THE SALT-GLAZE POTTERS.
The successors of Elers—Robert Astbury, Joshua Twyford, and especially
Dr Thomas Wedgwood—built up the reputation of the salt-glazed stoneware,
which for fifty years was the glory of North Staffordshire; and, in the
improvements they effected, the first two atoned for anything that to the
modern mind was irregular in the manner by which they got their start.
It was to Dr Thomas Wedgwood (1655-1717), and his son Thomas (1695-1737),
who made stoneware at “Ruffleys” in Burslem, that local tradition
ascribes most of the improvements in salt-glazed wares. Mr Burton writes
of the younger Dr Thomas: “It has never been suggested that Dr Thomas
Wedgwood, like Twyford or Astbury, learned anything directly from Elers,
but as he was a man of intelligence and commercial aptitude, as well as
one of the best practical potters of the day, he would naturally adopt
such new ideas as were brought in his way. Judging by the fragments of
drab salt-glazed stonewares that have been found on the site of his old
works in the centre of the town of Burslem, collectors are in the habit
of attributing to him, with some show of justice, the finest pieces of
this type.”[28][29]
The secret of the salt-glaze process consists in firing the ware,
specially composed of clay mixed with some siliceous sand or flint, to a
temperature higher than ordinary earthenware will stand, and then, when
red hot, shovelling common salt on to it through the top of the furnace.
The salt fumes, passing through large holes in the saggars, cover the
ware with a fine coat of colourless soda glaze. This glaze can always be
distinguished from lead glazes by its peculiar pock-marked roughness,
which indeed makes it somewhat unsuitable for plates or dishes for
ordinary use; and, although for fifty years salt glaze did more than hold
its own in public estimation, improvements in the old earthenware finally
drove it out. By the end of the eighteenth century salt glazing had
ceased to be practised.
Without Astbury,[30] who is said to have died in 1743, aged 65,[31] it
is doubtful whether even salt glazing could have been a really great
success. He it was that obtained a body white enough to show off the
transparent salt glaze to the best advantage. Dr Thomas Wedgwood had only
the drab body to work on—a far less effective medium.
With the object of whitening the clay body, Astbury began to import the
white clays of Devonshire.[32] At first he used them only as a wash or
dip to whiten the surface of the ware, just as the tin-enamel had been
used to conceal and coat the coarse body of the Delft ware. Then he
developed the use of the white sands of Baddeley Edge and Mow Cop to
harden the body; and, in 1720, according to tradition, he made the really
vital discovery of the value of calcined flint stones for both these
purposes—to whiten and to harden the clay body from which the stone ware
was made. Josiah Wedgwood, writing in 1777, attributed this discovery to
a potter of Shelton called Heath instead of to Astbury,[33] but whoever
it was that first noticed the whiteness of burnt flints, it was Astbury
who first determined the value of the new material and the manner of
using it. This discovery marks the first stage in the production of
cream-coloured earthenware as well as in the production of the perfect
salt glaze.[34]
Astbury and his son Thomas made red and black ware also, after the
pattern of Elers, but with this difference, the ornamentation of
Astbury’s red or black ware is generally done in white clay,[35] instead
of in the same colour as the body; and this is one sign by which
collectors distinguish these two makers. Robert (or John) Astbury was
succeeded by his son Thomas, who had started potting at Lane Delf in
1725. Their name does not occur among the potters of the latter half of
the eighteenth century, but Margaret, Thomas Astbury’s daughter, married
Robert Garner, a master potter of Longton, who attained a considerable
position.
Joshua Twyford (1640-1729), like Astbury, had his factory in Shelton;
one stood on either side of the mound where the church now is. Twyford
is best known for his stoneware, chiefly red and black in the style of
Elers, but he is also supposed to have made salt-glazed ware.
A particularly full account of the potters of 1710-15, especially of
those in Burslem, is preserved in a document drawn up by Josiah Wedgwood
in 1765. He gives both the weekly cost-account of a typical pot factory
of this period; and also a list of the potters’ names and the kind of
ware they produced. The document is in his own handwriting, and it
appears from a letter of Wedgwood’s to Lord Auckland in 1792 that he
obtained the information given in this document by “having examined
some of the oldest men in the pottery here, near thirty years ago, who
knew personally the masters in the pottery, and very nearly the value of
the goods they got up, fifty years before that.” ... “From these data,”
he goes on to say, “I can pretty nearly ascertain the annual value of
the goods made here at that time; which was something under £10,000 a
year.”[36] He then proceeds to guess at the annual value of the trade
in 1792, which he says may be between £200,000 and £300,000. I cannot
help thinking that his estimate was purposely on the low side, for the
manufacturers of this date always lived in fear of special taxation. In
1821 the export trade alone was worth £423,399 a year,[37] and in 1822
£489,732.
The document runs as follows:
“Men necessary to make an oven of Black and Mottled, per week, and other
expences—
£ s. d.
6 men, 3 at 4s. a week, and 3 at 6s. 1 10 0
4 boys at 1s. 3d. 5 0
1 cwt. 2 qrs. Lead Ore, at 8s. 12 0
Manganese 3 0
Clay, 2 cart-loads, at 2s. 4 0
Coals, 48 horse-loads, at 2d. 8 0
Carriage of do., at 1½d. 6 0
Rent of Works, at £5 per ann. 2 0
Wear and Tear of Ovens, Utensils, &c., at £10 p.a. 4 0
Straw for packing, 3 thrave at 24 sheaves to
the thrave, at 4d. 1 0
The master’s profit, besides 6s. for his labor 10 0
-------
£4 5 0
=======
“N.B.—The wear and tear, master’s profits, and some other things are
rated too high. £4 per oven-full is thought to be sufficient, or more
than sufficient, for the black and mottled works of the largest kind,
upon an average, as the above work was a large one for those times.”
“POT-WORKS IN BURSLEM ABOUT THE YEAR 1710 TO 1715.”
_Potters’ Names_ _Kinds of Ware_ _Supposed _Residence_
amount_
£ s. d.
Thos. Wedgwood Black & Motled 4 0 0 Churchyard.
John Cartlich Moulded 3 0 0 Flash.
(“Small”) Robt.
Daniel Black & Motled 2 0 0 Holehouse.
(“Small”) Thos.
Malkin Black & Motled 3 0 0 Hamel.
Richd. Malkin Black & Motled 2 10 0 Knole.
Dr Thos. Wedgwood Brown Stone 6 0 0 Ruffleys.
Wm. Simpson ? 3 0 0 Stocks.
Isa Wood ? 4 0 0 Back of the “George.”
Thos. Taylor Moulded 3 0 0 Now Mrs Wedgwoods.
Wm. Harrison Motled 3 0 0 Bournes Bank.
Isaac Wood Cloudy 3 0 0 Top of Robins Croft.
John Adams[38] Black & Motled 2 10 0 Brick House.
Marsh’s Not worked — Top of Daniels Croft.
Moses Marsh Stone Ware 6 0 0 Middle of the Town.
Robt. Adams Motled & Black 2 10 0 Next on the east side.
Aaron Shaw Stone & dippt
white 6 0 0 Next on the east side.
(“Conick”) Saml.
Cartlich Motled 3 0 0 Next to the South.
Aaron Wedgwood Motled & Black 4 0 0 Next to the “Red
Lyon.”
Thomas Taylor Stone ware and
Freckled ? Next to the North.
Moses Shaw Stone ware and
Freckled 6 0 0 Middle of the Town.
Thos. Wedgwood Moulded 2 10 0 Middle of the Town,
now Grahams.
Isaac Ball ? 4 0 0 S.W. end of the Town.
Saml. Edge Stone Ware 6 0 0 Next to the West.
Thos. Lockett Motled 3 0 0 Late Cartlichs.
Tunstals Not worked 3 0 0 Opposite.
(“Double Rabbit”)
John Simpson ? 3 0 0 West end of the Town.
Rd. Simpson Red Dishes, &c. 3 0 0 The Pump, West End.
Thos. Cartwright Butter Pots 2 0 0 West end of the Town.
Thos. Mitchel Not worked ? Rotten Row (now
High Street).
Moses Steel Cloudy 3 0 0 Rotten Row (now
High Street).
John Simpson, Chell Motled & Black 4 0 0 Rotten Row (now
High Street).
J. Simpson, Castle Red dishes & pans 3 10 0 Rotten Row (now
High Street).
Isaac Malkin Motled & Black 3 0 0 Green Head.
Rd. Wedgwood Stone ware 6 0 0 Middle of the Town.
John Wedgwood Not worked ? Upper House.
Jno. or Joseph
Warburton ? 6 0 0 Hot lane or Cobridge.
Hugh Mare Motled 3 0 0 Hot lane or Cobridge.
Robt. Bucknal Motled 4 0 0 Hot lane or Cobridge.
Ra. Daniel ? 3 0 0 Hot lane or Cobridge.
Bagnal Butter Pots 2 0 0 Grange (i.e. Rushton
Grange).
Jno. Stevenson Cloweded (_sic._) 3 0 0 Sneyd Green.
? Clouded 3 0 0 Sneyd Green.
H. Beech Butter Pots 2 0 0 Holdin.
---------
£139 10 0 at 46 weeks to the
year, is £6,417.
“(£6417) annual produce of the pottery in the beginning of the eighteenth
century in Burslem parish. Burslem was at this time so much the principle
part of the pottery that there were very few pot works anywhere else.
“Potters at Hanley, the beginning of the 18th centy.
Joseph Glass Clowdy a sort of dishes painted with difft’ color’d
slips, and sold at 3s. and 3s. 6d. a doz.
Wm. Simpson Clowdy and Motled.
Hugh Mare [Mayer] Black and Motled.
John Mare ” ”
Rd. Marsh Motled and Black. Lamprey Pots and Venison Pots.
John Ellis Butter Pots &c.
Moses Sandford Milk Pans and Small Ware.
“Only one horse and one mule kept at Hanley. No carts scarcely
in the country. Coals carried upon men’s backs. Hanley Green
like Wolstanton marsh. Only two houses (meaning potteries) at
Stoke; Wards, and Poulsonson’s.”[39]
If this list is to be regarded as satisfactory evidence, and it must be
remembered that it only professes to be a report of the fifty-year-old
recollections of old men, then it would appear that Burslem was still
the narrow home of the Potteries. It shows us the master potter of that
day, employing 11 hands at wages not exceeding 6s. a week, working
himself, and out of his single oven-full a week making a profit of 10s.
As represented it is still a peasant industry. But the scope and range of
the pottery produced has increased since Dr Plot described “the greatest
pottery they have in this County.” The butter-pots; the cloudy, mottled,
speckled and black; probably the red dishes and pans; these all existed
in Plot’s time; but what is the “moulded” ware made by Cartlich and
Thomas Taylor and by Dr Thomas Wedgwood, jun., in the middle of Burslem?
The stone ware too is new since Plot’s time. The five biggest factories
all make this stoneware, Dr Thomas Wedgwood, sen., Moses Marsh, Aaron
Shaw, Moses Shaw, Sam. Edge and Richard Wedgwood, the brother of Dr
Thomas.
Undoubtedly this was the new salt-glazed stoneware. The brown stoneware
ascribed in the list to Dr Thomas Wedgwood coincides exactly with the
drab salt-glazed teapot by him now in the South Kensington Museum. It is
supposed to have been made by mixing the lightest burning local clay with
the fine white sand from Baddeley Edge or Mow Cop.[40]
The list gives no potworks at all at the Longton end of the district,
yet then or shortly afterwards Delft ware was probably made at the place
called Lane Delf, now part of Fenton. Shaw says that in 1710 Thomas
Heath of Lane Delf was making a strange kind of pottery, and he proceeds
to describe a particular dish in such a way as to show that it was
really Delft ware.[41] There is no trace of Delft ware having been made
anywhere else in the Potteries, or indeed at any subsequent time at Lane
Delf itself, so that we may fairly ascribe to this solitary experiment of
Thomas Heath’s the name of the locality.[42]
[Illustration: Salt glaze teapot, drab body, supposed to be by Thomas
Wedgwood, died 1737. From the Stoke-on-Trent Museums.]
At this Longton end, soon after 1710, there was also made white ware
of a greenish type, called Crouch Ware. It was made from clay found in
Derbyshire that bore this name, and survived as a fairly white ware till
Astbury drove it out with his whiter body. In 1725 Thomas Astbury, the
younger, set up his new factory in Fenton, and from this date we may say
that the whole of the present Pottery area was engaged in the production
of Earthenware.[43]
In fact all that was wanted to convert the peasant pottery of North
Staffordshire into a great business was the stimulus given by the
refined hand of Elers, and the new demand in the new clubs and coffee
houses. When once improvements in manufacture began, invention followed
invention; and though the records during the second quarter of the
eighteenth century are full of entries of patents, registered for the
performance of every possible and impossible pottery process, yet most of
the improvements—especially the vital changes in body and glaze made by
Astbury and Booth—became public property unchecked by patent law.
First there was Astbury’s new white body, made with a fixed mixture of
powdered flint and Devon clay, imported on horseback from the sea-port of
Chester. Twenty years earlier the idea of bringing clay from Devon would
have been regarded as madness, and, even in 1720, carts could not get
to Burslem, and the clay must have been brought inland on pack saddles.
But the invention of the calcined flint body meant also the invention
of that terrible disease known as “potter’s asthma” or “potter’s rot,”
which used to cause an even greater mortality than lead poisoning. When
white flints were first used they were ground and powdered in the dry
state, in an atmosphere of flint dust, in underground cellars, so that
the secret of this valuable new preparation should not leak out.[44]
This state of things was soon partially remedied, for between 1726 and
1732 several patents were taken out—by Gallimore, Bourne, and finally by
Benson—for grinding the flint stones in water.[45] Benson’s final process
has survived to this day as the universal form of flint mill. A vertical
shaft with four radiating arms revolves in a circular horizontal pan. The
pan, with a hard stone bottom of chert, is filled with water, and similar
chert blocks, pushed round by the arms, grind the flints down to a cream.
Flint grinding became an industry, and in the well-watered valleys of
North Staffordshire, wherever there was both water-power and flint, these
flint mills sprung up and flourished. Though most of them are now closed
down through the progress of railways and steam, there are some still to
be seen working in the Moddershall valley, whence the creamy slip is sent
in by water-cart to Longton.
About this same time a workman named Alsager perfected the potter’s
throwing wheel as we know it at this day.[46] And now that potters were
using these mixed ingredients, Devon clay, ground flint syrup, and native
clay in special and patented proportions, the old method of evaporating
the slip under the sun in an open pan had to go. It is said to have
been Ralph Shaw, a most litigious personage, who began specially to mix
clays in a liquid form in a fire-heated trough—locked, of course, that
no neighbour might discover the “mystery.”[47] This same Ralph Shaw, of
Burslem, took out a patent in 1732, professing—as was almost common form
in those days—to make earthenware like Chinese Porcelain. It was to be
white within, and white when required without. It was made in reality by
dipping the ordinary ware in a white clay dip—just the process Astbury
had invented some twenty years before. But there was this that was new to
North Staffordshire; Shaw scratched away the white dip on the outside of
the jug so that the blue ground became visible. He produced indeed what
the mediæval Italians called “graffiato” ware, and very beautiful much of
it is.[48]
Shaw, however, tried to prevent anybody using the white slip at all,
and became such a nuisance to his neighbours that they united in 1736
to take up the case of John Mitchell, of Burslem Hill Top, who was
prosecuted by Shaw for infringing his patent.[49] Great was the rejoicing
in the Potteries when the Judge at Stafford declared, or is reported to
have declared:—“Gooa whomm, potters, an’ mak what soourts o’ pots yoa
leykin.” “An,” says our narrator, “when they coom ’nto’ Boslum, aw th’
bells i’ Hoositon (Wolstanton), and Stoke, and th’ tahin, wurn ringin’
loike hey go’ mad, aw th’ dey.” Ralph Shaw is said to have been so
disgusted at the result that he emigrated to Paris, where he made pots
for many years.[50]
Ralph Shaw’s ware was known as “bit-stone ware.” The “bit-stones” were
put between two pieces of ware when they were fired in the saggars
in order to keep them from sticking to each other. They were the
more necessary in that Shaw’s ware was dipped in a light slip. The
“bit-stones” have long since been replaced by “spurs” and “stilts” and
other small earthenware objects, the special manufacture of which is now
a great industry by itself. The single stilt and spur factory of Thos.
Arrowsmith in Burslem employs now 230 hands on this manufacture alone.
[Illustration: BURSLEM IN 1750
Scale 100 yards to the inch
Based on a plan by Enoch Wood]
If the old potters had had to rely only on the thrower’s wheel for their
shapes, no improvement in whiteness of ware, or in the salt glaze, would
have availed much to increase the demand for earthenware. The development
of the various use of moulds became of the greatest importance. The six
workmen required at such a potworks, as is shown on the 1710 list, would
be—slipmaker, thrower, turner, “stouker,” to put on handles and spouts,
fireman and warehouseman. A good workman, such as the master, could
throw, turn and stouk. But the fresh developments of the salt-glazed
stoneware arising from the use of moulds converted potting into a
specialized industry.
We have seen that Elers used metal seals to press his ornamental
“spriggs” on to his teapots. Such metal moulds could only be used for
small articles or ornaments, for the mould stuck to the clay, and had to
be carefully oiled. Both for the “sprigging on” of ornaments, and for the
shaping of ware, a new form of mould was wanted. At first the alabaster
of Derbyshire supplied the want. It was carved into shaped blocks, and
from the blocks were made “pitcher,” or porous clay moulds, which could
be replaced when worn out from the blocks, and could be used in various
ways for the manufacture of ware: for sprigging, pressing, or “casting.”
Then—a last step—about 1745, Ralph Daniel, of Cobridge, brought from
France the secret of plaster of Paris moulds which replaced both pitcher
and alabaster.[51]
Under competition, the Staffordshire potters were getting critical. The
white salt-glazed ware was competing with Chinese porcelain, and had to
be made as thin and light and transparent as possible. The ware made by
pressing the clay into the moulds sufficed for plates, basins and any
lead-glazed ware, but it came out much too heavy for complicated shapes
such as sauce-boats, teapots and vases, etc. To get these shapes Elers
would have had them thrown and turned down in the lathe: they would all
have been round. The process known as “casting” in a mould produced a
finer result, and gave infinite scope for variation. In casting, the
clay is run in a liquid form into a porous mould. After standing a few
minutes, the slip is run out again, leaving behind a clay shell. This
“cast” shell, taken out when dry, may be as fine and as varied in shape
as the skill of the potter and the heat of his furnace will permit.
The process of casting came into use about 1730, and the carving of these
moulds (in alabaster first, from which the “pitcher” mould could be
made), became the most critical operation of all the potter’s work. This
work required all the skill and artistic instinct of the carver and of
the designer. Block-cutters, as they were called, became famous. The best
known were the two brothers, Aaron and Ralph Wood of Burslem. Aaron Wood
(1717-85) was bound apprentice in 1731 to Dr Thomas Wedgwood, some of
whose best models he is supposed to have made.[52] He afterwards worked
for J. Mitchell, of Burslem,[53] and for Wheildon of Fenton, acquiring
such a reputation that he was allowed to work in a locked room, that his
art might thereby be kept secret.