TOFT DISH, DATED 1671.
(In the Grosvenor Museum, Chester.)
By permission of the Proprietors of the "Connoisseur."
POSSET POT, STAFFORDSHIRE, DATED 1685.
Decorated in slip ware, yellow ground, with brown ornament.
Inscribed "William Simpson. His cup."
(In the collection of Dr. W. L. Glaisher, Cambridge.)
Toft Ware.—The names of Ralph Toft and Thomas Toft appearing on certain large dishes, usually about eighteen inches in diameter, decorated in slip in a somewhat crude manner, have given the name to this class of ware, which at best is peasant pottery. The Tofts had their works near Shelton in Staffordshire. Similar dishes were made at Derby and at Tickenhall. The following names occur on examples in the National and other collections with dates, Ralph Toft, Thomas Toft, 1671; Robert Shaw, 1692; William Chaterly, 1696; Ralph Turnor, 1681; William Talor, 1700; John Wright, 1707; initials S. M., 1726, Dublin Museum (possibly Samuel Mayer, of Derby); John Wenter, 1686; I. W., 1706. The manufacture of this slip ware continued, in more or less spasmodic manner, throughout the eighteenth century. Pots and jugs had illiterate inscriptions on them in halting verse, or pious mottoes.
Toft ware, that is, the large dish form, apparently was made solely for ornament. There is a remarkable Toft dish in the Grosvenor Museum at Chester, having the inscription in Toft's peculiar orthography, "Filep Heues, Elesabeth Heues" (Philip and Elizabeth Hughes), signed Thomas Toft and dated 1671. This is evidently a marriage plate. There is the royal arms above, a favourite design in Toft ware, probably copied from some of the more elaborate foreign Bellarmine jugs. The slip potters had a fondness too for royal portraiture which ended lamentably in becoming dreadful caricatures of the subject. As many as nine crowned heads are found on one dish by Ralph Toft, signed "Ralalph To." These have as much art as the Stuart stump-work pictures in needlework, which were contemporary with them, in which kings and queens were represented in no more pleasing manner than on a pack of cards. In speaking of Toft's portrait dishes in general, and of the Grosvenor Museum example in particular, Mr. Frank Freeth, no mean connoisseur, says, "It must not be forgotten that these dishes were ornamental, and intended to occupy a conspicuous place in the homes of loyal citizens, just as oleographs of the King and Queen, that one often sees in country cottages, are made for the purpose in the present day. The same idea has remained; but the form of its expression has changed."
Looking at slip ware as a whole, one must not be too critical in regard to its somewhat inartistic appearance. It certainly has a charm about it which cannot be denied. It is native to the soil, and this peasant industry (if one can appropriately term it such), is chiefly to be regarded from the standpoint of what might have been if it had been allowed to develop on natural and untrammelled lines. But it was pressed on the one side by stoneware, such as the Bellarmine jugs and mugs imported from Germany, and it finally succumbed to foreign delft, which was largely used here prior to the Englishman's determined attempt, at Lambeth, at Bristol, and at Liverpool (where it was the staple industry for some time) to make his own wares.