ELERS AND ART.
The brothers Elers are supposed to have come from Amsterdam in the train
of the Prince of Orange. Jewitt has studied their pedigree and says they
were originally of a noble family of Saxony—their father an ambassador,
their grandfather an admiral! However that may be, the first notice we
have of them is in a note in the Philosophical Transactions of 1693 by Dr
Martin Lister. He says: “I have this to add, that this clay Haematites,
is as good, if not better, than that which is brought from the East
Indies. Witness the teapots now to be sold at the potters in the Poultry
in Cheapside, which not only for art, but for beautiful colour too,
are far beyond any we have from China; these are made from the English
Haematites in Staffordshire, as I take it, by two Dutchmen incomparable
artists.”[16] We too may call them incomparable artists if we compare
this evidence with Plot’s account of fifteen years before, or their
teapots sold at a guinea a time,[17] with the almost barbaric puzzle-jars
of the native potter.
It has hitherto been assumed from this statement of Dr Lister’s that
the Elers were _in_ Staffordshire in 1693. It does not follow from the
extract that the teapots were made in Staffordshire, only that the clay
came from thence. In the same year, 1693, they were sued by Dwight of
Fulham for copying his red teapots, and in the suit they are described
as “of Fulham.” Moreover Dr Martin Lister, writing again in 1698 in his
“Account of a Journey to Paris in the Year 1698,” says, after speaking of
the porcelain made at St Cloud, “As for the red ware of China, that has
been and is done in England.... But we are in this particular beholden to
two Dutchmen who wrought in Staffordshire, as I have been told, and were
not long since in Hammersmith.”[18] This, it will be seen, confirms the
supposition that they first made their teapots and stoneware in Fulham or
Hammersmith.
The important Chancery Suit, discovered by Prof. Church, in which Dwight
sued his copyists at Fulham, Nottingham and Burslem is as follows:
June 20, 1693. The complaint of John Dwight of Fulham in the County of
Middlesex, gentleman, showing that the complainant having ... invented
and set up at Fulham several new manufactures of earthenwares called
White Gorges, marbled porcelaine vessells, statues and figures and fine
stone gorges and vessells never before made in England or elsewhere, and
alsoe discovered the mystery of opacous red and dark coloured porcelaine
and china ... obtained lettres patent dated June 12, 1684 ... he and his
servants have for several years past used ... said invention ... and
sold them.... But having formerly hired one John Chandler of Fulham ...
and employed him in the making ... thereupon John Elers and David Elers,
both of Fulham (who are forreigners and by trade silversmiths) together
with James Morley of Nottingham and also Aaron Wedgwood Thomas Wedgwood
and Richard Wedgwood of Berslem in the County of Stafford and Matthew
Garner ... did insinuate themselves into the acquaintance of the said
John Chandler and ... inticed him to instruct them ... and to desert the
complainant’s service to enter into partnership together with them to
make and sell the said wares ... but far inferior to them.... And the
said confederates, “the better to colour their said unjust and injurious
practises,” pretend that the earthenwares made and sold by them are in no
way like those invented by the complainant but differ from them in form
and figure and have several additions and improvements ... whereas the
truth is they are made in imitation of the complainants wares ... prays
that writs of _subpena_ be directed to John Chandler, John Elers, David
Elers, Aaron Wedgwood, Thomas Wedgwood, Richard Wedgwood and Matthew
Garner and James Morley.
The answer, dated June 8, 1694, of the man with the Staffordshire name
of Garner to this Bill of Complaint, shows that he was apprenticed about
1680 for eight years to one Thomas Harper of Southwark, potmaker, and he
says that, afterwards, he invented a way of making earthen brown pans
and mugs, which art he still practises. The answer of David Elers to the
same Bill, dated July 28, 1693, states that he learnt at Cologne the
manufacture of “earthenware commonly called Cologne or Stone wares,”
and that about three years ago he and his brother began to make brown
mugs and red teapots “within this kingdom of England,” and employed John
Chandler. He says that neither he nor his brother nor Morley nor any of
the other defendants knew John Chandler while he was in the employ of
Dwight. He denies that James Morley was ever a partner with him or his
brother, or that Chandler was more than a hired labourer. He complains
that he and his brother ought not to be deprived of their living.
An order was made on August 10, 1693, for a trial of the action against
Morley and the Elers for the making of a brown mug and two red teapots
in imitation of china. Before the trial came on in November the Elers
came to terms with Dwight, and Morley put off his case by claiming that
he only made brown mugs and not the red teapots. On December 15, 1693,
the three Wedgwoods were ordered to be added to the Bill as defendants,
and on May 5, 1694, Matthew Garner was added also. On May 19, 1694, the
Wedgwoods “for delay have craved a _dedimus_ to answer in the country,”
and yet in the meantime proceed to make and vend the several wares,
against which continuance the plaintiff Dwight obtained an injunction
“until they shall directly answer to the complaint and the Court shall
make other order to the contrary against them their workmen servants and
agents.” On June 21, 1694, a similar injunction was obtained against
Matthew Garner; and on July 26, 1695, against Morley. Garner in his turn
wanted his witnesses examined in the country, and the cases against
him and Morley and one Luke Talbott dragged on till July, 1696, though
nothing more is to be found of the suit against the Wedgwoods. Probably
they too compromised on the basis of each paying their own costs, for
the last notice there is of these suits is one dated July 1, 1696, which
shows Dwight suing his solicitor for excessive costs.
[Illustration: Earliest known piece of Staffordshire salt glaze ware,
1701. From the Stoke-on-Trent Museums.]
This suit, given by Professor Church in the “Burlington Magazine”
(February, 1908) upsets a good many preconceptions, and throws
considerable light on the stage at which the development of the potting
craft had arrived in 1693. In the first place Garner, a Staffordshire
lad to judge from his name, is apprenticed to a London potter. This shows
communication between London and Staffordshire, and a clear desire to
improve a potting trade in Staffordshire by contact with more civilized
methods. Then the injunction obtained against Aaron Wedgwood and his
sons, “Doctor” Thomas and Richard “of the Overhouse,” shows that they
were making in 1693 the red teapots, known to collectors as Elers and
Dwight, and the brown stoneware which, glazed with salt, was later the
characteristic work of Dr Thomas Wedgwood. We must, therefore, call these
Wedgwoods and Matthew Garner the first known Staffordshire makers of
stoneware, and as Garner was out of his apprenticeship in 1688, and Elers
started in Fulham in 1690, we can give the date 1690 as the starting
point of the stoneware glazed with salt in Staffordshire.
If there was a definite partnership between the Elers and the Wedgwoods
I expect it was confined to the supply of red Staffordshire clay to the
factory at Fulham. It may well be that, as a result of this very action,
the Elers determined to shift their workshops and put them up in the
place whence hitherto they had got their clay, and where the unfortunate
leakage that had perhaps betrayed Dwight’s secrets could, in their case,
be more easily prevented. Be the cause what it may, between 1693 and 1698
John Philip Elers, the elder brother, was established in a secluded farm
in Bradwell Wood under Red Street. It should be noticed that at this
time, and for half a century afterwards, Red Street was important as a
potting village. Messrs Mayer & Moss of Red Street were, about 1740,
among the most considerable potters of their day.
Here, at Bradwell, the Elers put up their workshops and small kiln, while
they lived at another old house, Dimsdale Hall, which is still standing
about a mile to the south. Shaw[19] had a legend about an elaborate
underground speaking-tube, fixed from Bradwell to Dimsdale, through which
notice might be given to the works of the approach of strangers. And it
is a curious tribute to the value of such legends that, within the last
few years, white earthenware voice-pipes have actually been dug up on
the site of the Bradwell factory. They did not, of course, really extend
from Bradwell to Dimsdale, but they went from one part of the factory to
another, and were probably devised to secure secrecy rather than modern
economy. These pipes are now to be seen in the Hanley Museum, and the
curious thing is that one of them is glazed with salt. This, besides
confirming the legend of the voice-pipes, is the only certain living
witness that the Elers used salt glaze.
We have spoken of the two brothers going to Staffordshire, but the
recently accepted view is that John Philip Elers alone worked at
Bradwell, while David remained in London at the shop in the Poultry,
where he sold his brother’s teapots at from 12s. to 24s. apiece.[20]
The first pottery ware made at Bradwell was the same as Dwight’s “red
porcelaine.” On the land at Bradwell Farm was the seam of red clay
which formed the foundation of the ware, giving when fired a dense hard
red stoneware of fine texture.[21] There are in the South Kensington
Museum two pieces of “red porcelain” credited by Burton to Elers
and illustrated in his book. They are in marked contrast to the slip
decorated and marbled Staffordshire ware of the same time. They have
been turned in the lathe after throwing, and thus made thin and light.
The clay body is homogeneous and smooth, showing greater care in the
preparation of the body. The ornamentation is delicate and artistic, and
has been made by sealing a soft piece of the clay on to the ware with a
metal seal pressed over the soft clay. There is no glaze, but a high fire
has produced a ware so hard as to be almost forged solid. These things
show the hand of the ex-silversmith in size and shape and finish. The
Burslem imitators—Garner and the Wedgwoods—never made things like these.
Elers, though he may have stolen Dwight’s secrets, went ahead and showed
the possibilities of potting. He is said also to have produced black ware
of a similar character by mixing oxide of manganese—the “magnus” of Dr
Plot—with the clay body, and, though no known pieces of black Elers ware
can now be certainly identified, it is this black ware that his copyists
chiefly developed.[22]
[Illustration: 1. Red china teapot, probably by Elers. _c._ 1700.
2. Sample of later date, with moulded spout. Stoke-on-Trent Museums.]
[Illustration: Samples of solid agate ware made by Wedgwood or Whieldon.
_c._ 1760.
From the Stoke-on-Trent Museums (see p. 74).]
For Nemesis overtook John Philip Elers, and in spite of all his
secrecy, perhaps because of it, he was copied. Two potters, Twyford and
Astbury,[23] one of whom at least had already made pots after local
methods in Shelton, set themselves independently to acquire the arts of
the Dutchman. To lull the suspicions of Elers, Twyford shammed stupidity,
and Astbury, who was younger, passed himself off as an idiot. Recommended
by these strange qualifications, they asked and obtained employment and,
in time, the knowledge they desired. They went back to Shelton with their
acquired arts, and, in a few years, the most intelligent potters of North
Staffordshire knew how to make civilized pottery. But by 1710 John Philip
Elers was tired of his exile and of the treatment he had received. The
true porcelain which should detect poison was still unattained, and
his “red porcelain” and his black ware were become by somewhat sharp
practice a staple product of the district. So he shook off the clay of
Staffordshire from his feet and rejoined his brother in London.
Years later Josiah Wedgwood, who had every reason to know the history
of the potteries from hearsay, legend and family tradition, gave an
account to his partner Bentley of what John Philip Elers had done. The
son, Paul Elers, had asked Wedgwood to make a medallion of his father’s
head, surrounded by the motto: “Plasticis Britannicae Inventor.” Josiah
Wedgwood—looking back on the long array of his ancestors, all potters
born and bred in Burslem before ever Elers put his hand to the thrower’s
wheel—says the motto “conveys a falsehood,” and that John Philip Elers
merely _improved_ the Art. “The reason,” he writes in 1777, “for Mr Elers
fixing upon Staffordshire to try his experiments, seems to be that the
Pottery was carried on there in a much larger way, and in a more improved
state, than in any other part of Great Britain.” “The improvements Mr
Elers made in our manufactory were precisely these. Glazing our common
clays with salt, which produced Pot d’Grey or Stone Ware.... I make no
doubt but glazing with salt, by casting it among the ware while it is
red hot, came to us from Germany, but whether Mr Elers was the person
to whom we are indebted for the improvement I do not know.... The next
improvement introduced by Mr Elers was the refining our common red clay
by sifting, and make it into Tea and Coffee ware in imitation of the
Chinese red Porcelain, by casting it in plaster moulds, and turning it
upon the outside upon lathes, and ornamenting it with the tea-branch in
relief.”[24]
It is impossible to say why Wedgwood attributed “casting in plaster
moulds” to Elers, for all the evidence goes to show that the process
known technically as “casting” only came in with the introduction of
alabaster “blocks” and pitcher moulds after 1730. As to the far more
important and debatable point—the introduction of the process of glazing
with salt—this evidence of Wedgwood’s is perhaps the most reliable that
we can get.
As the invention of salt glazing not only made, at one stroke, a new
manufacture possible, but one that was peculiar to North Staffordshire,
it may be as well to examine more closely the evidence as to its
discoverer and its discovery.
The idea that salt glazing was accidentally discovered at Bagnal by
some strong brine solution boiling away in an earthen pot which became
automatically glazed[25] may be dismissed at once for the simple reason
that it could not happen as described. It may be urged too in Elers’
favour that, long before this, salt glazing was practised in Germany.
Again, Aikin in his “History of Manchester,” written in 1794, gives an
elaborate account of the novelty as practised by Elers. He writes: “It
was in the memory of some old persons with whom a friend of ours was well
acquainted that the inhabitants of Burslem flocked with astonishment to
see the immense volumes of smoke which arose from the Dutchmen’s ovens on
casting in the salt; a circumstance which sufficiently shows the novelty
of this practice in Staffordshire Potteries.”[26] Probably this part
of Dr Aikin’s work was written by Alex. Chisholm, secretary to Josiah
Wedgwood.
At least the same story was told to Josiah Wedgwood in 1765 by an old
workman named Steel, aged 84, who could remember the Dutchmen at work
at Bradwell, and who joined those who ran to the place amazed at this
unusual mode of firing. No doubt this is what was in Wedgwood’s mind when
he wrote to Bentley in 1777, as quoted above.
On the other hand we have the evidence of Simeon Shaw,[27] first that
William Adams and Thomas Miles produced salt glaze in 1680 (a very
doubtful supposition in view of the Chancery suit recently discovered),
and then that “Mr. John Mountford, 27 years since (i.e. in 1801), took
down the remains of the (Elers’) oven, and he states that the height was
about 7 feet, but not like the salt-glaze ovens.” And again: “E. Wood and
J. Riley both separately measured the inside diameter of the remains,
at about 5 feet; while other ovens, of the same date, in Burslem, were
10 or 12 feet. The oven itself had 5 mouths, but neither holes over the
inside flues nor bags, to receive the salt, had any been used by them.”
“The foundations,” he adds, “were very distinctly to be seen in 1808,
though now covered by an enlargement of the barn.”
Also there is the fact that no salt glaze ware that could be conclusively
shown to be Elers’ has ever been excavated on the site of his factory,
except the white voice-pipes previously mentioned.
Taking everything into consideration—the impossibility of saying
definitely who the makers of early pieces of salt glaze were; the
possibility of Elers having made his salt-glaze in a different oven
and on a different site to that seen and excavated; the fact that in
1710-1715 Staffordshire potters were making stoneware, and that Plot does
not mention it in 1677—none but Garner and the Wedgwoods were sued for
making even stoneware in 1693—we may assume that the Elers did, in actual
fact, introduce the salt glaze into North Staffordshire.
The red and black bodies made by Elers are still in fashion, but even
more valuable than the doubtful invention of the particular ware was
his careful method of refining and mixing the clay body, and the exact
turning of the pieces to extreme thinness and precision of outline. On
the excellence of his work, rather than on inventions which were not
really new, his fame deserves to rest. He may not, for example, have been
the first to introduce the method of sealing on the clay ornaments, but
the ornaments themselves were for the first time in really good taste. It
was this refined taste and precision of execution—and the proof that it
paid financially—which taught the Staffordshire potters the most valuable
lesson.
Thus it was that, when Queen Anne and tea drinking came in, North
Staffordshire had not only the clay and the coal, but also the tradesmen
to make the ware required.