There is a sort of heraldic touch about some of these Staffordshire dishes of the Toft class. The same idea seems to have possessed the workers of the Stuart stump-pictures in needlework, which were contemporary with these dishes. Coins and medals and Stuart marriage-badges are evidently the source from which Toft and his school on the one hand, and the gentle needlewoman on the other, derived their inspiration in design. Various animals and birds are used symbolically with great freedom. The caterpillar and butterfly nearly always accompany needlework portraits of Charles I., and the unicorn was the device of his father James I. There seems some similarity to this idea in the use of the Mermaid in the dish by Thomas Toft. Another dish of his, entitled "The Pelican in her Piety," depicts that bird with her young, the idea being that the pelican used to feed her brood with her own blood. The Latins called filial love piety, hence Virgil's hero is always termed pius Aeneas. "Ralph Simpson" is another name found on this pelican dish.
We give an illustration of a fine posset-pot of Staffordshire origin, dated 1685, in slip ware, with yellow ground and conventional ornament in brown, with dotted work. It is inscribed, "William Simpson, His Cup." It has three handles and three loops, and is quite a typical piece of this class of ware. It recently sold for fifty-five pounds ([p. 89]).
Metropolitan Slip Ware.—There is a slight distinction between pieces made in London and found during excavations, and those discovered elsewhere. The slip decoration is lightly done and there is a tendency to incised decoration of conventional floral design. One noticeable feature in this type of ware is its inscriptions, written in doggerel, always of a pious nature. "When this you see, Remember me,—Obeay God's word"; or "Drink faire, Don't sware"; or "Be not hyminded but feare God, 1638." This class of ware savours strongly of the Puritan influence, and it is evident that the potters who made these pieces were of the "Praise God Barebones" order of visionary, not uncommon at a time when books with titles like the following appeared, "Some fine Baskets baked in the Oven of Charity, carefully conserved for the Chickens of the Church, the Sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet Swallows of Salvation."
It seems absurd in regarding the productions of this school of English slip workers, from middle Stuart days down to the early years of the eighteenth century, to consider that Vandyck had painted his galleries of beauties; that Hollar, with his etching needle, had drawn a long procession of figures in costume, thousands of etchings which surely must have caught the eye of some Toft or some Simpson. There was Grinling Gibbons working his artistic profusion in wreaths of flowers and fruit carved in wood, and there were the treasures of the silversmith, to say nothing of the sumptuous furniture that was beginning to make its way in England. But these slip ware dishes seem to stand somewhat like the Jacobean chairs made in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, of the same date, apparently unaffected by any of the æsthetic movements of the period. Simply and naturally, and, be it said, crudely representing the artistic aspirations of the ordinary craftsman when he was left to himself, it is naïve, standing as it does for English native art at a time when Bernard Palissy, the French potter, had been dead a hundred years.
EARLY WARE PRICES.
| Wrotham Ware. | £ | s. | d. |
| Loving cup, four handled, fine specimen, decorated in slip; initials W.L.R. andH.I.; dated 1656. Sotheby, January, 1906 | 56 | 0 | 0 |
| Wine jug, brown with yellow slip, inscribed Samuel Hugheson and dated 1618;8 in. high. Sotheby, June, 1906 | 10 | 0 | 0 |
| Cradle, with inscription, "Mary Overton,Her cradle, 1729." Puttick and Simpson, May, 1908 | 17 | 0 | 0 |
| Toft Ware. | |||
| Plate (17 in. diameter), with figure of soldier, in relief, with sword in eachhand; trellis border; dated 1677. Warner,Leicester, March, 1906 | 86 | 0 | 0 |
| Slip Ware. | |||
| Brown posset-pot, two handled with lid, inscribed "William and Mary Goldsmith,"date incised "June ye 7th, 1697"; 9 in.high. Bond, Ipswich, April, 1906 | 15 | 0 | 0 |
| Dish, bearing royal arms of England,inscribed "G. R. 1748"; 18½ in. diameter. Sotheby, June, 1906 | 21 | 0 | 0 |
| Posset-pot, three handled, inscribed "Robert Shaw." Sotheby, June, 1906 | 35 | 0 | 0 |
| Posset-pot, larger, inscribed "God savethe Queen 1711." Sotheby, June, 1906 | 26 | 0 | 0 |
| Posset-pot, two handled, inscribed "Iohn Taylor, 1690." Sotheby, November, 1907 | 12 | 15 | 0 |
| Dish, slip decorated and salt glazed, inscribed on rim, "Joseph Mosson, theBest is not too good for You 1727."Sotheby, May, 1908 | 13 | 10 | 0 |
| Dish, trellis pattern, on rim in brown and yellow slip, portraits of CharlesII. and Catherine of Braganza; inscribed with maker's name "George Taylor";17½ in. diameter. Sotheby, May, 1908 | 53 | 0 | 0 |
| Posset-pot, yellow ground, conventional ornament in brown, with dotted work,inscribed "William Simpson, His Cup." Dated 1685. Sotheby, December, 1908(see illustration, [p. 89]) | 55 | 0 | 0 |