Arthur Hayden

“ It appears from this patent that he had "invented and sett up at Fulham, several new manufactories." There is no doubt that John Dwight was one of the greatest, if not the greatest of English potters. His magnificent life-size bust in stoneware of Prince Rupert, now in the British Museum, excites the wonder and admiration of modern potters. The technical excellence he displays in his fine stoneware, which is of a grey-white or pale fawn colour, and is salt glazed, is as remarkable a triumph of modelling as it is of skill in potting. ”

“ The two brothers Green and William Hartley nobly carried on the manufacture of cream ware. At first they looked to Wedgwood for inspiration, but very shortly introduced a lightness of design in the exquisite and intricately pierced patterns in the borders, and original touches in the feather edges in relief and twisted handles and the floral terminals. The gadrooned or fluted edges of Leeds plates were sometimes painted in blue. The ware is extremely light in weight, and varies in colour from a pale, sometimes a very pale, cream colour to a light buff. ”

“ An unmarked example may show every evidence in modelling, in paste, in colour, and in glaze, of having been made by a certain potter at a particular date. The only confirmation lacking is the mark. It is here that marked ware becomes of paramount importance for purposes of comparison. And it is better to have a genuine marked piece in one's cabinet, from a business point of view, than a genuine piece equally fine that bears no signature or trade-mark. But this craving on the part of collectors for marks has led in the field of china to a disastrous state of things ”

“ But the cottager's Staffordshire figures were lovingly handled when the good wife furbished up her brass candlesticks, and they insensibly became part of the environment of the cottage home.
Here, then, is the key to the charm and magic which goes to the collecting of old Staffordshire figures, even of the decadent period. There is within them and around them and about them something redolent of a sturdy peasantry, something sad, something tinged with autumn days and autumn mists because they belong to days that have faded, and almost to a race that is extinct. ”

“ Stoneware is equally opaque, but it is as hard as porcelain. It may be as thick and heavy as a German beer-mug or a stone ginger-beer bottle, or it may be cream in colour, and thin as a Passover cake, as in salt-glazed Staffordshire ware, or white and heavy, as in later stone china. Porcelain may be hard or soft and possesses properties [43] equally its own, but is outside the scope of this volume.
Practically earthenware is of such porous clay that when fired in the kiln it is unfit for use, as it is still too porous until it receives a coating of glaze. ”

“ The Purple of Cassius was employed with great success in obtaining marbling and veining, but it was not till late in his career, about 1792, that he produced the gold lustre in its happiest combination in connection with the fine Pearl Ware shell dessert-services. We have already alluded to the thin wash of yellow and pink which was applied to these dishes to represent the interior of the shell, but the addition of gold lustre was the finishing touch, and such pieces are remarkably rare. They glow with fleeting colours as the light plays upon their surface. ”

“ The third class is the great crowd of lesser men, potters who claim little attention for original work, but who are remembered as producing, as an echo to the great classic revival, designs and shapes and copies of Wedgwood's ware, sometimes in stoneware for jugs, and more often in cream-ware, without an added touch of originality. ”

“ Not only on flat surfaces such as the well-known octagonal plates, but in figures and groups such as we have illustrated, these colour effects were employed with considerable dexterity. So that, in the contemplation of black-and-white illustrations of "Whieldon ware," everything is lost which gave the beauty and richness and mellowness which have an irresistible charm to those collectors who confine themselves to this early school of colourists. ”

“ Silver models provided many a fine shape for Wedgwood, his cream ware and his basalt teapots are bodily taken from Sheffield. But imitativeness has always been the curse of English potters. Wedgwood copied in jasper ware the cameo work of the classic world, and the whole of Staffordshire to a man commenced to pot on similar lines. Through the last decades of the eighteenth century, and well into the nineteenth, thousands of vases and jugs were turned out as echoes of Etruria in Staffordshire which, as its name denotes, was but an echo of something centuries earlier. ”

“ To enumerate the classes of ware with black [334] transfer-printing is to make a catalogue of the principal events which stirred the heart of the people. It must be borne in mind that this school was working side by side with the makers of fine stoneware and of jasper ware with classic subjects, but it is, after all, to the black-printed ware that one turns most lovingly as being more human. ”

“ These boscage shepherds and shepherdesses, these rustic musicians, lusty post-boys, and the family of Toby Philpots, found kinship in the miller and the farmer, the herdsman and the milkmaid, the gamekeeper and the woodman, the ostler and the waggoner—simple, kind-hearted folk, the children of nature uncloyed by the subtleties of art. Red-cheeked lasses and wrinkled crook-backed old dames, mother and daughter and granddaughter, toilers and sufferers, who chose the warm west window seat in the sun and the ingle nook by the fireside—these were the whilom owners of the old Staffordshire figures. ”

“ The sagacity of Wedgwood's remark is obvious, for an examination of the Neale-and-Palmer jasper and other ware reveals an amazing mastery of technique. It is finely potted and well balanced in ornament and design. If it were not for the impressed mark such vases might readily pass as Wedgwood. It is not improbable that in the middle nineteenth century the names both of Adams and Palmer and Neale were ground out of the bases of some of their finer vases by ingenious persons, who passed them off as the work of Wedgwood. ”

“ These early pioneers in art—Chippendale, the masterly adapter of all that was best on the Continent, and Wedgwood, translator of classicism into English pottery—worked with broad and generous spirit, and their contemporaries and those who came immediately after them helped themselves liberally to the overflowing profusion of ideas. ”

“ Before coming to the crowd of lesser men, or lesser-known men, we must not omit Josiah Spode, who was a colleague of Wedgwood under Whieldon; Elijah Mayer, whose black basalt was almost equal to that of Wedgwood, and whose enamel cream-ware stands artistically very high; and Samuel Hollins, of Shelton, with fine red or chocolate ware, having as dense a character as Wedgwood's imitations of the Elers ware, and Hollins in his jasper produced some fine examples with original combinations of colours. ”

“ We find Wedgwood in quite early days searching London for suitable prints of views and similar small subjects for decorative purposes. Probably at first the copper plates which had been used in books were bought up by the potters, and did service again for their ware. Later they employed engravers, who no doubt copied or adapted other people's engraved work to suit their purpose, and as the art advanced it gained in originality, and a band of engravers worked for the potters in designing subjects strictly applicable to the limitations in the technique of earthenware. ”

“ The Plagiarists of Wedgwood.—We have seen that John Turner, of Lane End, that William Adams, of Greengates, came under the strong influence of Wedgwood, but were no more imitators, in the broad sense, than Gainsborough and Romney may be said to be imitators of Sir Joshua Reynolds. It must be allowed in art that a school may arise under the guidance of some remarkable genius who tinges the originality of his contemporaries with his own master mind. ”

“ Those who have sought these old cottage treasures high and low and secured from far-away habitations snug in the hills or lone huts on the wolds, or from the dim-lit cabins of fisher folk these relics of byegone days, read into their newly acquired possessions something of the life history in their old environment, lying perdu these many years, perched aloft on the high mantel or hidden in the cupboard recess silently listening to the old tales of the strange men and women who live apart from the hum of cities. ”

“ There are great gaps which divide the period of the mediæval tiles from the more or less peasant pottery known as slip ware. It is not until the seventeenth century had well advanced that the manufacture of stoneware took its place as an industry.
To the beginner it should be explained that stoneware is coated with a glaze by means of common salt. It is extremely hard, and has a surface in old and admired specimens like the skin of an orange being pitted with minute depressions, or in finer and thinner ware being like the surface of leather or chicken skin. ”

“ Solon, the eminent authority and a practical worker in artistic pottery, tells in his "Art of the Old English Potter" how, when he was searching for fine specimens to make his collection, he was deceived by some sham old slip ware bought at a high figure in a lonely cottage in a remote district. If the fabricator could lure so studious a collector into his net, it goes without saying that especial precautions should be taken by the beginner not to give large prices unless he has a guarantee or knows the seller's reputation. ”

“ This brings the story of the development of Wedgwood's cream-ware up to modern times. And the same chain of development might be traced in the history of some of the other great potters whose descendants still carry on the manufacture. Cream-ware at first painted, then transfer-printed in black or red, then painted in blue under-glaze—which was killed by the blue under-glaze printing—finally emulated the rich colours and gilding of porcelain. ”

“ From out of this chaos it seems impossible that there should arise soul enough to set the fashion later—nearly fifty years later—to the continent of Europe, and make English earthenware the formidable rival in point of cheapness, and often in point of beauty, to anything produced on the Continent. ”

“ Copper or Bronze Lustre.—This class of lustre is generally held to be later (excepting of course the early attempts at Brislington which stand by themselves) . It is held too by collectors up to the present not to offer such artistic possibilities as the "resist" silver lustre. This is amply borne out by the prices obtained at auction. But it must not be forgotten that this bronze or copper lustre varies very considerably. It may be and often is very coarse brown [436] ordinary ware, and it may be very thin and delicate as to tempt the connoisseur to regard it with more than a passing glance. ”

“ This first employment of a white enamel on a brown earthenware was clearly due to the very natural desire on the part of the potter to procure some surface upon which his decorations in colour would show well in contrast. All primitive potters have passed through several stages of evolution. Brown ware was at first plain, then it received scratched or incised decoration. Searching for greater contrast the potter applied his ornament in relief in white, as in slip ware, or he added coloured glazes, as in the Tudor miniature jugs. ”

“ Attempts at classification nearly always leave the borders overlapping. In trying to gather in our net a band of representative potters with work peculiarly illustrative of this period which was essentially English—as English as Toft—but progressing towards something that should stand as worthy of our art, several great potters, such as the Woods, have escaped, and will be treated separately later. It must be granted that the influence of the Whieldon school was not obliterated even by the great rise of the classic school of design as exemplified by Wedgwood, Turner, and Adams. ”

“ Technically, as specimens of earthenware, they are perfect, but it is open to question whether the potter has not trespassed on the domain of the worker in metal. There are canons which govern the art of pottery; form and ornamentation strictly appropriate in metal are utterly unfitted for the worker in clay. Branched candelabra are false in porcelain though extremely beautiful in silver. In passing this criticism, which applies to some of Wedgwood's work, we are incidentally brushing aside the contention of those critics who find him unoriginal. ”

“ Clocks, vases, sweetmeat-boxes, and elaborate dinner services lavishly decorated in over-glaze enamels and gilded, emulated the best work of the porcelain factories. In Staffordshire the story has been repeated. So that form is no guide as to what kind of ware a piece may be. In weight earthenware is lighter than porcelain as a general rule, though variations in the body make this rule an elastic one. In stoneware, and ware approximating to this in character, the weight is heavier than porcelain. All ironstone ware is exceedingly heavy. ”

“ The Havilands of Limoges, Copenhagen, and Sèvres, and Berlin potters, as well as the artists in the Rookwood Pottery in America, have worked in the same field; but it is pleasant to think that English potters have produced greater variety, including Lancastrian lustre ware of wealth of glowing colour not surpassed by the Hispano-Moresque potters nor by the lustrous majolica of the Italian renaissance. ”

“ This tragic story of disastrous love has clung to the willow-pattern plates, and nobody can shake the belief of owners of indifferent specimens of middle-nineteenth century days that these plates are of great value. As a matter of fact, apart from the eighteenth-century examples, anything else is not worth the attention of the serious collector.
We have alluded to the historic character of the black transfer-printed ware, but sometimes similar subjects were attempted in the blue ware. ”

“ There is no doubt that a very high standard of painting on the Swansea ware prevailed during the best period, and the illustration of a set of three Swansea-ware bulb pots (see p. 397) shows that landscape painters of no mean gifts were employed. It is this picturesque quality of decoration (dependent in a great measure on the fact that from 1814 to 1824 porcelain was made too) , together with the equally fine quality of the ware itself, that has placed Swansea well to the front among the collectors of artistic earthenware. ”

“ But pleasing as is the Dutch delft in its fine colours, incorporated as they are with the enamel and glaze and giving the rich tone so much admired by collectors, and faithfully copying the form of the [105] Nankin models, it falls short of these Oriental prototypes in many important respects. It is admittedly an imitation of the appearance of porcelain, and not an imitation of the qualities peculiar to porcelain. The Dutch potter in his delft did not, as in the case of other European potters, essay to copy the body of porcelain, and arrive at true hard white paste, as did Meissen. ”

“ Josiah Wedgwood & Sons.
The ordinary man sees in the collection of china and earthenware an interesting hobby. He reads of the prices remarkable specimens bring under the hammer, and he begins to think that his education has been partly neglected since he knows little or nothing concerning these art treasures, which seemingly [39] are attractive to other men of culture and means.
"Collecting for profit" is a phrase that tickles the ears of many others. Undoubtedly there have been many who have entered the field of collecting and regarded their purchases solely as investments. ”

“ It seems as though it was a dogged and obstinate attempt on the part of the potter to ignore classic models, and [187] produce something "understanded of the people." Obviously such ware did not rise to elaborate ornamental vases, but confined itself to mugs and jugs and useful articles in common use. So that, in spite of the enormous influence of Wedgwood, both in technique, but more especially in decoration, upon his contemporaries and his successors, it would seem that there was always an undercurrent of pottery which, even if crude, was extremely national. ”