The Twentieth Century Collector.—The story of the triumphs and sometimes of the decadence of English pottery cannot be ended without a passing reference to the wondrous ware being produced at the end of the nineteenth century and now. It should appeal to-day to the prescient collector. It will appeal to the collector fifty years hence.
Under the name of the Lancastrian Pottery Messrs. Pilkington, at Clifton Junction, near Manchester, have during the past few years produced some of the most beautiful ware ever seen in this country. At the exhibition of this ware in London in 1904 they astonished all experts. The indescribable variety of exquisite colours, ranging from faint pink and sky blue to the richest purple and dark green and amber, showed at once that modern scientific methods and painstaking research had rediscovered the lost glazes of the old Chinese potters.
The starry crystalline glazes so well known in the Copenhagen porcelain have been faithfully reproduced, recalling the patterns traced on the window-pane by frost—sometimes brilliantly coloured blue or green against a background of pale lavender blue, at other times having a sheen like bronze. Other crystalline glazes are the Sunstone in which brilliant prismatic and golden crystals are disseminated through rich green yellow or olive brown glazes. The fiery crystalline glazes display brilliant red crystalline formation through purple and grey glaze in dazzling patches.
STAFFORDSHIRE BLUE PRINTED JUG.
Marked at back "Liverpool & Manchester Railway."
Showing the famous Rocket locomotive invented by George Stephenson.
(Date 1830.)
(In the collection of Miss Feilden.)
CYDER MUG.
Printed in black with touches of colour.
(In the collection of Mrs. M. M. Fairbairn.)
Opalescent clouded, or curdled, or veined, or serpentine glazes have countless variations of colours—copper-green, turquoise-blue, or deep lapis-lazuli broken with white curds, or opalescent veinings, or fine lines of variegated colour shot through the glaze from top to bottom—this alone suggests a dream of colour schemes, and the wise collector will realise without further ado that we are in a period of great ceramic triumphs in pottery of this nature.