SUNDERLAND FROG MUG.
(Showing interior.)
London and its environs has given birth to several celebrated potteries. Fulham pottery has a worthy history. Letters patent were granted in 1671 to John Dwight, for the “misterie of transparent earthenware, commonly knowne by the names of porcelain or China and Persian ware, as alsoe the misterie of the stone ware, vulgarly called Cologne ware.” There was, too, a pottery at Mortlake. “Kishere, Mortlake,” is the mark generally used. Isleworth had a small factory at Railshead Creek, Isleworth. Much of the coarse pottery made here was known as “Welsh ware.”
Lambeth pottery is well known, the art productions of Messrs. Doulton having done much to popularise their ware. In the middle of the seventeenth century certain Dutch potters settled at Lambeth, and made pottery tiles. Lambeth delft ware had quite a reputation in the eighteenth century.
Some particularly quaint devices appear on the old English jugs and mugs during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. They were used by the common people who could not afford silver and for whom glass was too expensive a luxury. They succeeded the old leathern jacks and leathern bottles, and played no inconspicuous part in social gatherings both at home and in alehouses. Many of the mugs have two (and sometimes as many as four) handles, which were made to supply the needs of several drinkers.
These English mugs possess little artistic merit, but they come as a very interesting link in the history of the manufacture of pottery in this country. One would have thought that the conquering Roman who settled in various colonies in our islands would have left some permanent mark on our pottery; that the Norman, who possessed some artistic skill, or peradventure the Spaniard who settled in the West in Armada days, would have taught the Anglo-Saxon a lesson in pottery; but it appears that the principles of art fell upon very stony ground in these islands.
OLD ENGLISH DELFT MUG.
(Dated 1631.)
At Victoria and Albert Museum.