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.
