TRANSFER-PRINTED PLATE IN COLOURS.
Inscription—"Dampf Wagen von London nach Bristol.
Ein Geschenk für meinen Lieben Jungen." (Staffordshire, about 1830.)
(In collection of Author.)
"NEW STEAM COACH."
From an old print dated 1827.
Equally interesting is the Staffordshire blue-printed Jug marked at back "Liverpool and Manchester Railway" showing the famous Rocket steam-engine invented by George Stephenson. The date of this is 1830. A fine Cyder Mug printed in black with touches of colour shows an early passenger train. The luggage, as will be seen, is on the roofs of the carriages. The aristocratic company at the rear are seated in their own carriage, the ladies of the party are noticeable by their old-fashioned poke bonnets. There is something very interesting in these old railway mugs and jugs. They are modern, that is in regard to technique and artistic beauty, but the subjects are of sufficient interest to make the ware important enough to find a treasured place of honour in the collector's cabinet.
Lambeth Stoneware.—Mention should be made of the revival of artistic stoneware at Lambeth about 1850 by Henry Doulton, of the Lambeth pottery. An attempt was made to make vessels for ordinary use as ornamental in character as the old Flemish stoneware. Some of the early pieces are in brown stoneware with incised decoration filled with blue-glaze. Tankards and vases and jugs were made of very pleasing character. Under Sir Henry Doulton great advances were made, and mugs with hunting subjects and many grotesque brandy bottles of stoneware were made. Light brown stoneware flasks modelled to represent Lord Brougham, and impressed "The True Spirit of Reform," and "Brougham's Reform Cordial," are often of Lambeth origin. In date these are about 1830, other factories made similar ware, including the Derbyshire potteries.
Of the Doulton and Watts period which commenced 1815, from 1815 to 1832 some fine Napoleonic stoneware was turned out. There is, in particular, a small stoneware, brown jar of Napoleon made about 1825, which is finely modelled and an excellent portrait. In the Reform days of the early thirties they produced, to supply a public demand, many spirit jars with more or less grotesque models of Earl Grey, Lord Brougham, William Cobbett, and Lord John Russell. In the museum at Messrs. Doulton's at Lambeth are some fine examples of the early period.
We illustrate a strongly modelled jug with Bacchanalian subject in high relief ([p. 471]), showing the excellence of some of this early work at its best.