etruria works as one of the principal co-adjutors in the
management of the new factory until 1780 or 1782,
while Wedgwood and Adams remained on terms of the
closest intimacy and uninterrupted friendship to the
death of Wedgwood x in 1794.
As became the pupil of such a first-rate practical
tutor, William Adams was an indefatigable experimenter,
and he fitted up a private laboratory at his house in
Tunstall where he continued his trials and researches in
the chemistry of pottery to the end of his life. There is
ample evidence of the success he attained in this direc-
tion when we consider the excellence of his jasper ware
and the fine earthenwares of various kinds, for all of
which he soon secured an extensive and lucrative foreign
trade. He travelled a good deal in pursuit of his busi-
ness, both in England and on the Continent, for he
made several extended journeys of investigation and
business combined, from which he evidently derived a
great amount of pleasure. There is an interesting
account, in one of his diaries, of a tour through Den-
mark and North Germany in company with his brother-
in-law, Mr. Daniel, which occupied several months of
1 Several deeds relating to various properties were executed between Josiah
Wedgwood and William Adams ; one as late as August llth, 1792.
164 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
the year 1797, and which was fortunately reprinted in
the family history published nearly twenty years ago.1
The Adams jasper ware has some well-marked fea-
tures which usually serve to differentiate it from that
of the other eminent makers. Some of the ground
colours differ perceptibly from those invented by Wedg-
wood, or at least from those which he generally used.
The applied ornament, too, though of the type which
Wedgwood and Bentley had made so familiar, is suffi-
ciently distinct in the style of modelling as well as in
the treatment of the designs — figures, draperies, and
conventional borders — to have won it a well-deserved
reputation. William Adams was a skilful modeller who
practised the art assiduously, and in the family history
which has just been mentioned a list is given of the
principal subjects which he is known to have modelled.
This list deserves careful consideration by all who are
interested in such details, for his work proves that he
possessed an uncommon degree of skill and taste, so
that one can perfectly understand why his descendants
have been wishful to choose these examples for repro-
duction as representing the best work of their distin-
guished ancestor. Joseph Monglott, a Swiss artist of
some repute who settled in England in 1785, became
the chief working modeller at the factory, and he is
said to have designed many of the border patterns which
were used on the Adams's jasper ware. The majority
of these are excellently spaced and proportioned, and
display a spice of novelty. On the whole, the more
characteristic designs found on the Adams's examples
1 " William Adams, an Old English Potter." London : Chapman & Hall, Ltd.,
1904.
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Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 165
are more fanciful and less balanced than the similar
work made at Etruria, though they are always interesting
and often spontaneous and fresh. The connoisseur may
find a source of interest that is all but inexhaustible in
a comparative examination of the treatment given to
the figures, draperies, and ornamental borders which
appear on the contemporary examples made by Wedg-
wood and Bentley, Adams,1 Palmer and Neale, and
Turner, for each kind possesses merits of its own as
well as characteristic and distinguishing features.
Black basalt — or the black Egyptian ware, as it
was often called — was also manufactured by Adams, and
the quality of his productions in this material is un-
surpassed. It may be helpful to some collectors who
own specimens of the Staffordshire black basalt of this
period if a sentence or two is interpolated as to the care
of such treasures. It has often been stated that the
sheen of the finest pieces was obtained by polishing in
the lathe after firing, as a lapidary polishes agates and
other hard stones. The effect of such polishing is often
to be seen on the shanks of seals, on the faces of seals
to be mounted as signets, and pieces of a similar kind,
but it produces a different surface quality from that
found on the figures, busts, and those examples which
are decorated with applied ornament, and which could
hardly have been polished by mechanical means except
at a prohibitive cost. The only polishing I have known
such pieces to undergo before they left the works is a
careful scrubbing with soft soap and fine sand, and when
1 The modern jasper wares made by John Adams & Co., and by Adams &
Bromley (who had worked at Etruria), of Hanley, circa 1870-85 or later, should not
be confounded with the vastly superior productions of Adams of Greengates and
his successors.
166 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
this has been thoroughly carried out and the piece has
been dried it is sometimes rubbed with milk and an
old silk rag. At all events, I can recommend this method
to any collector as one which he may follow, as required,
to the great advantage of his specimens.
Adams also excelled in the cream stonewares, in
which he made large quantities of jugs, mugs, and loving
cups, as well as more important flagons and wine coolers.
These are decorated with subjects in relief in the same
colour as the body of the piece, of the sporting and
drinking subjects which were most affected by the
Staffordshire potters of the time. The brown bands
applied to the shoulders or necks of these pieces are
glazed ; but the portions left white, while perfectly
vitreous, are less glossy than the stonewares made by
Mayer and others, which often have a " smear " of glaze
on the white portions. It is stated that Adams in-
variably finished his pieces with bands of brown or
black, as he did not consider the blue or other colours
used by some of his contemporaries suited to this kind
of pottery. Adams must have been the most extensive
maker of this kind of pottery in Staffordshire at the
end of the eighteenth century, as when the Turners
of Longton retired from business he is said to have
secured the bulk of their trade.
An old Staffordshire method of decoration which was
freely used by Adams is what is commonly called in the
district i; Mocha " ware, because it displays dendritic
or fernlike markings like those found in Mocha stones
or moss agates. This elementary decoration arose out
of the methods of the old slip-potter, and it has enjoyed
a longer life than most of his devices, for the method
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Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 167
is still practised for decorating the drinking mugs used
in the ale-houses of many country districts. The tech-
nique of the device is simple enough : when a clay
vessel has been turned in the lathe a thin coat of slip
is easily applied, and if, before this dries, drops of finely
ground oxide of manganese in water are applied to the
wet surface from a brush or a small pipette, they spread
through the moist slip in dendritic or fernlike forms
and retain these shapes after the ware has been dried
and fired. With care and skill it is possible to make
a pleasing surface-pattern in this way, but the method
has seldom been used for anything more elaborate than
these common drinking mugs. Such things are still
freely manufactured by a few potters, and specimens
may be found exposed for sale in any country fair or
market-place.
Blue-printed earthenwares became an important
branch of the manufactures of the Adams's factories,
for the family as a whole must have been the most
extensive makers of " blue-printed " after 1775 or 1785,
when they owned so many works in the district from
Tunstall to Stoke-on-Trent. Their printed earthenwares
were deservedly popular, for the patterns were always
well engraved, while the blue colour in which they were
mostly printed was used in various bright and agree-
able shades. The ware gained such a reputation that
it was soon in demand wherever English earthenware
was used and large collections of it are treasured to
this day among the older families in the United States
and Canada. Choice representative collections will be
found in the various museums of the " Five Towns,"
and there are a number of typical specimens in the
i68 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
British and the Victoria and Albert Museums. The
individual pieces are so well " potted " and the blue
printing is so sharp and clear that the Adams's
earthenware has always been in great demand, and its
popularity, fortunately, shows no sign of approaching
exhaustion.
I borrow from " Staffordshire Pots and Potters,"
by G. W. and F. A. Rhead, a table of the Adams family
which is of interest as a memorandum of names and
dates :
1. William Adams of Greengates . . 1745-1805.
2. William Adams of the Brick House
and Cobridge .... 1748-1831.
3. William Adams of Stoke-on-Trent . 1772-1829.
4. William Adams of Greenfields . . 1798-1865.
The first three were cousins and the last two father
and son, and while the two first-mentioned families are
extinct, the descendants of the other two are still con-
ducting the factories of Greengates and Greenfields.
Marks : ADAMS, w. ADAMS & SON, w. A & s., w. A & co.,
impressed and printed.
Just as the Adams family were migrants who settled
in North Staffordshire from the adjacent county of
Salop, the Wood family, which boasts so many distin-
guished modellers and potters among its sons, settled
in Burslem very early in the eighteenth century from a
hamlet called Cheddleton, which nestles in the moor-
lands beyond Leek and bordering on Derbyshire. The
first of this family who appears in Burslem, Ralph Wood,
born at Cheddleton in 1676, was a prosperous corn
miller, and it gives one a vivid idea of the rapid develop-
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 169
ment of the pottery industry in Staffordshire during the
eighteenth century when we attempt to trace the his-
tory and activities of his many descendants who became
well known as working potters, modellers, or manu-
facturers. With natural variations in detail, the broad
outlines of the history of the Woods, Wedgwoods,
Turners, Adams, Spodes, Mintons, and many another
family of more than local fame are remarkably similar,
and it is to the energy and enterprise combined with
marked technical and commercial aptitude displayed by
these men that England owes the remarkable develop-
ment of this local industry during the eighteenth century.
To return to Ralph Wood,1 the corn miller. His two
elder sons, Ralph Wood (1715-72) and Aaron Wood
(1717-85), are both famous in the annals of Stafford-
shire pottery making, and it may be mentioned as an
introduction to their activities that the second Ralph
Wood has another claim to the attention and interest
of all Wedgwood students, inasmuch as he married a
daughter of Aaron Wedgwood named Mary, who was a
cousin of Sarah Wedgwood of Spen Green, the wife of
Josiah Wedgwood.
Ralph WTood entered on his career as a master potter
by renting one of the factories in Burslem which belonged
to Thomas and John Wedgwood, the relatives from whom
Josiah Wedgwood likewise rented a factory, as we have
seen. Thus it came about that these two were neigh-
bours and friends at a time when they were both young
and full of energy, and they remained friends, though
1 Every student of our eighteenth-century pottery is, surely, familiar with the
delightful work by Mr. Frank Falkner, " The Wood Family of Burslem." London :
Chapman & Hall, Ltd., 1912.
170 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
their careers carried them so far apart in the work to
which they set their hands. There is in existence a
modelled group generally known as " Ralph Wood and
his Son " (see No. 28, Plate vn, " The Wood Family
of Burslem "), and though some doubt has been cast
on this ascription, I for one am inclined to accept it
as correct. The work, in any case, is an able and char-
acteristic piece of modelling in the style of other figures
and groups which are always accepted as the work of
Ralph Wood.
In the museum at the Etruria works there is an
invoice, dated November 16th, 1783, for a number of
figures, groups, animals, sater (satyr) head drink cups,
and cream ewers supplied to Josiah and Thomas Wedg-
wood (for the "useful" branch of their business), prob-
ably, that they might complete some of their country
orders. This list has been reprinted by Mr. Frank
Falkner and others for its interest as an indication
of the range of Ralph Wood's ordinary productions.
Another note, similarly preserved, is dated October
19th, 1784, but has an interest of another kind. It
runs :
MR. THO. WEDGWOOD.
SIR, — I should esteem it a great favour to settle the Note I delivered
with the Flowerpots by the Week End which was Dectd — £3 16 — my
Necessities oblige me or should not have ask'd so soon, at the same
time I thank you for your goodness in promoting my Trade, hoping
I may still be favor'd with your future orders in my Way, which will
be gratefully acknowledged by
Sir, your obliged humble Servant,
RALPH WOOD.
Ralph Wood is believed to have been the first among
the makers of the Staffordshire figures to use his signa-
CO
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ce
5
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 171
ture as a mark of identification, for they generally bear
7la .
the impressed mark R. WOOD or _. T , while
there is often, though not invariably, an impressed
mould number in addition.
Aaron Wood,1 the younger brother, who became the
most famous and expert block-cutter and modeller of
his generation, was apprenticed in 1731 to Dr. Thomas
Wedgwood of Burslem, the well-known " salt-glaze "
potter. The apprenticeship indenture runs that he was
to be taught " the art, trade, mystery and occupation
of a potter to learn, that is to say, turning in the lathe,
handling and trimming (throwing on the wheel being
out of this indenture excepted)." At the conclusion of
this term, in 1738, Aaron Wood continued to work for
Dr. Thomas Wedgwood at a weekly wage of five shillings
for a further period of five years. In 1743 he engaged
himself to John Mitchell, another salt-glaze potter, for
a term of seven years ; this time at the rate of seven
shillings a week and half a guinea, earnest money, every
November llth (Martinmas, the traditional hiring day in
Staffordshire, and a date at which wages are still generally
settled among the potters). At the expiration of this
term Aaron Wood commenced to work on his own
account as a block-cutter and modeller, and he had
already gained such a reputation for his skill that when
he was engaged by Thomas Whieldon he could stipulate
that he should work only in a private room which he
could keep locked, so that he might retain the secrets
1 An excellent reproduction of the portrait of Aaron Wood, which was painted
by William Caddick, of Liverpool, in 1747, will be found in Plate xxiv of Mr.
Frank Falkner's " The Wood Family of Burslem."
172 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
of his methods. Here he is believed to have devised
and cut the models of some of the tea and coffee-pots,
melon and other table plates, pickle leaves, sweetmeat
trays and pieces of that order for which the Whieldon
factory became so famous.
There are preserved in the collections of the British
and the Victoria and Albert Museums a number of the
original pitcher blocks, from which the plaster-of-Paris
moulds used in shaping the actual pottery were
made, which bear the name, Aaron Wood, inscribed
in full ; while the pitcher block for a small milk jug
bears the letters R. W. (probably for Ralph Wood)
on two flat patches on its opposite sides over which
the feet would be attached. The large collection of
such blocks and moulds possessed by the Victoria and
Albert Museum — which was greatly enriched by the
examples from Enoch Wood's historic collection trans-
ferred from the Jermyn Street Museum — must always
remain a source of extreme interest to students,
inasmuch as one can see and examine there the
actual block-work of these skilled modellers alongside
the pieces of pottery manufactured from it at the time.
Aaron Wood married Mary Meir and they had eight
children. The eldest son was William Wood (1748-1808),
so well known as the modeller of the useful wares at
Etruria for Wedgwood and Bentley, while the youngest
son was Enoch Wood (1759-1840), a successful potter
and public-spirited citizen who is also memorable as
the first systematic collector of the older Staffordshire
pottery, and for this he deserves to be held in grateful
remembrance by all who are interested in the history
and development of the art in that district.
'*'
VOLTAIRE
Cane body
Mark : WEDGWOOD & BENTLEY
Height 12i in., base 4\ in.
Falcke Collection, British Museum.
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 173
Enoch Wood seems to have followed the family
calling from childhood, as there is in the British Museum
a glazed cream-ware plaque bearing the arms and crest
of the Wood family in modelled relief. On the back is
a painted inscription (one surmises painted by Enoch
Wood at some later date) : " These arms were modelled
by Enoch Wood, A.D. 1771, being then in the 12th year
of his age — signed William Wood — This piece was found
in the possession of Wm. Wood, Modeller, after his
decease, with the above memorandum in his hand-
writing in ink, and is now in 1821 thus transcribed more
durably — This Arms was copied from a rough drawing
found in the wall of Chedleton Church, then said to
be Wood's Arms."
Enoch Wood appears to have spent a little while
in acquiring the rudiments of the potter's trade at the
Burslem works of Wedgwood and Bentley when he was
still very young, though he was not apprenticed to them
but to H. Palmer of Hanley Green, and worked under
that potter until he set up on his own account at the
age of twenty-four. His record as a manufacturer is
one of sustained interest and growing commercial success,
but, in addition, he became a notable figure in the public
and industrial life of the district and was always eager
to be of service in any cause which he conceived to be
for the benefit of the population or industries of " The
Potteries."
Three years before he set up in business — viz. 16th
December, 1780 — he married Miss Ann Bourne, daughter
of Mr. James Bourne, attorney, of Newcastle-under-
Lyme. They were destined to enjoy a long period of
married happiness, and while Enoch Wood died on
174 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
August 17th, 1840, his widow only survived to January
28th, 1841. They had a family of eight daughters and
four sons, but the surviving sons appear to have relin-
quished the business after the death of Enoch Wood.
The business and works at Burslem were sold to the
firm of Finder, Bourne & Hope (for whom Lockwood
Kipling, father of Rudyard Kipling, was at one
time art director), and this firm was ultimately
absorbed by Sir Henry Doulton when that famous
potter established the Burslem branch of his business
for the manufacture of china and fine earthenware
especially.
In the course of his long and busy career Enoch Wood
evidently manufactured all the kinds of pottery that
were made in North Staffordshire at that epoch, for
besides becoming a manufacturer of earthenware and
jasper ware on a large scale he made bone-china and a
white stoneware, which was generally overlaid with a
slip-ground of turquoise or bright cobalt-blue and orna-
mented with figures of cupids, festoons of flowers and the
like in relief, the whole being glazed.1 He also manu-
factured some black basalt ware of good quality,
though not so extensively (except for the busts of Wesley,
Whit field, and other Methodist divines) as the pro-
ductions already mentioned, for black basalt does not
seem to have been so popular during the first half of
the nineteenth century as it had been for half a century
before.
Speaking generally, I should rank Enoch Wood's
manufactures as representing the good, sound, average
production of his times. One can hardly say that he
1 See " The Wood Family of Burslem " (I.e.). Plates
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 175
attained to any marked distinction as a potter or as
an artist, or that his contributions to the progress of
the industry were of outstanding merit. He fills a
position just below the first rank admirably, for he
was an energetic, industrious, painstaking man who
made the best of conditions as they were, paid his way
cheerfully, and did all that lay in his power for what
he conceived to be the good of his family, his neigh-
bours and his native district, so that one can well under-
stand why he was so generally and affectionately called
" The Father of the Potteries."
Marks :
Josiah Spode has been mentioned several times, as
he was one of the group of potters trained by Whieldon
who afterwards rose to eminence in the trade. He
was born in 1733, and it is amusing to note the
first entries of weekly wages under his name in
Whieldon's account books, as they were published by
LI. Jewitt : —
1749 £ s. d.
April 9. Hired Siah Spode, to give him from
this time to Martelmas next 2s. 3d.,
or 2s. 6d. if he Deserves it.
2d year ...... 029
3d year ...... 033
Pd. full earnest . . . .010
Spode was hired by Whieldon for two further periods
till 1754, and for the last year he was paid at the rate
176 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
of seven shillings and sixpence a week, with the un-
usually large earnest of £1 lls. 6cL, so that he must have
been a first-rate workman. He was married during this
time as Josiah Spode II was born in 1754. About 1770
Spode entered on the occupation of a works at Stoke-
on-Trent, formerly conducted by Turner and Bankes
(see p. 151), and as he had been trained in a famous
school and was skilful and energetic he soon became
a successful and thriving manufacturer. He was one
of the first in Staffordshire to turn his attention to the
possibilities of blue printing (underglaze), a process which
had proved its worth at Caughley and Coalport. Blue-
printed ware could be sold more cheaply than the over-
glaze printed ware in red, brown and black, as no second
fire in the enamel kiln was required to fix the pattern.
The process was immediately successful in Spode's hands,
and he must have reaped a considerable harvest from
it before it was largely adopted by his neighbours. His
first patterns were echoes of the Oriental patterns found
on the so-called " Nankin China," and Spode's suc-
cessors, the present-day firm of W. T. Copeland & Sons,
still carry on the tradition in a fine series of blue-printed
earthenware services of all kinds, among which Spode's
" Tower " pattern enjoys its measure of popularity.
The rapid development of Spode's business was due
to the quality of his blue-printed earthenwares, and
their sale was greatly extended by the activities of
Mr. William Copeland, a native of Stoke-on-Trent, then
residing in London and engaged as a traveller in the
tea trade. Copeland undertook to sell Spode's pottery
among his customers, the retail tea-dealers of London
and the provinces. This enterprise succeeded, and Cope-
PERFORATED BASKET AND STAND
In Jasper Ware
Basket — Height 1} in., width 4J in.
Stand — Diameter 4J in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
,-f
>^^x^?^^
^•&£SZ£^'.< %
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 177
land opened a warehouse in Fore Street, in the City of
London, where he sold all the Spode productions. This
in its turn succeeded, and Copeland became a partner
in the Spode business, and in 1779 they purchased a
house, 37 Lincoln's Inn Fields, and behind it, in Por-
tugal Street,1 they opened a warehouse for the sale of
Spode and Copeland's pottery. For some time the elder
Spode conducted the factory, and his son Josiah II
worked in the London agency with Mr. Copeland.
When the elder Spode died in 1797, his son returned
to Stoke to manage the factory, and soon proved him-
self a worthy successor to his father by the skill with
which he maintained and extended the branches of
manufacture in which his father had excelled. His best
original work was done in connexion with his intro-
duction of the manufacture of bone-china at the Stoke
factory, for it is to the labours of the second Josiah
Spode that a considerable measure of the successful
working out of the composition of the modern English
china body is due. The first improvement in the body
of his chinaware is said to have resulted from the sub-
stitution of pure felspar for a proportion of the china
stone previously used, so that the finished ware became
richer in tone and quality, for it was solidly translucent
without being too " glassy ' and thin looking. These
technical improvements, supported as they were by the
excellent " potting " for which the firm was noted,
quickly made Spode a formidable rival of the older
porcelain factories, Worcester, Derby and Coalport (to
1 This warehouse covered the site of Davenant's old theatre, which became
famous as the scene of Garrick's first appearance and of the first performance of
The Beggar's Opera, which has enjoyed another London success while these
pages were being written.
M
178 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
which the Caughley business had recently been trans-
ferred by John Rose), the chief survivors from the spacious
days of the eighteenth century. In 1805 Spode made
another departure by the introduction of " ironstone
china," a hard, white earthenware of the type which
was afterwards rendered so popular by the Masons of
Lane Delph (Fenton), that it largely displaced for a
time the old cream-colour.
Apropos of Spode's china, I cannot refrain from
directing the reader's attention to the opinions so
judicially expressed by that famous authority the late
M. L. Solon x on the historically important question of
the settlement of the composition of our English china
body and Spode's share in that matter. He says :
" One hundred years have gone since Josiah Spode, second of the
name, breaking away from technical routine, composed. a new china
body which united the advantages of the soft and hard porcelain. From
the nature of its chief constituent it received the vulgar name of ' Bone
China.' Modern manufacturers scarcely seem to realize what they
owe to the invention, and what gratitude they should entertain toward
the inventor. His name could not occupy too high a place in the annals
of the Staffordshire Potteries. Unlike so many improvements which,
after being acclaimed and adopted by all, live only long enough to be
displaced by some other novelty, this evergreen ' bone china ' has re-
mained unaltered ever since the first pieces of it came out of Spode's
oven, and nothing indicates that it will be superseded for a long time
to come."
That Spode's china should have displayed in its
decorations a close resemblance to the styles of the
contemporary Crown-Derby china is natural, as so many
of his decorators had previously worked at Derby.
This affiliation is shown in many ways, in the elaborate
1 " History of Old English Porcelain." M. L. Solon. Bemrose & Sons, Ltd.,
London and Derby, 1903.
FEEDING-GUP AND COFFEE POT AND STRAINER
"Pearl" Ware
Feeding-Cup — Length 7] in., height (from spout) 2 in.
Coffee Pot Height 6 ,! in., diameter 4 ,! in.
Victoria and Albert Museum.
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 179
vases made in the Stoke factory (notably the three ex-
amples presented to the Victoria and Albert Museum
by Miss Spode, the last direct representative of the
family) no less than in the successful adaptations of the
ever-popular Crown-Derby Japan patterns, though many
of Spode's patterns were adapted directly from Japanese
examples that he acquired for the purpose. When Spode
was entering on the manufacture of china the Crown-
Derby factory was under a cloud of commercial depres-
sion accentuated by mismanagement, so that an enter-
prising rival, whose situation was in some ways more
advantageous, was in a position to secure the steady
patronage of the wholesale dealers and shopkeepers,
especially when he could offer a better article at the
same price.
The Spode productions of this time, whether in earthen-
ware or china, were excellently made and of the best
material, but the decorations, popular as they proved
at the time, are thoroughly representative of the period
and find few admirers among writers on aesthetics. All
our china factories seem to have been obsessed by two
foreign styles in the forms and decorations they gave
to their productions. First, the Greek vase, robbed of
its purity of line and covered all over with bright colour
and lavish, heavy gilding, and as an alternative the
" Japan " patterns with their informal patches of rich
blue, bright red and gold, a style which was as freely
used at Spode's factory as if it had been the latest novelty
in pottery decoration. All very sad and very bad, but
more tolerable to live with than the unrestrained pranks
of IL'art nouveau by which they have been replaced
in our generation.
i8o Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
Marks :
The completion of the Staffordshire Canal caused a
number of potters to establish works along its course
from about 1773, and the most northerly group of these
was at Longport, above and below the bridge that
carried the Burslem-Newcastle road over the canal. One
of these factories was opened by John Brindley, brother
of the famous James Brindley who had constructed the
waterway, and in 1794 a John Davenport, previously
in partnership with a potter named Woolfe who had a
works near the centre of Stoke-on-Trent, took over this
factory at Longport and settled there. The first John
Davenport was a man of great activity and enterprise,
for the business became one of the most extensive of
its time in Staffordshire. His productions were more
than usually diverse, for in addition to a great manu-
facture of earthenware and china, he also carried on,
for a few years after 1797, the preparation of litharge
and white lead for the use of potters and glass makers,
while in 1801 he commenced to make glass and manu-
factured table-glass on a scale comparable with the old-
established glass houses about Stourbridge. There
appears to have been no limits to his ambitions, for he
also produced large windows of stained and painted
glass, and in 1805 retained Fuseli, the painter, to design
such windows and to supervise the artists and glass
painters who were employed at the works. The records
MARRIAGE OF CUPID AND PSYCHE
White on blue jasper
Height 2 1 in., width 3i in.
"AM I NOT A MAN
AND A BROTHER"
Cane Ware, black relief
Height 3£ in., width 3] in.
British Museum.
TERPSICHORE
White on black
Jasper Ware
Height 3| in., width 2| in.
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 181
of these windows appear to have been lost or destroyed,
but it is certain that a considerable number of elaborate
windows were made for churches and country mansions,
and they were considered of some importance at the
time.
Other artists of note were also engaged at this fac-
tory, and one or two of them should be mentioned.
Joshua Christall, who served his apprenticeship here,
became a well-known painter in water-colours and Presi-
dent of the Society of Painters in Water-colour. I am
unaware of any identified work by Christall that was
done for Davenport, but my friend, the late G. Woollis-
croft Rhead, was of opinion that the figures on a service
of New Hall china that had been handed down in his
family were painted by Christall.1 James Holland, who
is so well known for his water-colour drawings of Venice,
also served his apprenticeship as a china-painter at the
factory, and it would be a matter of some little interest
were we able to identify the work he did as a pot-painter
in his youthful days.
In spite of these ambitious efforts and the co-operation
of such artists, the Davenport examples of earthenware
and china have little claim to artistic merit. The
material is always excellent in body and glaze, the manu-
facture and workmanship are as good as need be, while
the painting and gilding are rich and elaborate, for they
recall the work of the Crown-Derby china factory in its
palmy days ; yet, with all this skill and ambition, I
have never seen a specimen of Davenport porcelain that
I should wish to possess.
That the Prince Regent and the Duke of Clarence,
1 " Staffordshire Pots and Potters " (I.e.), pp. 281-2.
182 Josiah Wedgwood and His Pottery
afterwards George IV and William IV respectively,
patronized the Davenports and visited the factory on
one occasion in the course of a tour to the north of
England tells us something of the reputation enjoyed
by the firm at the time — though, unfortunately, it was
a time that has left us little to boast about in the art
of pottery. Davenport was honoured, perhaps as a
result of this visit, with a commission to manufacture
the service that was used at the coronation banquet of
King William IV, and it is said that the crown which
was afterwards used as a mark on the Davenport
pottery and porcelain owes its appearance to this
circumstance.
The reputation of the Davenport earthenware and
china was widely spread, for the firm secured a great
foreign trade with North and South America, as well
as with various countries of continental Europe. The
firm opened a depot and showrooms in the free port
of Hamburg as a centre for their extensive trade in
Eastern Europe, and it is of some little interest to note
that a German house carried on this depot under the
name of Davenport and Company and maintained an
extensive trade in pottery, porcelain, and table-glass,
and when I last visited Hamburg, just before 1914, was
one of the most important houses of its kind in that
city.
John Davenport retired from the management of
affairs about 1830, and the business was carried on by
the second son Henry Davenport and the youngest
son William. Henry Davenport died in 1835, and the
business was then continued by William Davenport
under the title of W. Davenport & Co. On the death
Imitation Chinese
mark, on red ware
Teapot of F.Iers
style
Imitation Chinese
mark with im-
pressed W on a
red Teapot
WEI5GWOOt>
& BENILfcY
Wedgwood <V' Bentley
Wedgwood <\: Bentley
w^wa^ ; <A';/fXf WOOft
SOME OF THE PRINCIPAL WEDGWOOD MARKS
Contemporary Potters in Staffordshire 183
of William Davenport in 1869 the business was con-
tinued by his only son Henry Davenport until it came
to an end shortly after 1880, for the last Henry Daven-
port seems to have left affairs too much in the hands
of managers.
As the wares were distinctly marked DAVENPORT
DAVENPORT, ,., .., ., jj-.- f
or LONGPORT °ften W1th the addition of an anchor,
and in the later years with a crown, they may be readily
identified. On many pieces words so CANNING PLACE
LIVERPOOL, 82 FLEET STREET LONDON, encircled by
a garter bearing the words DAVENPORT LONGPORT
STAFFORDRE, and similar legends which are quite dis-
tinctive, appear. In many cases the mark is both
impressed and printed.
INDEX
" A HISTORY and Description of English
Earthenware and Stoneware," by
William Burton, 152
" A History of the Wedgwood Family,"
by Josiah C. Wedgwood, M.P., 2, 3,
144
Adams, family of, 151, 161, 168
a History of, by Percy W. L. Adams,
161
table of, 168
Adams, John, founder of Brick House
Works, 162
Adams, John, II., 162
Adams, Percy W. L., " History of the
Adams Family," 161
Adams, Ralph, 162
Adams, William, association of, with
Wedgwood, 163
black basalt ware of, 165
" blue printed " ware of, 167, 168
cream stoneware of, 166
jasper ware of, 164
laboratory work of, 163
" Mocha " ware of, 1(5(5
"Agate" wares, 30, 31, 65
Alders, Thomas, Wedgwood's partnership
with, 113
Aldersea, John, 113 (footnote)
Aldersea, Thomas (see Alders)
Anson, Lord, and " Grand Trunk Canal,"
106
" Antique " printed pattern, 83
Arkwrights, the, English yeoman family
of, 2
Arnoux, Leon, 30 (footnote)
" Art of Pottery in Liverpool," by
Mayer, 78
Artists, Wedgwood's principal, 128 el seq.
M* I
Astbury, and the Elers, 16
first importer of Devonshire clays, 17
red and black pottery of, 57
white pottery of, 41
works of, at Shelton, If.
" BACCHANALIAN- Boys," jasper medallion
of, 13(5
Bacon, black basalt bust of, 64
Baddeleys of Shelton, 33, 42, 151
Ball-clays of Dorset and Devonshiie, 34, 41
use of, in cream-coloured wares, 42
Bankes, Robert, 151
" Barberini " Vase (sec Portland Vase)
Barium, carbonate of, in white jasper
ware, 67
sulphate of, 68
Barker, John, 119
Barret, George, R.A., and designs for
" Russian Service," 88
Barytes, sulphate of (" cawk "), 7
use of in white jasper ware, 67
Basalt, black, Adams's, 165
bronze " encaustic " decoration of, 65
Enoch Wood and, 174
Palmer and Voyez's work in, 155
polishing of, 165
preparation or clays for, 6
texture of, 63
ware, 63, 155
Battersea, printed wares of, 78
Bell Works, Bursiem, leased by Josiah
Wedgwood, 6
origin of name of, 22
" Bentley and Boardman," 123
Bentley, Thomas, and Palmer's vases, 31
and use of lathes, 23
lS6
Index
Bentley, Tliomas (continued)
disagreement with Wedgwood, 61
first commission to Flaxman, 134
house of, at Turnham Green, 125, 120
letter from Wedgwood to, on technical
education, 102
letter to Boardman from, 12(5
letters from Wedgwood to, on " Russian
Service," 90, 125, 126
partnership with Wedgwood, 122, 124,
126
Wedgwood's first acquaintance with,
104 (footnote), 122
Bideford, clays from, 7
" Black " and " Mottled " wares of
Staffordshire, 18
" Black Egyptian " ware, 63, 165
" Blue Convolvulus with green leaves "
pattern, 83
" Blue printing," Adams and, 167, 168
popularity of, 157
" Blunging " clay, 13
Booth, Enoch, of Tunstall, glazing inven-
tion of, 41, 42
" Border " patterns, 83
Boulton, Matthew, and artistic develop-
ment of pottery, 129
letter from Wedgwood, to, 111, 112
Bourne, Edward, Wedgwood's portrait
of, 25 (footnote)
Bow, printed wares of, 78
Boyle, John, partnership with Francis
Wedgwood, 117
Brick House Works, 120
founded by John Adams, 162
Bridgwater, Duke of, and canal, 8
Brindlcy, James, and " Grand Trunk
Canal," 106, 107, 180
Brindley, John, 180
British Museum, black basalt vase by
Palmer and Voyez in, 155
" blue printing " ware in, 168
jasper ware in, 70, 73, 74, 137, 156
" lilac " jasper cameos in, 75
Wedgwood's " Portland " Vase in, 73
Wood, Enoch, moulds in, 172 ; plaque
by, in, 173
Bronze " encaustic " decoration, 65
Brown, Capability, and gardens of Etruria
Hall, 88
Brown, Robert, partnership with Francis
Wedgwood, 147
" Brown Stone " ware, 18
Burslem, as pottery centre, 142
Bell Works at, 6, 22
birthplace of Josiah Wedgwood, 1, 3 J
Churchyard Works at, 3, 142, 143
Ivy House Works at, 6
"' The Big House," 101 (footnote)
" The Jenkins," installation of lirst
mill at, 23
Wedgwood's free school at, 101
Burton, W., " A History and Description
of English Earthenware and Stone-
ware," 152
Bute, John, Marquis of, service for, 49
" Bute " shape cups and saucers, 49
" Butter Pots," 18
Byerley, Thomas, death of, 146
Etruria works and, 116
partnership with Wedgwood, 127
tour with Josiah Wedgwood, II., 144,
145
CALCINED flint, Aslbury's discovery of,
for use in pottery, 17
first mill for grinding, 23
use of in North Stallordshire, 34
" Calico pattern and springs," 83
" Cambridge ale-jug," 61
Canals as mode of transport to potteries,
8, 106, 107
" Canary-yellow " glaze, use of platinum
on, 97
Cane-body ware, 62, 63
" Catalogue of English Pottery in British
Museum," by R. L. Hobson, 71,
155
Catherine II. of Russia, Danish service
for, 86
Sevres service for, 85
Wedgwood's service for, 50, 54, 55, 85
et seq.
" Cauliflower " ware, 29, 116
" Gawk " from Derbyshire, for jasper
ware, 7, 68
" Ceramic Art in Great Britain," by
LI. Jewitt, 3 (footnote), 78
" Chalk-body," used by Wilson, 157
Index
187
Champion, attempt of, to secure extension
of Cookworthy's patent, 34, 130, 152
atham, Lord, black basalt bust of, 64
laucer, black basalt bust of, 64
nelsea, printed wares of, 78
'helsea, Wedgwood and Bentley's paint-
ing shops at, 125
jhessmen, by Flaxman, 76
Chester, importance of, 7
" Chester Clays," 7
China-clay, discovery of, by William
Cookworthy, 33
transport of, from Liverpool, 35
use of, in cream-coloured ware, 42
China-stone, discovery of, by William
Cookworthy, 33
Christall, Joshua, work of, for Daven-
port, 181
Church, Professor, " English Earthen-
ware," by, 16, 33, 38, 42, 59
" Josiah Wedgwood," by, 64, 68, 72
ChurchyardiWorks, Burslcm, 3, 142, 143
Cicero, black basalt bust of, 64
Clark, William, of Newcastle-under-Lyme,
47
Clarke, Esau, on Wedgwood's Irish
business, 112
Clay, methods of working in North
Staffordshire, 6, 13
Cliff Bank, pottery centre, 4
Wedgwood's factory at, 113
" Cloudy " wares of Staffordshire, 18, 28,
117
Cobalt, oxide of, use in pearl ware, 37
Colclough, John, 141
Cookworthy, William, discovery of china-
clay and china-stone in Cornwall
by, 33
patent granted, to, 34
Copeland and Sons, 151 (footnote), 176
Copeland, William, association of, with
Spode, 177
Copper, use of, in Staffordshire glazes, 28
Cox, letter from Wedgwood to, 36
" Crab-stock " handles. 50
Cream-coloured earthenware, 32 ft seq.,
35, 42, 45, 49, 53
" gold lustre " on, 97 et seq.
of ^France, 46
origin of, 41
Cream-coloured earthenware (continued)
use of platinum on, 97
Creil, Saint-Cricq factory at, 47
Croce, Benedetto, " Theory of ^Esthetic,"
44
" Crouch " ware of Nottingham, 39
Cunningham, W,, D.D., " The Growth of
English Industry and Commerce,"
150
DARWIN, CHARLES, and Wedgwood's
" Portland " Vase; 73
parents of, 144
Darwin, Dr. Erasmus, marriage of son of,
to .Miss Susannah Wedgwood, 144
sends sketch of windmill to Wedgwood,
23 (footnote)
j Darwin, R. \V., and Wedgwood's " Port-
land " Vase, 73
Davenport, Henry, 183
Davenport, John, retirement of, 182
royal service by, 182
work of, 180
Davenport, William, 182
De Witt, brothers, black basalt bust of,
64
Defects, disputes between employers and
potters concerning, 26, 27
Delany, Mrs., on Wedgwood's " Russian
Service," 92
" Delft," English, 45
Devonshire clays for potteries, 7
Dimsdale Hall, the Elers brothers at, 15
Doulton, Sir Henry, 174
i Drab-coloured ware, 61, 62
" Dry bodies," 56, 58, 60
" Dysart " glaze, 35, 43
EDUCATION, Wedgwood and, 100, 101
; Ehrenberg, and platinum deposits in
Ural Mountains, 95
Elers, John Philip, 16
Elers, the brothers, 15
and North Staffordshire clays, 56
and use of lathes, 23
pottery of, 15
Enamel-colours, use of, 53, 84
Enamelled patterns, 83
i88
Index
" Enamelled shagreen " pattern, 83
" English Earthenware," by Professor
Church, 16, 33. 38. 42. 59
Engraved plates, inventory of, 83
Etruria Hall, 125
Capability Brown and gardens of, 88
" Etruria " works, " Agate " wares of. 30
artists employed at, 134, 135, 138
built by Wedgwood, 1, 107
date of foundation, 1
early methods of working clay at, 6
installation of steam-engine at, 23
ovens and kilns at, 25
Etruria Museum, letter from Ralph Wood
in, 170
letter relative to " Russian Service " in,
89
memorandum on Garrick tea service in,
81
memorandum on " lustre " decorations
in, 80 (footnote)
white stoneware in, 65
Etruria Vale, transport of potter's ma-
terials from, 35
" Etruscan " printed pattern, 83
" Exotic birds " pattern, 83
FAJ.CKE Collection, 73
jasper slabs and plaques in, 73
Falkner, Frank, " The Wood Family of
Burslem," 101, 169. 170, 171, 174
Fenton Low, Whieldon's factory at, 114
Flaxman, John, R.A., association with
Wedgwood, 132
career of, 132-134
chessmen by, 70
friendship with Romney, Hlake, and
Stothard, 133
medallion portrait of In'mself, 64
" Pegasus " Vase and, 71
portrait medallions by, 00
" wine " and " water " ewers, 04
" Flora Danica " service for Catherine II.,
86
France, cream-coloured pottery of, 40
Fuseli, work of, for Davenport, 180
GALENA, 14
" Galena " glaze. 41
I Garner, Robert, 119
I Garrick, David, tea service for, 81
| Gildca and Walker, 160
Glazes, " canary- yellow," 97
" cream-colour," 36, 42
" Dysart," 35, 13
" ivory." 35
Wedgwood's green and yellow, 27, 28,
110
Whieldon's, 117
Gold in enamelled patterns, 84
in " lustre " decoration, 80 (footnote)
" liquid," 97 (footnote)
on black basalt, 65
on terra cotta ware, 97
use of, 53
I Gower, Earl, and " Grand Trunk Canal,''
106
Gower family and Staffordshire canal
project, 8
" Grand Trunk Canal," Wedgwood and
scheme for, 106, 107, 130 (footnote)
Greatbach, William, 119
china glaze of, 42
" Granite " ware, 36
Neale's, 156
" Greek " printed patterns, 83
Greek Street, Soho, Wedgwood and Bent
ley's painting shops in, 54
exhibition of " Russian Service " at,
92
Green, Guy, printed wares of, 78, 80, 81,
91
Green glaze, use of, by Wedgwood, 27, 28,
116
Grindley, W. H., white earthenware of,
36
HACKWOOD, modeller at Etruria, 138,
139
Hamilton, Sir William, letter to, from
Wedgwood on " Pegasus " Vase, 71
" Portland " Vase and, 72
" Handbook of Wedgwood W7are," 74,
75
Hanley Museum, indentures of Josiah
Wedgwood in, 3, 16
Neale's jasper ware in, 156
Twyford teapots in, 16
Index
Harecastle, canal tunnel at, 107
Harrison, John, of Newcastle-under-
Lyme, Wedgwood's partnership with,
4, 113, 114
" Harrison, Wedgwood and Aldersea," of
Cliff Bank, 4
Hayden, Arthur, " Royal Copenhagen
Porcelain," by, 86
" Head of Medusa," jasper medallion of,
136
Heath, of Shelton, and use of calcined
flint, 17
" Heavy-spar," 68
' History of Old English Porcelain," by
M. L. Solon, 178
" History of the Staffordshire Potteries/'
by Simeon Shaw, 113 (footnote)
Hobson, R. L., " Catalogue of English
Pottery in the British Museum," by,
71, 155
Holland, James, work of, for^Davenport,
181
Hollins, Samuel, red and chocolate
coloured ware of, 57, 58
" the " red china potter," 57
Homer, black basalt bust of, 64
" Honeysuckle " pattern, 83
Humboldt, Alexander, and platinum
deposits in Ural Mountains, 95
" ILLUSTRIOUS Moderns," 60
Ireland, commercial relations between
Great Britain and, 108, 109, 110^
Pitt and, 110
Iron, carbonate of, in black basalt ware,
63
Iron, oxides of, in " cream " ware, 43
in Staffordshire wares, 28
Wedgwood's use of, 35
" Ironstone china," and Spode, 178
" Ivory " glaze, 35, 53
Ivy House Factory, Burslem, leased by
Josiah Wedgwood, 5, 6, 42, 119, 120,
143
" JASPER body," Wedgwood's experi-
ments in, 68
formula for, 68
Jasper ware, Adams's, 164
busts and figures in, 74
Jasper ware (continued)
" cawk " for, 7
characteristics of, 69
" lilac," 74
medallions and cameos in, 136, 137
method of making, 29 (footnote)
Palmer and Neale's, 156
panels and mantelpieces in, 136
" Pegasus " Vase in, 71
preparation of clays for, 6
shades of, 70
slabs and panels in, 73, 135
Turner and, 152
Wedgwood's experiments with, 67
Wedgwood's opinion of, 56
Jermyn Street Collection, 13 (footnote), 172
cream-colour and " pearl " figures in, 38
jasper plaques in, 74
Wedgwood's " Portland " Vase in, 73
Jewitt, LI., " Ceramic Art in Great
Britain," 3 (footnote), 78
Johnsons, white earthenware of, 36
" Josiah Wedgwood," by Sir A. H.
Church, 64, 68, 72
" Josiah Wedgwood and Son," 127
" Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, Ltd.," 127
" Josiah Wedgwood, Sons, and Byerley,"
127
KAYE-COX Collection, at Manchester, 30
Kiln-space, 25
Kipling, Lockwood, director of Pinder,
Bourne and Hope, 174
LANE END, Turner's factory at, 152
Lathes, introduction of, for pottery, 23
Lead, sulphide of (galena), 14
Lead ore, use of, in early glaze, 14
Lead oxide in early glaze, 14
Leadbeater, origin of name, 162 (footnote)
Leland, 11
" Life of George Brummell," 62
" Life of Josiah Wedgwood," by Eliza
Meteyard, 3 (footnote), 23, 35, 36,
59, 74, 75
" Light green bell drops " pattern, 83
Linnaeus, black basalt figure of, 65
Liverpool, communication of pottery
towns with, 7, 35
pottery printing at, 78, 80
Index
Liverpool Museum, bronze " encaustic "
work in, 65
Mayer Collection in, 147
printed ware in, 81
"Turner" ware in, 153
white stoneware in, 65
" Lustre " ware, decoration of, by Steele
of Hanley, 80 (footnote)
in Victoria and Albert Museum, 98
Staffordshire, 94 et seq.
Wilson's, 158
MACHINERY, introduction of, to potteries,
20, 21, 22
Maddox, white earthenware of, 36
Manganese, oxide of, in " lilac " jasper
ware, 75
use of, in black basalt ware, 63, 64
use of, in Staffordshire glazes, 28
" Marbled " ware, 30, 65
Neale's, 156
Marks, Adams's, 168
Davenport's, 183
Mayer Bros.', 161
Mayer's, Elijah, 160
Palmer's, 155
Spode's, 180
Turner's, 154
Wedgwood's, 120, 121
Wilson's, 158
Wood's, Enoch, 175
Wood's, Ralph, 171
Matthews, Mr., friendship with Flaxman,
133
Mayer, " Art of Pottery in Liverpool," 78
Mayer Brothers of Dalehall, 160, 161
Mayer, Elijah, enamelled decoration of,
159, 160
use of enamel-colour patterns, 48
Mayer family of Hanley, 158
Mayer, Joseph, 160
Meakins, white earthenware of, 36
Mercury, terra-cotta bust of, 64
Meteyard, Eliza, " Life of Josiah Wedg-
wood," 3 (footnote), 23, 24, 35, 36,
59, 74, 75, 83, 112, 155
Middle Ages, pottery of, 11
Mill for grinding calcined flint, 23
Milton, black basalt bust of, 64
Mitchell, John, 171
" Mocha " ware, 166
Monasteries and pottery, 11
Monglott, Joseph, modeller for Adams,
164
" Mottled " wares of Staffordshire, 18, 28,
117
" NATURAL History of Staffordshire," by
Dr. Robert Plot, 13, 20
" Nautilus " centrepiece, 51
" Navvy," origin of word, 106
Neale, partner of Palmer, 156
Nicholas II. and Wedgwood's " Russian
Service," 93
" OLD BOURNE," Wedgwood's portrait of,
25 (footnote)
Olive-coloured ware, 61, 62
Ovens, size of, 25
" Overglaze " colours, 79
" P.O." (pearl granite) ware, 36
Pacetti, " Sacrifice of Iphigenia," by, 135
Palmer and Neale, " agate" wares of, 31
Palmer, Henry, Enoch Wood apprenticed
to, 173
jasper ware of, 156
partnership with Neale, 156
work of, 155
Painters employed at Etruria, 102, 103
Painting shops in London, 54
" Pearl " ware, 49
composition of, 37
first making of, 36
glazes for, 43
" gold lustre " on, 98
silver shape, 51
use of platinum on, 97
" Pebble " ware, 65
Peels, the, English yeomen family of, 2
" Pegasus " Vase, 71
" Personal adornment," articles of, 75,
76
" Pie-crust " ware, 62
Pinchbeck, origin of, 115 (footnote)
Pinder, Bourne and Hope, 174
Index
191
"Pineapple" ware, 29, 116
Pitt, William, and trade relations between
Ireland and Great Britain, 110
Platinum, discovery and application of,
94
preparation of, for pottery, 95, 96
use of, by English potters, 95
use of, in " lustre " decoration, 80 (foot-
note), 94
Plato, black basalt bust of, 64
Plot, Dr. Robt., " Natural History of
Staffordshire," by, 13, 20
" Plymouth China," invented by Cook-
worthy, 33, 34
Portland, Duchess of, and " Portland "
Vase, 72
'' Portland ''" Vase, sarcophagus in which
was found the, 135
Wedgwood's copy of, 72, 144, 145
" Potteries, The," 10
" Potter's dozen," 26
Pottery industry, North Staffordshire, 6
conditions of, 10 el seq.
" Priam begging the body of Hector from
Achilles," jasper slab of, 135
" Printed bird " pattern, 83
Printed earthenwares, 77 el seq.
" QUEEN'S " pattern, 83
" Queen's Ware," 32, 42
decoration of, at Chelsea, 125
early specimen of, in Wood Collection,
52
Enoch Wood's memorandum on, 33
RAY, E., bust of John Turner, junior, by,
154
" Red and black strawberry leaf with
drop " pattern, 83
" Red birds " pattern, 83
Red-ware, Eler Brothers and, 57
Rhead, G. W. and F. A., " Staffordshire
Pots and Potters," by, 168, 181
Ridge House Estate, Wedgwood's pur-
chase of, 107
Ridgway, William, 160
Roads, Wedgwood and, betterment of,
103
Rome, Wedgwood's school at, 135
Romney, George, friendship of, with
Flaxman, 133
Rose, Gustav, and platinum deposits in
Ural Mountains, 95
" Rosso antico," 58, 59
Rousseau, black basalt figure of, 64
" Royal Copenhagen Porcelain," by
Arthur Hayden, 86
Russia, platinum deposits in, 95
"Russian Service," 50, 54, 55, 85 et seq.,
125, 126
exhibition of, 92
list of illustrations for, 90, 91
Mrs. Delany on, 92
Nicholas II. and, 93
SADLER, JOHN, printed ware of, 78, 91
Saggers, 14
definition of, 26 (footnote)
Saint-Cricq, M. de, 47
Saint-Fond, M. Faujas de, " Travels in
England," 87
St. Petersburg Academy and platinum
deposits in Ural Mountains, 95
St. Stephens, clay workings at, secured by
Wedgwood and Turner, 35
" Salt-glaze " pottery, Adams's, 162
of Cliff Bank, 4, 113
Wedgwood's later, 121
" Salt-glaze," Staffordshire, popularity of,
40
technical account of, 39 et seq.
Schreiber Collection, " lilac " jasper
cameos in, 75, 138
" Seaweed " tea and coffee services, 52
Seaweeds, Wedgwood's collection of, 52
Shaw, Ralph, of Burslem, 47
Shaw, Simeon, and Astbury, 17
and Elijah Mayer, 158
and relief tiles, 121
" History of the Staffordshire Potteries,"
113 (footnote)
" Shell " dessert service, 51
"Shire Products," by Speed, 11
Siberia, platinum deposits in, 95
" Silver " shape, 50
Solon, M. L., " History of Old English
Porcelain," 178
Index
Solon, M. L. (continued)
" The Art of the Old English Potter," 46
" The Old French Faience," 46
South America, platinum from, 94
Speed, " Shire Products," by, 11
Spengler, and Wedgwood figures, 38
Spenser, black basalt bust of, 64
Spode, Josiah, 151
and underglaze blue, 79, 80, 157, 176
association with Copeland of, 176
career of, 175-177
use of enamel-colour pattern, 84
Wedgwood and, 119
Spode, Josiah, II., " ironstone " china of,
178
work of, 177-178
" Sprigged " ornament of Wedgwood, 29
(footnote), 116
Staffordshire Canal project, 8, 180
Staffordshire, North, " dry bodies " of>
56
famous potters of, 2
growth of pottery industry in, 6, 10,
149 el seq.
improvement of conditions in, 19 et seq.
light coloured earthenwares of, 32
printed wares of, 78
various ware, of, 18, 28
'' Staffordshire Pots and Potters," by
G. W. and F. A. Rhead, 168, 181
" Staffordshire Pottery and its History,'
by Josiah C. Wedgwood, M.P., 17,
139
Steele of Hanley, and Wedgwood's
" lustre " decorations, 80 (footnote)
Stoke-on-Trent Museum, examples of
" blue printing " in, 157
" Stoneware and Freckled," 18
" Stouking," 4
Stringer, Mr., and drawings for " Russian
Service," 89
" Sun-kiln," 14
TECHNICAL training, Wedgwood and, 102
Terra-cotta ware (" Rosso antico "), busts
and figures in, 64
use of gold on, 97
Wedgwood's, 58, 59
" Terror," jasper bust of, 74
" The Art of the Old English Potter," by
M. L. Solon, 46
" The Growth of English Industry and
Commerce," by W. Cunningham,
D.D., 150
" The Old French Faience," by M. L.
Solon, 46
" The Wood Family of Burslem," by
Frank Falkner, 101, 169, 170, 171,
174
" Theory of ^Esthetic," by Benedetto
Croce, 44
Tiles, Liverpool, 81
Tiles, Wedgwood, 121
Toby jugs, Wedgwood's, 37
Whieldon's, 118
Wilson's, 157
Toft, Thomas, 142
" Tortoiseshell " ware of Staffordshire,
18, 28, 30, 117
" Tour into the North of England," by
Arthur Young, 104
Transfer printing, use of, in France, 47
Transport, and the potteries, 7, 8, 12, 103
from Liverpool to the potteries, 35
" Travels in England," by M. Faujas de
Saint-Fond, 87
Turner, John (of Lane End), opposes
Champion, 34, 152
jasper ware and, 152, 153
partnership with Bankes, 151
St. Stephens clay workings secured by,
35
tour through Devonshire and Cornwall
with Josiah Wedgwood, 34, 35
Turner, John, junior, bust of, by E. Ray,
154
busts and statuettes of, 154
earthenware of, 153
manager to Thomas Minton, 154
Turner, William, adventures in France of,
154
busts and statuettes of, 154
earthenware of, 153
Turnham Green, Bentley's house at, 125,
126
Twyford, and Elers Brothers, 16
red and black pottery of, 57
works of, at Shelton, 16
Twyford Works, 17
Index
UNDER-QLAZE blue, Spode and, 79, 80,
157, 176
use of, by Wedgwood, 54, 79, 80
Ural Mountains, platinum in, 95
" Useful " wares, Wedgwood's, 32, 44
et seq., 116, 117
VICTORIA AND ALBERT Museum, " blue-
printed " ware at, 168
cream-colour and pearl figures in, 38
drab and olive coloured ware in, 61, 62
Enoch Wood, collection in, 52
jasper ware in, 70, 74, 137, 138, 156
" lilac " jasper cameos in, 75
Liverpool printed ware in, 81
" lustre " ware in, 98
medallion portrait bust of Flaxman in,
64
Palmer and Neale's jasper ware in, 156
plates of Sevres service of Catherine II.,
85
Spode vases in, 179
Wedgwood's " Portland " Vase in, 73
Wood's, moulds in, 172
Voltaire, black basalt figure of, 64
jasper bust of, 74
Voyez, John, modeller at Etruria, 138
Palmers and, 155
WARBURTON, family of, 2, 151
Warburtons of Hot Lane, Burslem, 33, 42
" Water " ewers designed by Flaxman, 64
Watson, William, experiments on plati-
num by, 94
Watt, James, on trade relations between
Ireland and Great Britain, 109
" Weathering " clay, 13
Webber (modeller), 134, 137
Wedgwood and Bentley, artistic develop-
ment of pottery and, 129
Enoch Wood and, 173
exhibition of wares of, to the King and
Queen, 126
Flaxman's association with, 134
painting shops of, at Chelsea, 125 ; in
Soho, 54
" Russian Service " of, 50, 54, 55, 85
et seq., 125, 126
Wedgwood and Bentley (continued)
" Sacrifice of Iphigenia," by Pacetti,
for, 135
Wedgwood, Burslem, 101
Wedgwood, Dr. Thomas, 171
Wedgwood, Francis (Frank), 147
Wedgwood, Frank, 147, 148
Wedgwood, Godfrey, 147
Wedgwood, John, eldest son of Josiah, 144
Wedgwood, John, of the Big House, 5, 23,
142
Wedgwood, Josiah, amputation of leg of,
3, 104 (footnote)
and canals, 8, 106, 107
and "Eleven Resolutions," 110, 111
and means of communications with
potteries, 103
and use of lathes, 23
appointed " Potter to the Queen," 32
apprenticeship to Thomas Wedgwood,
3, 113
artistic development of pottery and, 129
artists employed by, 128 et seq.
black basalt ware of, 57, 63, 155
" Black Egyptian " ware of, 63
born at Churchyard Works, 3, 143
Brick House Works and, 120, 162
Byerley, Thomas, taken into partner-
ship with, 127
" Cambridge ale-jug," 61
cane-body ware, 62, 63
classic ideals of. 9, 27
Cliff Bank, factory at, 4, 113
collection of shells, seaweed, and fossils
of, 51, 100
date of birth, 3
death of, 146
disagreement with Bentley, 61
drab-coloured ware, 61, 62
" dry bodies " of, 58, 60
enamel colours used by, 53
Etruria Hall gardens and, 88
experimental developments of, 19 et
seq., 114, 115
experiments with jasper ware, 67
first acquaintance with Bentley, 104
(footnote), 122
founds Etruria, 1, 2
" Grand Trunk Canal " and, 106, 107
130 (footnote)
194
Index
Wedgwood, Josiah (continued)
green and yellow glazes of, 27, 28, 116
has smallpox, 113
history of, 3 el seq.
" Illustrious Moderns " of, 60
improvements in kilns by, 24
installs steam-engine at Etruria, 23
Irish business of, 112
Ivy House factory and, 5, 6, 42, 119,
120, 143
jasper ware, 67 el seq.
leases Bell Works, 6
leases part of Ivy House Works, 5
letter to Matthew Boulton from, 111, 112
letters to Bentley on " Russian Ser-
vice," 90
list of " Master Potters," 17
London painting shops for, 54, 125
" lustre " decorations, 80 (footnote)
machinery and, 19 el seq.
marks of, 120, 121
method of applying " sprigged " orna-
ment, 29 (footnote)
olive-coloured ware, 61, 62
on his cream-colour glazes, 36
opposition of, to Champion, 34, 130
(footnote), 152
parliamentary work of, 108, 109
partners of, 113 el seq.
partnership with Bentley, 124, 125, 126
partnership with Harrison, 4, 113
partnership with Thomas Wedgwood,
82, 120, 126
partnership with Whieldon, 5, 32, 114,
143
" Pegasus " Vase, of, 71
" pie-crust " ware of, 62
" Portland " Vase and, 72
portrait medallions of, 59, 60
printed earthenware of, 77 el seq.
public work of, 100 el seq.
purchase of Ridge House Estate by, 107
" Queen's ware " of, 32
red terra-cotta ware (" Rosso anlico ")
of, 58, 59, 64
St. Stephens clay workings secured by,
35
salt-glaze pottery of, 4, 113, 121
sons of, taken into partnership, 127, 144
" sprigged " ornament of, 29
Wedgwood, Josiah (continued)
technical training and, 102
terms of partnership with Bentley, 122,
126
Toby jugs of, 37
tour with Turner, 34, 35
under-glaze blue of, 54
use of gold by, 53
weighing of clay and, 24
white earthenware of, 32 el seq.
white stoneware of, 65
William Adams and, 163
Wedgwood, Josiah II., 127
marriage and family of, 146
tour with Byerley, 144, 145
Wedgwood, Josiah III., 127, 147
Wedgwood, Josiah C., M.P., " A History
of the Wedgwood Family," 2, 144
" Staffordshire Pottery and its His-
tory," 17, 139
Wedgwood, Kennard, 148
\Vedgwood, Miss Audrey, 148
Wedgwood, Mrs. Cecil, 148
Wedgwood, Sarah, 143
Wedgwood, Susannah, marriage of, with
R. W. Darwin, 143, 144
Wedgwood, Thomas, and Burslem free
school, 101
apprenticeship of Josiah to, 3, 143
Wedgwood, Thomas (cousin), death of, 82,
126
engaged as journeyman by Josiah, 5
partnership in " useful " wares, 82, 120
Wedgwood, Thomas, great-grandfather
of Josiah, 141, 142
Wedgwood, Thomas (of the Big House,
Burslem), 5, 142
Wedgwood Institute, Burslem, white stone-
ware in, 65
Wedgwoods, the, yeoman family of, 2
history of, 2, 3
Wesley, John, impressions on the potteries
of, 101, 102
Whieldon, Thomas, 151
death of, 119
engagement of Aaron Wood by, 172
factory of, at Fenton Low, 114
glazes of, 117
partnerships with Wedgwood, 5, 32, 114,
143
Index
Whieldon, Thomas (continued)
Toby jugs of, 37, 118
" Whieldon " ware, 118
White earthenware, 32 et seq.
White stoneware, 65, 66
Wilson, C., " lustre " ware of, 157
red stoneware figures by, 157
Toby jugs of, 157
" Wine " ewers designed by Flaxman, 64
" Witherite," Wedgwood's use of, 67, 68
Wood, Aaron, 169, 171
apprenticeship to Dr. Thomas Wedg-
wood, 171
engaged by Thomas Whieldon, 172
Wood, Charles, discovery of platinum by,
94
Wood, Enoch, 16
black basalt ware of, 174
first collector of Staffordshire pottery.
172
Wood, Enoch (continued)
marriage and family of, 174, 175
sauce-boat in collection of, in Victoria
and Albert Museum, 52
Wood, Ralph, 169, 170
mark of, 171
Wood, William, modeller at Etruria, 38,
138, 139, 173
Woods, of Staffordshire, 2, 151, 169
Worcester, printed wares of, 78
YELLOW glaze, use of, by Wedgwood, 27
Yeoman families of Staffordshire, influence
of, 2
Young, Arthur, " Tour into the North of
England," 104
ZENO, black basalt bust of, 64
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