Jul
26
COTTAGE POTTERY AND POPULAR ART GLOSSARY
July 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment
COTTAGE POTTERY AND POPULAR ART
GLOSSARY
Agate: salt-glazed stoneware or lead-glazed earthenware made in imitation of semi-precious stones by wedging together different coloured clays.
4Astburyl type: classification of Staffordshire pottery in
which red and white clays are combined under a transparent
lead glaze. Similar wares covered by a glaze splashed with
metallic oxides are generally styled ‘Astbury-Whieldon’. Ballot box: a common name for a Salt Kit.
Barra pot: pot for storing harm or yeast (see also Salt Kit).
‘Battle for the Breeches’: theme of popular imagery concerning marriage occurring on 17th-century slipware and as a subject for 19th-century spill vases. Possibly made by Obadiah Sherratt.
Bear jug: model in the form of a bear hugging a dog, illustrating the sport of bear-baiting. The detachable head serves as a cup. Made in Staffordshire and Nottingham, 18th century.
Bellarmine: big-bellied stoneware bottle with a bearded mask in relief, named after Cardinal Bellarmine (15421621). Frequently cited in contemporary literature and used in magic and witchcraft.
Bellringers’ jugs: jugs for serving ale to bellringers, kept in the church tower, as at Macclesfield, or in the home of a ringer.
Bird call: pottery whistle in the form of a bird. Sometimes built into old chimneys as a charm against evil spirits.
Bird fountain: wall bracket with a projecting socket for water, made in blue-printed, lustred, or enamelled earthenware, 18th and 19th centuries.
Black-printing: ‘A term for applying impressions to glazed vessels, whether the color be black, red, or gold’ (William Evans, t846).
‘Bocage’: foliage or tree background to pottery figures.
Body: mixture of clay from which pottery is made.
Bull-baiting: pottery groups showing a bull goring or tossing a dog, often upon table bases supported by six legs, popular c. 1830-35. Said to have been made by Obadiah Sherratt.
Bussa: large earthenware pot commonly kept in old Cornish cottages for salting down pilchards.
Butter-pot: cylindrical earthenware vessel made to hold fourteen pounds of butter, made at Burslem in the 17th century for use at Uttoxeter market. An Act of 1661 regulated abuses in the manner of making and packing the pots.
Capacity mug: cylindrical measure made in stoneware, earthenware, mocha ware, etc., from the 17th century. The presence of a Royal Cypher or an Excise Stamp provides a clue as to date.
Carpet balls: used in the Victorian game of carpet bowls, made in brown stoneware or white earthenware coloured with starry, ringed, or flowery patterns. A set comprised six patterned and one white or self-coloured balls. Made in Scotland and Staffordshire. The Parr family of Burslem specialized in them.
Castle Hedingham: pseudo-medieval and Tudor pottery was made here by Edward Bingham (b. 1829). Some- times mistaken for authentic ,1 5th-, 16th-, and 17th-century wares.
Cats: popular ornaments made in delftware, slipware, and salt-glaze, c. 1670-1750.
Chill: earthenware oil lamp shaped like a large candlestick with a lipped cup large enough to hold two cups of `train’ (pilchard oil), used in Cornwall before candles. Sometimes rendered STONEN CHILL.
‘China’ dogs: mantelpiece ornaments in the form of spaniels, Welsh sheep dogs, French poodles, greyhounds, etc., made in earthenware, and sold extensively in Wales and the West Country. Made by Sampson Smith, James Dudson, William Kent, and many others in Staffordshire and Scotland; rarely marked.
Christening goblets: footed four-handled loving cups with whistles attached for calling for replenishment, specially associated with Wiltshire, and used for christenings, harvest homes, etc. A favourite inscription is HERE IS THE GEST
OF THE BARLY KORNE GLAD HAM I THE CILD IS BORN.
Dates from 1603 until 1799 recorded.
Combed slip: a technique in which a marbled or feathered effect is achieved by brushing together, while wet, two or more different-coloured slips.
Costrel: flat, circular bottle with loop handles for suspension from the shoulder, used by field workers.
Cottages: used as night-light shields, pastille burners, and mantelpiece ornaments. The latter frequently represent the scenes of sensational crimes, such as the Red Barn at Polstead (Maria Marten) or Stanfield Hall (the Rush murders).
Cow-milk jug: model of cow with mouth and tail forming spout and handle. Filled from an aperture in the back. Based upon a Dutch model introduced into England about 1755. Made in Staffordshire, South Wales, Yorkshire, and Scotland.
Cradle: presentation piece for a newly-married couple, having the same significance as the `La F6condit6′ dish. Slip-ware specimens recorded from 1673 until 1839. Used as a hold-all or pipe-tray.
Crazing: fine network of cracks in the glaze caused by unequal shrinkage of body and glaze.
Cuckoo: bird call in the form of a large spotted bird perched upon a fence, with four smaller birds. Commonly made in slipware, 19th century.
Delftware: earthenware coated with a glaze made opaque by the addition of tin ashes, named after Delft in Holland, which became an important centre of manufacture
in the 17th century.
Dendritic: having tree-like markings.
‘Doctor Syntax’: fine underglaze blue transfer-prints representing the adventures of Doctor Syntax, used as tableware decorations by James and Ralph Clews, Cobridge, c. 1821. Pottery figures were also popular. The Tours of Dr. Syntax in Search of the Picturesque by Dr Combe, with illustrations by Thomas Rowlandson, published 1815-21, were a satire upon the writings of the Rev. William Gilpin.
Egyptian black: hard stoneware body heavily stained with manganese.
Easter eggs: `nest’ eggs decorated, inscribed with the name of the recipient, and given as Easter and birthday gifts.
Feeding-bottle: flattish oviform article with a small circular aperture at the top and a small nozzle.
‘Female archer’: subject of ‘Pratt’ type jugs and earthenware figures intended as satire upon the smart archery parties popular in `high’ society, 1800-50- Sometimes known as the FAIR TOSCOPHOLITE or TOXOPHILITE.
Ferruginous: containing iron rust and, therefore, reddish brown in appearance.
Flasks: in form of fish, mermaid, constable’s baton, horse-pistol, boot, potato, cucumber, barrel, or a figure of some royal or political celebrity, commonly made in brown stoneware or ‘Rockingham’-glazed earthenware, early 19th century. Chief centres: Denby, Chesterfield, Brampton, Lambeth. (See Reform Flasks.)
Fuddling-cups: cups of three, five, or more conjoined compartments communicating internally, made at Donyatt and Crock Street, Somerset, 1 7t and 18th century.
Gotch: East Anglian word for a large stoneware jug.
Gretna Green: popular black-print showing a runaway couple being married by the Gretna blacksmith, accom-panied by the verse, ‘Oh! Mr. Blacksmith, ease our pains:/ and tie us fast in Wedlock’s Chains’. Known alternatively as `The Red Hot Marriage’.
Greybeard: a Bellarmine.
Grey hen: stoneware liquor bottle.
‘Greyhound’ jugs: jugs with greyhound handles and relief decorations of sporting subjects.
Hearty good fellow. Toby jug in form of a swaggering standing figure clasping a jug.
Hen dish: oval, basket-shaped egg-dish with cover in the form of a sitting hen.
Hen and chickens: emblems of Providence, hence frequent use as adornments of money-boxes.
Image toys: mid-18th-century description of small pottery figures.
Inlaid decoration: process used by medieval potters for decorating paving tiles (Cleeve Abbey, Westminster Abbey) and by Sussex potters, c. 1790-1850, for useful and ornamental wares. The decoration was formed by impressing the body with punches or with printers’ types, and filling in with clay of a contrasting colour, usually white on red.
Joney or joney grig: a dialect term for a chimney ornament in the form of a dog. A well-known Burslem pottery in the 19th century was known as a ‘doll and jona’ (figure and dog) works.
‘Keep within compass’: a popular ‘morality’ used as decoration for earthenware by John Aynsley (1752— 1829), showing the rewards of virtue and the punishments of sin.
Leeds horse: large model of horse on a rectangular plinth made specially at Leeds, and probably used as the sign of a horse leech.
Lustre: thin deposit of metal on pottery giving it an iridescent or metallic sheen.
Martha Gunn’. female Toby jug modelled in the likeness
of Martha Gunn (1727-1915), the Brighton bathing-woman.
Mocha: ware decorated with coloured bands into which tree, moss, or fern-like effects have been introduced by means of a diffusing medium, described by William Evans (1846) as ‘a saturated infusion of tobacco in stale urine and turpentine’, made from about 1780 until 1914. Named from mocha quartz.
Moco, Moko: buff or redware mottled by spattering various coloured slips over the surface before glazing. A cheap 19th-century substitute for mocha.
Money-boxes: made at most country potworks from medieval times. Usual forms comprise houses, chest of drawers, globes, fir-cones, pigs, and hens and chickens. Associated with the custom of the ‘Christmas box’.
‘Mr and Mrs Caudle’: relief decoration on brown stoneware spirit flasks, made about 1846 by Doulton of Lambeth, and based upon Douglas Jerrold’s Punch papers (`Mrs Caudle’s Curtain Lectures’). One side shows ‘Mr and Mrs Caudle in Bed’ the other ‘Miss Prettyman’.
On-glaze: decoration applied after the ware has been glazed and fired.
‘Orange-jumper’: local subject on Yorkshire cream-coloured earthenware made at the Don pottery, c. 18o8, depicting a coarse-featured local horse-breaker who acted as messenger for Lord Milton Iton in the 1807 election. He is clothed in orange, the colour’ of Lord Milton. Orange-tawny was considered the colour appropriate to the lower classes.
Owl jug: jug with a separate head forming a cup, made in slipware, c. 1700, and white salt-glazed stoneware, c. 1720-75• The proverb ‘Like an owl in an ivy bush’, used of a vague person with a sapient look, may explain its convivial associations.
Pantheon: large shallow earthenware bowl with sloping sides used for settling milk.
Pap-dish: a shallow boat with a tubular spout for feeding infants.
‘Parson and clerk’: figure group showing a drunken parson being led home by the faithful Moses, first made by Enoch Wood (1759-1840) as a sequel to the ‘Vicar and Moses’. A satire on the drinking, hunting squarson type of incumbent.
Pastille burners: box-like containers, often in the form of cottages, churches, or summer-houses, with detachable perforated lids for burning cassolette perfumes. These consisted of finely-powdered willow-wood charcoal, benzoin, fragrant oils, and gum arabic. Extremely popular, 1820-50.
‘Paul Pry’: model for pottery figures and Toby jugs based upon the meddlesome hero ofJohn Poole’s comedy of that name, 1825.
Peasant style: ornament derived from peasant art: specifically earthenware painted in the ‘resist’ lustre style with a restricted palette of colours.
Peever: a piece of slate or stone used in the game of hopscotch, also a disc of pottery, so used, coloured and lettered with the name of the owner. Made at Alloa and elsewhere in Scotland, 19th century.
‘Peggy Plumper’: crude decoration showing Peggy Plumper sparring with Sammy Spar for mastership of bed and board, accompanied by a long rhyme ‘about wearing the breeches’.
‘Pelican in her piety’: a Christian emblem representing the old popular fallacy that the pelican feeds her young with her own blood. Used on Staffordshire slipware.
Penny bank: earthenware money-box in the form of a house or chest of drawers.
‘Pew’ group: figure group representing a man and woman sitting upon a high-backed settle, made in white salt-glazed stoneware, c. 1730-40.
Piggin: a small milk pail. A PIG-WIFE is a woman
who sells crockery.
Pilchard pots: made in North Devon, South Wales, and Cornwall for the West Country fishermen, and known by size as ‘gallons’, `bussas’, and ‘great crocks’, etc.
Pipkin: earthenware cooking vessel.
Pirlie-pig: earthenware money-box. ‘Pig’ is a North Country word for an earthen jar: `pirlie’ is a diminutive indicating something of slight value.
Pitcher mould: mould made of clay and fired.
Pope and Devil: reversible bell-shaped cup showing the Pope in his triple tiara when held one way up, and the Devil when reversed. Sometimes inscribed ‘When Pope absolves, the Devil smiles’. Late 18th century.
Porringer: child’s basin for broth, or porridge.
‘Portobello’ ware: made at Tunstall, Staffordshire, c. 1830, in imitation of banded and ‘Pratt’ type wares made at Portobello in Scotland.
Posset: beverage comprising hot ale, milk, sugar, spices, and small pieces of bread, toast, or oatcake, said to have been a common supper beverage in Staffordshire and Derbyshire on Christmas Eve. Enjoyed widespread popularity.
Posset-pot: straight- or curve-sided vessel with loop handles and spouts, generally covered with a slanting or dome-shaped lid, and occasionally crowned with an elaborate knob, used for posses, and made in delftware and slip-ware, 1 7th and 18th century.
Pottle-pot: quart pot.
‘Pratt’ type: wares made at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, decorated in a distinctive palette of colours, consisting of drab blue, dirty brown, ochre, orange, yellow, and dull green. Made in Staffordshire by Pratt and others; also in South Wales, Liverpool, Sunderland, and Prestonpans.
Punch: beverage consisting of spirits blended with hot milk or water, sugar, and flavoured with lemon and spice.
Punch-bowl: large basin for serving hot punch, sometimes called a ‘jorum’.
Puzzle jug: vessel made in earthenware, delftware, or stoneware with a hollow tube round the lip opening into three or more spouts, and connected with the inside by the hollow handle. Sometimes there is a hole under the top of the handle. The neck is pierced with ornamental motifs, and usually inscribed with a challenge to the drinker. To empty the vessel without spilling the contents it is necessary to stop all the apertures except one, and to drain it by suction.
Reform flasks: brown salt-glazed stoneware spirit flasks made by Doulton (Lambeth), Stephen Green (Lambeth), Oldfield (Chesterfield), and Joseph Thompson (Wooden Box Pottery, Hartshorne), in the form of prominent politicians and royalty, at the time of the Reform Bill, 1832- Personalities portrayed included William IV, Queen Adelaide, Lord Grey, O’Connell, Brougham, Richard Cobden and Lord John Russell.
‘Resist’ lustre: on-glaze decorative process used generally with silver lustre, giving an effect of a light or coloured decoration against a metallic background. The ornament is painted on the ware with a ‘resist’, covered with the metallic solution, and fired; the infusible ‘resist’ being removed by polishing with whiting afterwards.
Salt-glazed stoneware: stoneware in which the glaze is formed by throwing common salt into the kiln when it reaches the maximum temperature. The salt decomposes, forming sodium oxide and hydrochloric acid, the former combining with the alumina and silica of the surface of the wares to form a thin coating of glass.
Salt kit: dome-topped ovoid jar surmounted by a knob and loop-handle with a wide circular aperture at one side; used for storing salt, etc.
‘Scratch blue’: decoration characteristic of white salt-glazed stoneware comprising incised floral arabesques and inscriptions into which clay stained with cobalt was rubbed. Examples dated from 1724 to 1776 recorded.
Sgraffiato: cutting away, incising, or scratching through a coating of slip to expose the colour of the underlying body. Popular technique in South Wales, Devonshire, Somerset, and Staffordshire.
Siamese twins: the ‘monstrous’ birth in Somerset, 19 May 168o, recorded on a sgraffiato dish and Bristol delft, platter. The Kentish Siamese twins, Eliza and Mary Chulkhurst (d. 1734, aged 34) occur on redware copies of the `Biddenden’ cake.
Skillet: earthen saucepan with three legs. Slip: clay reduced to a liquid batter.
Slipware: earthenware decorated with white or coloured slip. (See also COMBED SLIP, SGRAFFIATO, TRAILED SLIP, and INLAID DECORATION.)
Snufftaker: standing Toby jug in the form of an ugly man taking a pinch of snuff, usually with a deep purple-brown lustrous ‘Rockingham’ glaze.
Spinario: figure of boy extracting a thorn from his foot, copied fi-oin statue in the Capitoline Museum, Rome.
‘Sponged’ ware: a crude, easily-recognized peasant style originally made by Adams of Tunstall, and, because of its `bright fancy character’ (Dewitt), extensively exported.
Steen: originally an earthen vessel with two ears to hold liquids, later used for bread, meat or fish.
Stoneware: opaque, dense, intensely hard and completely vitrified pottery.
Sussex pig: pottcry jug with a loose head used as a cup, enabling the user to drink a hogshead of liquor without disquieting after effects. Peculiar to the Sussex factory of Cadborough, Rye, 19th century.
Iryg. beaker-shaped drinking vessel with from two to twelve handles.
Underglaze decoration: decoration applied to bisquit
pottery before the addition of glaze.
Venisons: bowls ‘made to fit into one another … in capacity ranging from a pint to a peck’ (George Bourne), made at Frimley, Cove, and Farnborough, c. i800-5o.
‘Vicar and Moses’: popular satire on the drinking parson, showing a clergyman asleep in the pulpit with the parish clerk conducting the service. First made by Ralph Wood of Burslem, c. 1775-
Wall pocket: flower or spill vase shaped as a mask, fish, or cornucopia, made in Staffordshire salt-glaze, and in Liverpool and Lambeth delft, 18th century.
Wassail bowl: two-handled loving cup passed clockwise around the company on convivial occasions.
‘Wassailing’: originally a rite to ensure fertility in cereals, fruit crops and cattle, but later a term of abuse to describe Christmas revels.
‘Welsh’ ware: shallow meat dishes with feathered slip decoration, in form like a gardener’s trug, commonly made in Staffordshire, Sunderland (Scott’s ‘Superior Fireproof’) and Isleworth, under this name.
‘Whieldon’ ware: ware made in cream-coloured earthenware under a glaze splashed with metallic oxides to give tortoise-shell or mottled effects, made by Thomas Whieldon (1719-95) at Fenton, and others.
‘Willow’ pattern: pseudo-Chinese under-glaze blue transfer-print first engraved by Thomas Minton (17651836), and known in numerous variants.
Jul
26
COTTAGE POTTERY AND POPULAR ART
July 26, 2009 | Leave a Comment
COTTAGE POTTERY AND
POPULAR ART
Tuts study includes country pottery produced for cottage, farm or ale-house use, as well as ‘wares of common stamp; copper lustre jugs, and tea things of tawdry colouring and coarse quality, and painted in flaring tints; painted pot marbles, and drinking mugs with names in letters of pink or purple’ which Chambers’ Edinburgh yournal, 23rd November
1839, said were manufactured in quantity at the smaller Staffordshire pot-works for use of the poor. These constituted the indigenous popular art of the people.
Slipware: apart from medieval pottery, English slipware reached its finest flowering at the end of the 17th century, and shares, with the contemporary Jacobean style, robustness of expression, lavish and sometimes unrestrained use of ornament and, more important, a certain crude vitality. While these characteristics are fairly constant, each district developed a well-defined local style.
The normal products of all country pot-works were lead-glazed utility articles, undecorated, or, at most, given a simple slip finish; and they often satisfy hand and eye because of functional honesty and simplicity.
DERBYSHIRE: the earliest clay-decorated pottery (apart from medieval and Tudor wares) appears to have been made at Tickenhall. Narrow dark tygs with applied pads of white clay shaped roughly into the form of flowers or stags’ heads are characteristic, but many of the notched dishes decorated with ‘trailed’ slip formerly attributed to Derbyshire are now generally accepted as Staffordshire wares. The Derbyshire slipware factories (Tickenhall and Bolsover) continued in operation until the end of the 18th century.
KENT : between 1612 and 1721 (possibly longer), bowls, candlesticks, cisterns, dishes, mugs, porringers, posses-pots, puzzle-jugs, tygs, and useful crockery decorated with various forms of slip were made at Wrotham. These have distinctive features: (I) applied pads inscribed with initials and dates surrounded by effects of `stitchery’, perhaps in imitation of appliques embroidery; (2) use of rosettes, stars, and masks; and (3) the occasional inclusion ofthe place-name (Wrotham) in the decoration.
Early products of this factory were simple in shape and ornament; later wares were generally over-elaborated in a rather tasteless manner. Two potters have been identified with certainty: George Richardson (1620-87) and Nicholas Hubble (d. 1689).
Something of the Wrotham flavour may be perceived in the red slipwares made at Brabourne, Deal, Dunkirk, High Halden and Pembury in the 19th century; there may have been some continuity.
NORTH STAFFORDSHIRE: the best English slipwares were made in the Potteries from about 166o onwards, and those associated with the name Toft represent the high-water mark of technical accomplishment. Of the three Tofts – Thomas, Ralph and James – the former died a pauper in 1689. There is no certainty that the wares marked Toft were made by them, although the balance of evidence supports this tradition. Hearth Tax returns for Shelton and Stoke parish registers prove that the family was living in Shelton at this period. Tiny fragments of a signed Toft dish have recently been excavated in Hanley.
Surviving signed pieces fall into two classes: (I) large circular dishes, (2) jugs, posset-pots and loving-cups. The latter are extremely rare. Analogous unmarked pieces include divided baking dishes, bleeding-bowls, cradles, egg-stands, honey-pots, owl jugs, Dutch ovens and posset-pots.
Toft dishes are usually encircled with trellis borders with a rim panel enclosing the name. Heraldic or figure motifs, usually Royalist in character, formed the centre decoration – the Royal arms, rampant lions, the Boscobel oak, the pelican in her piety, fleur-de-lis, cavaliers and mermaids.
Other names which occur on wares of similar type include Meir, Osland, Simpson, Taylor, Wright, Chatterly, Heath, Ward, Wood and Ley. Women’s names, such as MARGERE NASH and MARY PERKINS, occur individually or as part of inscriptions. The style continued well into the 18th
century.
Posses-pots, bell-shaped or straight-sided, were attractively decorated by dividing the surface into zones of ornament and lettering, and counterchanging the colours; or by tiers of floral and conventional designs with suitable
inscriptions, such as THE . BEST . IS . NOT . TOO . GOOD . FOR . YO V.
The tulip is a frequent feature of decoration. Not uncommonly the lower portion was enriched with feathered or combed slip to contrast with the trailed or painted slip above. Dog-Latin inscriptions, names, initials and dates are frequent. Sometimes the name indicates ownership (MARY OUMFARIS YOUR CUP 1678), at others the maker. The initials I.B. and R.F. commonly occurring in association with others may stand for Isaac Ball and Robert Fletcher. Such wares were made as indications of loyalty or to celebrate birthdays, betrothals or weddings.
Dishes with notched edges, decorated in relief with conventional or figure subjects picked out with painted slip and roulette impressions, form a distinctive category. They were made by pressing a bat of clay upon a ‘pitcher’ mould in which the design had been incised before firing. The outline relief ornaments were filled in with patches and spots of various coloured slips.
Certain wares of this kind have been ascribed to a period before the Civil War on the strength of the costume of figures depicted upon them. But they are more likely of late 17th or early 18th-century date. Such archaisms are not uncommon. The initials R.S. (Ralph Simpson, 1651-1724) and i.s. (John Simpson of Rotten Row, Burslem) are to be found on dishes ornamented in this manner with fleur-de-lis and pomegranates. Samuel Malkin (1668-1741), parish clerk of Burslem, made similar wares decorated with sun-faced flowers or religious and proverbial subjects (’Burd in Hand’, Adam and Eve, ‘Wee three logerheads’, etc.). His usual mark was sm. Wares akin in treatment but of later date have been identified by means of a mould inscribed an dated 1751, made by William Bird.
Pottery decorated in the sgraffiato technique by scratching through a dark-brown coating of slip to expose the light-coloured clay beneath were made about 1725-3o. Hares, rabbits, dogs, birds and flowers vigorously incised through the slip coating are typical. The tool-marks of the potter, usually much in evidence, give a pleasant sense of surface texture. Another sgraffiato type of later date – c. 174540 –shows less vigorous and rather neater workmanship. The chief decorations compromise checks, stripes, wavy bands, and lines cut through a white slip over a deep-brown clay. The type is associated, erroneously, with Ralph Shaw.
These pottery styles were continued throughout the 18th and into the 19th century. Finely-feathered slip-dishes of the second half of the 18th century, with the letter ‘n’ inscribed upon them, have been excavated in Hanley recently. Other wares with individual but unidentified initials have been found upon other sites. These initials may be early factory or workmen’s marks. Redware factories were still working in North Staffordshire as late as 1834 at Goldenhill, Red Street, and in Shelton. A country pottery making bottles, pitchers, vinegar kegs and settling-pans also existed at Ipstones.
SOUTH STAFFORDSHIRE: there is clear evidence of an early and extensive manufacture of slipwares in this area. Robert Plot (writing in 1677) refers to ‘divers sorts of Vessels’ made at Wednesbury `which they paint with Slip, made of a reddish sort of Earth gotten at Tipton’. These wares have never been identified, but probably resembled the slipwares of North Staffordshire in character. The industry lasted until the end of the 18th century, when the workers migrated to the north of the county.
Coarse earthenwares were made by a number of firms at Bilston (where the Myott family worked for several generations) and Kingswinford from the beginning of the igth century.
HEREFORDSHIRE : wares similar in character to those made in Staffordshire, comprising tygs, posses-pots (sometimes with pads of clay impressed with coats of arms), jugs, costrels, cooking stoves, skillets, Steens, piggins, candlesticks and dishes were made at Boresford, Whitney-on-Wye, and Upton Bishop; and at Dickendale, Deerfold Farm, and Shirley Farm in Deerfold Forest. A crude kind of sgraffiato consisting of scratchy zig-zag lines was usual on the plates. The glaze varied from pale straw to copper green. These farmer potters flourished from about 16io to 1750.
WORCESTERSHIRE: country crockery, including slip-ware, was made also at Gorsty Hill, near Halesowen, until comparatively recently, and at Polesworth in Warwickshire.
BUCKINGHAMSHIRE : the brownish black manganese-glazed red earthenwares made at Aylesbury from c. 1701-93 (Thomas Brackley, potter) contrasts with the crockery made at Brill, ten miles east of Oxford from late 18th century until about I goo. Money-boxes, bottles and lampstands as well as ordinary kitchen crocks were made. The ware has a speckled dirty appearance. In the Ashmolean Museum there is a covered Steen, incised ‘Thomas Hullocks Brill 1791′ of rather finer quality. Late igth-century redwares were made also at Leafield near Oxford by George and Alec Franklin.
YORKSHIRE : pottery of a distinctly medieval character was made by John Wedgwood and his descendants at Yearsley near Easingfold. It included great pantheons and jars with names and dates inscribed under a strong green glaze. But in general the later products of the peasant craftsman have been overshadowed by the productions of th-, Yorkshire industrial potters. In all districts where suitabl— clay existed, coarse red, yellow, and black wares were made. The old saying ‘Like Falsgrave pottery, rough and ugly’ indicates the popular estimate of these wares. There were numerous little workshops in the Leeds and Castleford districts. Combed and mottled wares were made- at Norton) near Stockton, from about 1850 onwards. Pot Howcans, near Halifax, run by the Halliday family, made good trailed slipware, including salt kits, from about 1850 to 1890- Similar wares were made by the Catheralls at Swill Hill and Bradshaw Head; and by a factory at Midhope, near
Sheffield.
CUMBERLAND: slipwares, marked by dexterous use of the trailed slip technique, were made until late in the 19th century at Weatherigg’s Pottery, Penrith. These included salt kits decorated with cleverly disposed white wavy lines and dots upon a dark ground.
LANCASHIRE: at Blackburton simple slipwares were also made about the same time. These late slipwares are usually a little hard and mechanical in treatment. The old freedoms, which rendered the early slipwares so exciting, disappeared.
SUSSEX: numerous potworks were working in Sussex from the end of the 18th century, notably at Chailey, Brede, Rye, East Grinstead, Dicker, and Burgess Hill. The wares produced are usually sunny orange lead-glazed earthen-wares; darker pieces are not uncommon, and sometimes the glaze was flecked with minute iron spots.
Agate wares were made at Burgess Hill. Inlaid decorations, consisting of formal arrangements of sprays, leaves, rosettes and stars, formed with printers’ types and punches, are typical of the productions of the Norman family at Chailey: similar wares were made at Brede, Rye, and Dicker, and at Bethersden in Kent. Tea canisters, milk churns, flasks, tobacco-jars, fir-cone money-boxes, bird-callers and hedgehogs were made, as well as the usual farmhouse crockery. Cadborough specialized in ‘Sussex Pigs’.
HAMPSHIRE AND SURREY: extensive potteries existed at Frimley, Farnborough, and Cove at the beginning of the 19th century. Little is known of them. Pipkins, venisons, money-boxes, pitchers, bowls, bed-pans and stool-pans for sale to Whitechapel Jews were made by William Smith (1790-1858) at Farnborough. A family named Harris potted at Wrecklesham, Surrey, about the same time. Similar factories existed at Fareham, Hants., at Verwood, Dorset, and in Gloucestershire.
WILTSHIRE: ferruginous earthenwares with an iridescent brownish black glaze were made over a long period (c. 1600-c. 1800) near Salisbury. Incised decorations and inscriptions occur. The most distinctive products were the footed loving cups or christening goblets.
SOMERSET : the rough, vigorous pottery of Donyatt and Crock Street forms an important class in which fantastic forms were combined with a free vernacular sgra
g ffiato style.
Tygs with bird-whistle lids, fuddling-cups with intertwined handles, puzzle jugs, vases with several apertures, and money-boxes, as well as useful wares were made. They were lead-glazed and stained with patches of copper green. Dates from 1677 have been recorded, but the bulk of the pottery produced was made in the 18th and 19th centuries. Other Somerset potworks existed at Pill and Bridgwater.
DEVONSHIRE : a group of potteries flourished at Barnstaple, Bideford, and Fremington, making redwares for the West Country and South Wales markets from the 17th to the 19th centuries. In fact, some factories still operate in this district, although the character of the product has changed. Pilchard pots and harvest jugs were made as well as ugly elaborate watch-stands, honey jars and other vessels. The harvest jugs may be identified by the coil at the lower attachment of the handle and the bold chevron which often adorns the neck. The principal potters were the Fishley family. Similar sgrqfflato wares were manufactured at Honiton, where there are extensive clay beds.
CORNWALL: Truro alone survives of the dozen or so potworks which formerly made pantheons and pitchers in the Duchy.
CAMBRIDGESHIRE: at Ely Jabez Lucas produced red-wares at the end of the 18th century, inlaid with white clay. This unusual technique was otherwise almost entirely confined to Sussex.
SUFFOLK: at WattiSfield a redware factory has existed from the 17th century and is still flourishing. Brown-glazed gotches, breadpans, milk Steens, washbowls and frying-pans were the staple products. Some slipwares were probably made. The pottery was worked by the Death family, 17341808, and by the Watson subsequently. A I 9th-century pot-works making slipwares existed in the Rope Walk, Ipswich: W. Balaam was the potter.
EssEx : incised pottery with a purple-brown glaze was made at Gestingthorpe, near Halstead (dates recorded range from 1685 to 1770). Jugs with cylindrical necks, narrow tubular spouts and three handles have survived.
WALES: slipware potteries existed in Flintshire at Buckley Mountain (Joseph Hayes, 1756-1842, potter) and at Bagilt, near Flint, in the first half of the 19th century. In South Wales potworks flourished at Bridgend, Pencoed, and Ewenny, where useful crockery was extensively made, as well as puzzle jugs and many-handled wassail bowls decorated with name of owner and maker in sgralialo slip, for use in the Welsh custom of Mari Lwyd.
Peasant Styles: a considerable quantity of industrial cream-coloured earthenware in the closing decades of the 18th century was decorated in on-glaze enamels with stylized rustic and floral motifs in red and black. This restricted palette, occasionally diversified with other colours, particularly green and a striking but rather dissonant puce, was combined with spiky foliage and feathery scrolls. Leeds and Staffordshire were centres of this production. The motto `God Speed and the Plough’ indicates the class for whom it was made.
In the 19th century a peasant style based upon the type of painting used in the ‘resist’ lustre technique was developed by Staffordshire craftsmen. Three palettes of colour were employed: (I) monochrome blue; (2) black, sage green, dirty pink, and blue; and (3) yellow, orange, blue, and green. Floral arabesques, completely covering the wares, and built up by skilful brushwork, are characteristic decora.
tions. Hearts, initials, and dates occur with sufficient frequency to suggest that many of the pieces were intended as love tokens. Dates from 1814 to 1835 have been noted. Copelands, Rogers, and Adams are among the known makers, but quite a few pieces were probably bought in the white and decorated by outside enamellers.
Lustre pottery: lustre decoration on pottery became popular in the first half of the 19th century. Who invented it is not known with certainty. Josiah Wedgwood certainly experimented with lustre decorations from about 1790, and his successors made use commercially of silver, pink (gold), and ‘moonlight’ lustre from about 1805. John Hancock claimed to be the first to produce lustre in Staffordshire, while John Gardner has been credited with the earliest commercial use of silver lustre at Wolfe’s factory in Stoke. The early history of lustre decoration is therefore obscure. At least three other craftsmen made early contributions in this field: Richard Horrobin (1765-1830), of Tunstall, joiner, mechanic, organ-builder, whose obituary stated ‘he may be considered the reviver of gold lustre on china and earthenware’; John Aynsley (1752-1829), ‘the first lusterer’ at Lane-End; and Peter Warburton (1773-1813), who took out a patent in 181 for ‘printing landscapes and other designs from copper plates in gold and platinum’.
The English potters, once the secret of applying metallic solutions to china and earthenware became known, made extensive, and often non-ceramic, use of the material. The earliest wares are undoubtedly the best, but vast quantities were produced in the 1850s for export through the firm of Burgess, Dale, and Goddard to the United States. Later wares were produced for the fairground and the pot hawker.
The popular appeal of the material accounts for the allusive nature of the subjects chosen for decoration, which cover the whole field of contemporary life—politics, sport, religion, travel, domestic experience. Pious quatrains may be matched by crude licentious doggerel. The lustre decorator was certainly all things to all men. He smothered his wares with metal to provide the poor with imitation `plate’. For the religious he offered patterns of eminent respectability, but when the market demanded it he could descend to the earthy coarseness of a Bewick or a Rowlandson.
There are six classes of lustre: (I) plain (gold, silver or copper), evidently intended to imitate more precious materials; (2) painted; (3) decorated in ‘resist’, usually in silver but occasionally in purple or other lustre; (4) lustre in conjunction with transfer-prints or enamel decoration; (5) lustre on moulded relief decoration; and (6) on pottery figures, used to pick out armour, or all over to make them resemble precious metal. ‘Resist’ decoration was sometimes effectively combined with a coloured ground, yellow or buff.
The centres of manufacture were Longton, Burslem, Swansea (where good silver lustre was made), and Sunderland. Splashed and crudely mottled pink lustre was extensively used in the North East in conjunction with prints of the ‘Wear’ Bridge or ‘The Sailor’s Farewell’. Surprise mugs were ornamented in like manner. At these North Country factories the folk element was completely dominant.
‘Dipped’ pottery: a class of pottery which had a long vogue – from about 1750, when it was introduced by Thomas Heath of Fenton, until the death of King Edward VII – and which was made in Glasgow, Newcastle-on-Tyne, and Swansea as well as Staffordshire, consisted of slip decorated pottery produced under industrial conditions for the dairy, tavern, and the farmhouse. Shrimp, nut and beer measures have survived in quantity, but `tea things’, toilet sets, tobacco jars, jugs and ornamental pieces were also made in it.
The earliest wares made in this category were marbled slipwares, dating from about 176o, and often surprisingly beautiful in colour: but other styles were quickly developed. Clean hygienic-looking band treatments in blue, ochre and dark brown, sometimes plain, occasionally with deftly-executed slip motifs superimposed, were popular. An attrac-tive decoration comprised coloured bands with added dendritic effects in brown, blue, or (much later) pink. This was known as mocha. Wavy bands of two or more coloured slips, worked together with the fingers (finger-trailing), or with a brush, were made in the 1830s. An imitation mocha, known as `Moto’, was made for export.
Dipped pottery was rarely marked, although the makers were numerous – Adams of Tunstall, J. and R. Riley of Burslem, Copeland and Garrett of Stoke, Broadhurst of Fenton, Tams of Longton, Green of Church Gresley, and Malings of Newcastle-on-Tyne among others. Few pieces can be dated with certainty. A small mug in the Christchurch Mansion Museum, Ipswich, lettered ‘M Clark 1799′ is believed to be the earliest surviving dated example of mocha ware.
Salt-glazed stoneware: most early salt-glazed stone. wares do not concern us, they were made for the upper classes. The popular will to form, however, is evidenced by the owl and bear jugs, the streaky blue-and-white agate animals, the bell figures and ‘pew’ groups, and the scratch blue loving cups, mugs and punch-bowls which confirm the traditional conception of the Englishman as hard drinking, hard living. While the inscriptions might be crude, even obscene, the forms were generally refined and the potting of the highest quality. What is said here of the white salt-glaze of Staffordshire is equally applicable to the nut-brown stonewares of Nottingham (Morley family, potters) and Derbyshire. It is, however, to the later products of these factories that we must turn for popular imagery. Spirit flasks in all sorts of quaint and unusual forms, mask mugs and pitchers, and Toby jugs were made by Bournes of Denby, Joseph Thompson of Hartshorne, Oldfield of Chesterfield, and by the London factories – Stephen Green, and Doulton & Watts of Lambeth. Reform flasks and greyhound jugs enjoyed enormous popularity in the r83os and later.
Transfer-printed pottery: this class of industrial pottery is of great importance because it made possible greater production, and so widened the potters’ market to include
even the poorest cottager. The earliest transfer-prints process was introduced before 1765) were done overglaze in black, more rarely in colour. Subjects were often crude popular moralities, pleasantries concerning marriage, caricature prints after Rowlandson or Gillray, and decorations commemorating national events or heroes, as well as floral and other more conventional styles of ornament. The work of the `black-printer’ had a considerable vogue which lasted well into the 19th century.
Underglaze printed decorations began to make their appearance towards the end of the 18th century. Blue, black, and brown were the first colours used, but blue soon ousted the less attractive tints, and between 1800 and 1830 vast quantities of blueprints were produced for home and overseas markets. All sorts of subjects were used for decoration, some taken from books of travel others from historical prints, portraits of celebrities, illustrated Bibles, or the works of famous painters. As the vogue for blue passed other colours were introduced – orange, mulberry, chrome-green, and rose-pink. The most popular pattern was the almost ubiquitous ‘Willow’. Nearly every early 19th-century industrial factory in Staffordshire and the Out-Potteries made blueprinted earthenware.
Figures: the image toys labelled ‘Astbury’ or ‘AstburyWhieldon’ are the most direct expression of pure clay technique in English pottery. They owe nothing to foreign influence, and are conceived in simple terms and worked out in a broad manipulative technique which died out about 1750.
The potters who made them knew little about the fashionable world and rarely attempted anything outside the range of their own experiences. Their best-known works are mounted hussars, grenadiers, topers, dancers, bands of musicians, or women seated upon high-backed chairs fondling pet dogs; and only occasionally do echoes of the fashionable world, in the form of opera singers or orators, occur. They were made, in fact, not for the big house but for the cottage or farm, and were evidently sold in the cheapest markets.
`Astbury’ or ‘Astbury-Whieldon’ are convenient labels covering many potters making similar wares, including John Astbury of Shelton, Thomas Astbury of Lane Delph, Samuel Bell of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Edward and William Warburton of Fenton Low, and Thomas Whieldon. It was probably Whieldon who was responsible for the more developed specimens. And with Whieldon we begin to notice the impact of the outside world in clumsy attempts to emulate classical sculpture (the ‘Spinario’) or Chinese porcelain figures.
The ‘pew’ and ‘arbour’ groups, made in salt-glazed stoneware and tortoiseshell-glazed earthenware, are extremely rare, and were evidently the work of potters of uncommon sensibility and skill. The names of those who made them are not known.
In addition to figures, cats, dogs, rabbits, cows and other animals were made. There is little to choose in quality between images made in stoneware and those made in common earthenware. The harder material was used expressively for depicting character and detail: the coarser body was perfectly suited to ‘pinching out’ droll characters to which life and colour were added by splashes of metallic oxides in the lead glaze.
Ralph Wood of Burslem lifted this ceramic sideline from its humble origin and developed it into a specialized craft –the craft of the figure-maker – and something was lost in the process. The humour of the Wood figures is quieter than that of the earlier pieces: a vein of sentiment creeps in, particularly with figures believed to have been modelled by John Voyez (c. 1735–i800), and in place of expressive manipulation we have careful character modelling and a closer regard for anatomical truth. Ralph Wood catered for more specialized markets, hence the changes in style and treatment. The best of the Wood figures are those which satirize contemporary events and personalities. The ‘Vicar and Moses’ and the original ‘Toby’jug deserved their widespread and long-lived popularity. They were original works of popular art. The chief characteristic of the early Wood figures is the clever tooling of the models to set off the lovely washes of translucent coloured glazes.
The younger Ralph Wood was responsible for a further development — the use of bright on-glaze enamels — which made previous figures seem dowdy and old-fashioned. The itch for novelty resulted in the multiplication of models and colour effects. Lustre and cheap gilding were introduced. By the end of the century dozens of factories turned to this lucrative trade, many backstreet potters turning out gaudy images for street hawkers, whose cry ‘Buy my images!’ became familiar in town and village.
The late 18th-century and early 19th-century figure-makers developed distinctive types. The makers of ‘Pratt’ figures used a palette of high-temperature colours dominated by yellow and blue. Enoch Wood made large lifeless statues of classical or literary subjects and competent busts of Wesley; tree background groups in gay enamels were made by Walton, Salt, Tittensor, Dale, and Selman; powerful but crude representations of popular sports were made by Obadiah Sherratt; the ubiquitous ‘china’ dogs and flatbacks of political, criminal, or military celebrities were turned out by the thousand from the factories of Sampson Smith, William Kent, and William Machin from 185o down to the Edwardian era. The trade did not die out until the First World War.
These were characteristic types: what Staffordshire did one day, Liverpool and Leeds, Sunderland, Swansea and Scotland did with variations the next.
This Victorian flowering of the craft of the image-maker gave rise to vast quantities of cheerful crudities which mirror perfectly the tastes and interests of common people. They were, in fact, the last expression of the folk will to form and colour.