_From the Collection of Mr. W. G. Honey._]
The first method, with the design left in white, was produced in
handsome and highly artistic styles, and there is a pattern known as
the “Resist” pattern which is much sought after.
From Mr. W. G. Honey’s collection we have selected a very good example
of this silver lustre with design in white. This is of the “Resist”
pattern, its artistic excellence speaks for itself.
[Illustration: GOLD LUSTRE JUG
(Raised coloured flowers.)
_From the Collection of Mr. W. G. Honey._]
With regard to gold or purple lustre, the middle dish in the group
in our illustration is gold lustre ware, and is probably of Swansea
manufacture. Wedgwood produced a gold lustre of remarkable brilliancy.
The dish above alluded to is decorated with stags and staghounds, but
in some of the gold undecorated examples, such as Wedgwood’s, covered
with a mottled ruby-gold lustre, the effect was due entirely to the
shape and to the lustre.
The reason that this variety is called gold or purple lustre is that in
the lights it shines like gold, and the rest of the pattern in those
pieces decorated with flowers and floral pattern, glows with a rich
purple.
This purple lustre shows more signs of the hand of time than any of the
other lustres, and it is nearly always found to be partially worn off.
We give an interesting example of a jug with gold lustre ground and
raised coloured flowers from Mr. W. G. Honey’s collection.
* * * * *
NOTE.—Lustre ware is more fully treated in a chapter in the companion
volume, “Chats on English Earthenware.”
XIII
LIVERPOOL
WARE
[Illustration: LIVERPOOL DELFT PUNCH BOWL.
(Decorated with military trophies in blue, and having three-masted
man-of-war inside.)
Diameter, 20-1/2 in.
_At Victoria and Albert Museum._]
[Illustration:
_In possession of Messrs. Fenton & Son._
OLD LIVERPOOL TILES.
(Transfer-printed in black.)]
XIII
LIVERPOOL WARE
It is the hope of the writer of these “Chats” that Worcester and
Derby, Bristol and Plymouth, Bow and Chelsea have become something
more than mere names to the readers who have followed our journeyings.
The china-shelf has been shown to hold the monuments of men’s lives.
Behind the delicate pencillings and the shower of rose-leaves lies many
a tragic story. Liverpool and its ware is not the least of the great
landmarks in the history of English ceramic art.
In entering on the threshold of the history of Liverpool, and of
the printed ware stated to have been first produced there, we find
ourselves in the midst of a controversy. If discussions upon points
of china-collecting were waged physically, the opponents in their
heat would have demolished each other long ago with their own china
collections, but luckily, they have confined themselves to hurling
opinions and nothing more tangible. Philosophically, they have agreed
to differ, and have parted good friends, to renew the argument another
day, or they have each gone to his last home and the echoes of the
conflict have come down to us, and fresh battles are fought over the
theories of dead collectors. Up till quite recently a wordy war was
being waged over Lowestoft, and the laurels of that much-disputed
factory were in great danger of being snatched away.
To John Sadler, of Liverpool, is generally ascribed the honour
of having discovered the useful art of printing on pottery from
copper-plate engravings. He was the son of Adam Sadler, a printer,
in Liverpool, who had formerly served as a soldier under the Duke of
Marlborough in the wars in the Low Countries. John Sadler carried on
the business of an engraver in Harrington Street, and having noticed
that some of his waste prints were used by children to stick on to
fragments of earthenware obtained from the potteries, he commenced
experiments with a view of extending this application to the purposes
of decoration.
He associated himself about the year 1750 with Guy Green, who had
succeeded to the printing business of Adam Sadler.
The secret of the manner in which an engraving was transferred from a
copper-plate to the rounded surface of a bowl or a teapot, was well
kept, but it was fairly obvious that in some way or another the design
was transferred to paper and then retransferred to the china object to
be decorated.
Sadler and Green, after working at the discovery, applied for a patent.
The value of the invention can best be understood by the following
affidavit made by John Sadler and Guy Green, in 1756.
“I, John Sadler, of Liverpoole, in the county of Lancaster, printer,
and Guy Green, of Liverpoole aforesaid, printer, severally maketh oath,
that on Tuesday, the 27th July, inst., they, these deponents, without
the aid or assistance of any other person or persons, did, within the
space of six hours, to wit, betwixt the hours of nine in the morning
and three in the afternoon of the same day, print upwards of 1,200
earthenware tiles of different patterns, at Liverpoole aforesaid, and
which, as these deponents have heard and believe, were more in number,
and better, and neater than 100 skilful pot painters could have painted
in the like space of time in the common and usual way of painting with
a pencil; and these deponents say that they have been upwards of seven
years in finding out the method of printing tiles, and in making tryals
and experiments for that purpose, which they have now, through great
pains and expense, brought to perfection.”
Two printers doing the work of a hundred tile painters! The stupendous
nature of the invention is seen in the light of this statement. Caxton
never made a greater discovery when he set his type moving, and the
illuminated manuscripts of the monks became the printed page in the
hands of the common people. Josiah Wedgwood, with characteristic
foresight, saw the value of the work of Sadler and Green, and his
waggons made weekly journeys from Staffordshire up to Liverpool laden
with his Queen’s ware to be decorated in the new style.
[Illustration:
[Established 1710].
[Pennington 1760].
[Transfer Printing]
[1756]
EARLY LIVERPOOL MARKS.]
To come back to the controversy for a moment, it is claimed that
Worcester was first to produce printed china. There is at the Bethnal
Green Museum a printed mug of Worcester, dated 1757. It will be
remembered that the date of Sadler and Green’s affidavit was 1756. But
a claim is made for a third factory—Battersea. There is a letter from
Horace Walpole to Bentley, dated 1755, in which he says: “I shall send
you, too, a trifling snuff-box, only as a sample of the new manufacture
of Battersea, which is done from copper-plates.” There are also dated
pieces of this Battersea enamel with the design printed upon them,
dated as early as 1753 and 1754. In all probability Worcester derived
the secret from Battersea, as Robert Hancock, of Worcester fame, who
signed some of the older pieces, was formerly an engraver at Battersea.
[Illustration: LIVERPOOL MARKS
(1756-1822).]
In spite of this fact there is every reason for believing that at
Liverpool, Sadler and Green independently discovered the art of
printing on china, as their affidavit declares them to have been
engaged upon it for seven years, which takes them back to 1749.
[Illustration: LIVERPOOL MARKS
(1822-1841).]
Of the earlier potters of Liverpool, we have little space to deal
in this “Chat.” Chaffers, a contemporary of Josiah Wedgwood, and a
formidable rival of the Staffordshire potter; Thomas and Samuel Shaw;
John Pennington, celebrated for his punch-bowls and for a very fine
blue ware, are all well known to collectors of Liverpool ware. We
give the marks of these factories, and of other Liverpool makers:
Philip Christian (1760-1775), W. Reid & Co. (1756-1760), Herculaneum
Pottery (1790-1841). Staffordshire had its Etruria and Lancashire its
Herculaneum. In the earlier days of the potter classic names were much
in vogue. A favourite pattern in Herculaneum china was a series of the
towns of England printed on the pieces, with the name in a medallion at
the bottom of the piece. The bird is the liver, being the crest of the
city of Liverpool, and was used at Herculaneum by Messrs. Case, Mort &
Co. in 1833. The anchor mark is between this date and 1841, when the
factory ceased.
When it is remembered that Wedgwood had his ware printed by Sadler and
Green and that Bow sent to Liverpool to have the Liverpool designs
transferred to the Bow china, it is easy to understand how complicated
it becomes to determine with exactitude how little or how much was
actually printed at Liverpool, because there came a time when the
secret leaked out and when other factories besides Liverpool and
Worcester began to print their own wares.
We reproduce a Liverpool mug, printed in brownish red colour,
representing a lover and his lass. It is typically English in treatment
and design, and it is this quality which makes Liverpool printed ware
so interesting. There is nothing like it in any of the Continental
wares. The quaint and delicate English pastoral scene breathes of the
eighteenth century. The refrain might run:—
“Phyllida, my Phyllida!
She takes her buckled shoon,
When we go out a-courting
Beneath the harvest moon.
. . . .
The ladies of St. James’s!
You scarce can understand
The half of all their speeches,
Their phrases are so grand:
But Phyllida, my Phyllida!
Her shy and simple words
Are clear as after rain-drops
The music of the birds.”
[Illustration:
_In possession of Mr. S. G. Fenton, Cranbourne Street._
OLD LIVERPOOL MUG (4 IN. HIGH).
(Printed in brown.)]
Or take the old Liverpool jug with the landscape printed in black on
one side, and the humorous heads, entitled “Courtship and Matrimony,”
on the other; which heads, by the way, will our readers kindly turn
upside down to gather what the acid doggerel written underneath alludes
to. It is a pity the jug is not perfect, but the top has a metal band
which remedies the broken spout. The lines underneath the heads run:—
“When two fond fools together meet,
Each look gives joy, each kiss is sweet,
But wed, how crabb’d and cross they grow
Turn upside down and you will know.”
[Illustration: OLD LIVERPOOL JUG (7-1/4 IN. HIGH).
(Transfer-printed in black.)
Landscape and Heads entitled “Courtship and Matrimony.”
_From the Collection of Capt. H. F. Maclean._]
We reproduce as a headpiece two exquisitely black printed Liverpool
tiles. It is true they are badly damaged, but their quaint designs were
worth the preserving. The one with the gallant sportsman firing at a
deer at very close range is queerly out of perspective. The other tile
is a typically English rural scene, and pity it is that more of our
rustic scenery has not found its way to our national china.
[Illustration: LIVERPOOL MUG (6 IN. HIGH).
(Transfer-printed and partly coloured after glazing.)
_From the Collection of Capt. H. F. Maclean._]
Another of our illustrations is that of a Liverpool mug with subject
entitled “The Tithe Pig,” in which the vicar appears to have come
off worst in a wordy encounter with two of his parishioners. There
is a grim humour about many of the eighteenth-century decorated mugs
and jugs which are a record in ceramics of party strifes and of
long-forgotten social enmities.
It will be seen that the Liverpool printed ware has in it an element
of decoration which some of the other wares do not possess. Many of
our readers doubtless possess specimens of this black or brown printed
ware, mugs, or tiles, or teapots with old-world scenes upon them like
the landscapes of our illustration. Shepherds and herds, fifers and
fiddlers and dancers, village-green sports, lads and lasses “dancing
the hays”—these are the homely scenes transferred from the old
copper-plates.
XIV
WEDGWOOD
[Illustration: WEDGWOOD DINNER PLATES FROM DESIGNS IN FLAXMAN’S
SKETCH-BOOK. PRODUCED OVER 100 YEARS AGO AT ETRURIA, AND STILL MADE BY
THE FIRM.
I. Strawberry. II. Lag and Feather. III. Feather border.
IV. Bell-flower and leaf pattern.
_By courteous permission of Messrs. Josiah Wedgwood & Sons._]
[Illustration: WEDGWOOD JASPER CUP AND SAUCER.
_By courtesy of Messrs. Josiah Wedgwood & Sons._]
XIV
WEDGWOOD
The pottery made in England did not exhibit any marked characteristic,
nor was it of much artistic value until Josiah Wedgwood, by his genius,
raised Staffordshire ware to such a degree of perfection that it was
universally used on the Continent of Europe.
Josiah Wedgwood, the youngest of a family of thirteen, was born in
1730, and came of a race of potters. There were Wedgwoods, potters,
at Burslem, in the seventeenth century. We give an illustration of a
puzzle jug having the inscription, “John Wedg Wood, 1691” (see p. 212).
Young Josiah left school at the age of nine and was apprenticed to
his brother. At eleven, he had a most virulent attack of small-pox,
which left him a weakling. Later on in life, he had to have one of
his legs amputated owing to a weakness which he always had after
his first terrible illness. Physically handicapped from the start,
Josiah Wedgwood—wooden-legged though he was for over a quarter of a
century—was the prince of English potters. His genius was coupled with
great business capability. His inventions were eminently successful.
Starting with £20, which his father left him, he died worth over half a
million.
Thoroughness seems to have been his policy, and prosperity always
attended him. He interested himself in getting an Act of Parliament for
better roads in the vicinity of the Staffordshire potteries. He cut the
first sod of the Grand Trunk Canal.
His aim was a glorious one. “Let us make all the good, fine, and new
things we can,” he said to his partner Bentley once, “and so far from
being afraid of other people getting our patterns, we should glory in
it, and throw out all the hints we can, and, if possible, have all the
artists in Europe working after our models.”
He allowed no imperfect thing to leave his factory. It is a quaint
scene one conjures up of the potter who, when going through his works,
used to lift the stick he leant on and smash to pieces some offending
dish or vase, saying, “This won’t do for Josiah Wedgwood.”
The beginnings of Wedgwood ware were simple enough. In 1752, Josiah
left Burslem to go to Stoke, where he was engaged in manufacturing
knife-handles and like objects in imitation of agate and tortoiseshell.
Subsequently he entered into partnership with John Harrison, of
Newcastle, and their wares were made at Stoke. In 1754, Wedgwood
and Harrison entered into partnership with Thomas Whieldon at Little
Fenton, the most eminent potter of his day. Shortly after Harrison
disappears from the partnership. This connection between Whieldon
and Wedgwood was a most important one. Their principal manufactures
were tortoiseshell plates and dishes, cauliflower jugs, teapots with
crabstock handles, and agate knife-handles. While with Whieldon,
Wedgwood produced a new green earthenware, highly glazed and decorated
with flowers and fruit, which was mainly used for dessert services.
[Illustration: CUP AND SAUCER.
WHIELDON TORTOISESHELL WARE.]
The tortoiseshell ware now known by Whieldon’s name is very beautifully
made. Usually the plates and dishes are hexagonal or octagonal in
shape, with very finely moulded edges, and having a mottled and
variegated arrangement in colour, which more resembles marble than
tortoiseshell.
Wedgwood made snuff-boxes, and various trinkets intended to be mounted
in metal. These productions of his were coloured to represent precious
stones. When the jewellers of London and Bath were shown these wares,
they considered them a valuable discovery, the secret of which they
could not discover. But learning the low price at which Wedgwood
was intending to sell them they grew less favourable, probably from
thinking the imitation would ruin the sale of genuine jewels.
We learn, too, that Wedgwood at this time was so incapacitated from
attending to his business, owing to the remains of his old complaint,
that he was obliged to communicate the secret of the method and
proportions of his mixtures to a workman.
The ware manufactured by Whieldon, both during his partnership with
Wedgwood and afterwards, are of good quality, and are highly prized by
collectors. A tortoiseshell plate costs a sovereign to-day.
Of course none of these early wares of Wedgwood are marked. We shall
show how he laid the foundation of his manufactory, which he called
“Etruria,” after the Italian home of the famous Etruscans, whose work
he admired and imitated.
What Wedgwood did for Staffordshire is shown best in the following
sentence by M. Faujas de Saint Font in his “Travels,” who says,
speaking of the Wedgwood ware: “Its excellent workmanship, its solidity
the advantage which it possesses of sustaining the action of fire, its
fine glaze, impenetrable to acids, the beauty and convenience of its
form, and the cheapness of its price, have given rise to a commerce so
active and so universal that in travelling from Paris to Petersburg,
from Amsterdam to the furthest part of Sweden, and from Dunkirk to
the extremity of the South of France, one is served at every inn with
English ware. Spain, Portugal, and Italy are supplied, and vessels
are loaded with it for the East and West Indies and the continent of
America.”
Leaving the biographical side of the subject, we come to the actual
productions of Josiah Wedgwood. We left him in partnership with
Whieldon. That partnership ended, he commenced manufacturing on his
own behalf. He speedily found that one pottery was not enough to
satisfy his tireless energies. He became the owner of two. In 1762, he
presented Queen Charlotte with a breakfast service of cream-coloured
earthenware. In return he received the title of “Potter to her
Majesty,” and his Queen’s Ware became a great success. Every fortnight
a waggon left Burslem for Liverpool with a freight of this ware, to
be decorated by Messrs. Sadler and Green by their transfer process at
Liverpool.
About this time he took his cousin, Thomas Wedgwood, into partnership,
and later Thomas Bentley, of Liverpool, a man of great taste, who
exercised no inconsiderable influence upon the style of design of the
new pottery at Etruria. A man of wide reading and culture, it was he
who supplemented Wedgwood’s practical efforts by his theories. It was
always Wedgwood first, but Bentley was an ideal second. He took no
part in what Wedgwood termed the “useful” side of the manufactory, such
as, for example, the manufacture of Queen’s Ware and other articles
for everyday use. Bentley’s partnership was only concerned with the
“ornamental” side of the pottery, such as the manufacture of vases and
works of art.
In 1769 Etruria was opened, and Josiah Wedgwood might have been seen at
the potter’s bench and Thomas Bentley at the wheel, and their united
labours produced the first vase, having an inscription which runs:—
JUNE XIII., MDCCLXIX.
ONE OF THE FIRST DAY’S PRODUCTIONS
AT
ETRURIA IN STAFFORDSHIRE,
BY
WEDGWOOD AND BENTLEY.
ARTES ETRURIÆ RENASCUNTER.
The subject of decoration is Hercules in the Garden of the Hesperides,
and was a forerunner of those classical pieces which have made Wedgwood
as honoured a name in Europe as that of Palissy the Frenchman, of Lucca
del Robbia the Italian, or of Böttcher the German.
The range of the Wedgwood ware may be gathered from the fact that in
one of the catalogues the productions are divided into twenty distinct
classes. It is not our intention to enumerate these, but they comprised
series of medals and medallions of the Cæsars, the Roman emperors,
the heads of the Popes (consisting of no less than two hundred and
fifty-three medallions), a hundred heads of the kings of England and
France, together with “heads of illustrious moderns.” In addition to
these there were admirable busts, some being twenty-five inches in
height, of Lord Chatham, Cornelius De Witt, John De Witt, Plato, and
many more. These were in black basaltes, durable as marble. Lamps and
candelabra of antique forms were produced from “two shillings apiece to
five guineas.”
In passing, we may refer to the above fact to show why Wedgwood or any
other ware varies in value so much at the present day. Obviously a
two-shilling lamp will not be as valuable as a five-guinea one. Readers
learn that certain china has fetched a large price in the auction-room.
Sometimes they erroneously infer that other china they possess, which
bears the mark of the same factory, is equally valuable. The above
will point the moral of the story. It is a fact that cannot be too
often insisted upon that the great factories turned out productions by
the ton, many of them intended for ordinary everyday use, and though
bearing their mark, yet not valuable from the collector’s point of view.
There are, of course, other reasons why china is or is not valuable,
but this is a very solid reason too often overlooked. To be able
to differentiate the good from the bad, “that is the question.” To
know that a specimen is good is one thing, to give the reason why is
another. When the reader begins to do this he or she is already a
connoisseur.
In order to give a fairly proportionate idea of what Wedgwood ware is,
we quote a list and description of six different kinds of ware in his
own words:—
“1. A _terra-cotta_; resembling porphyry, granite Egyptian, pebble, and
other beautiful stones of the silicious or crystalline order.
[Illustration: WEDGWOOD TERRA-COTTA VASES
_In Museum at Etruria._
_By courtesy of Messrs. Josiah Wedgwood & Sons._]
“2. _Basaltes_ or black ware; a black porcelain biscuit of nearly the
same properties with the natural stone; striking fire with steel,
receiving a high polish, serving as a touchstone for metals, resisting
all the acids, and bearing without injury a strong fire; stronger,
indeed, than the basaltes itself.
“3. _White porcelain biscuit_, of a smooth, wax-like surface, of the
same properties with the preceding, except in what depends upon colour.
“4. _Jasper_; a white porcelain biscuit of exquisite beauty and
delicacy, possessing the general properties of the basaltes, together
with the singular one of receiving through its whole substance,
from the admixture of metallic calces with the other materials, the
same colours which those calces communicate to glass or enamels in
fusion—a property which no other porcelain or earthenware body of
ancient or modern composition has been found to possess. This renders
it peculiarly fit for making cameos, portraits, and all subjects in
bas-relief, as the ground may be of any particular colour, while the
raised figures are of a pure white.
“5. _Bamboo_, or cane-coloured biscuit porcelain, of the same nature as
No. 3.
“6. A _porcelain biscuit_, remarkable for great hardness, little
inferior to that of agate. This property, together with its resistance
to the strongest acids and corrosives, and its impenetrability by
every known liquid, adapts it for mortars and many different kinds of
chemical vessels.
“These six distinct species, with the Queen’s Ware already mentioned,
expanded by the industry and ingenuity of the different manufacturers
into an infinity of forms for ornament and use, variously painted and
embellished, constitute nearly the whole of the present fine English
earthenwares and porcelain which are now become the source of a very
extensive trade, and which, considered as an object of national art,
industry, and commerce, may be ranked amongst the most important
manufactures of the kingdom.”
Of these various wares we give illustrations. The three vases we
reproduce are fine examples in imitation of porphyry and other precious
stones (see p. 256). The material is so hard that it can be worked
upon by the lapidary, and takes as fine a polish as the real stone it
resembles.
[Illustration: WEDGWOOD JASPER VASE.
_By courtesy of Messrs. Josiah Wedgwood & Sons._]
Of the celebrated basaltes or black ware, sometimes called Egyptian
ware, the vase we reproduce as the first made at Etruria was of this
class, and we give two other examples.