Chats on Old Earthenware

by Arthur Hayden

BRISTOL DELFT BOWL.
Ground of powdered purple. Decorated with fishes in white and blue.
(In the possession of Mr. S. G. Fenton.)

There are many dated pieces of Bristol delft with initials, bowls, marriage and election plates, and sometimes tile pictures. At the Victoria and Albert Museum there is a fine plate with the initials E.M.B., and dated 1760, the initials being those of the painter, Michael Edkins, and his wife Betty. This was made at the factory of Richard Frank, and was presented to the National collection by the grandson of the painter.

In the collection of pottery at the Bristol Museum there is an example attributed to Brislington which in colouring is slightly duller than the Bristol examples. Connoisseurs of Bristol delft divide the ware into the earlier period prior to 1735, when the decoration followed Dutch prototypes, and they attribute much of the thinner or finer potted examples to Joseph Flower, but after that the Bristol potters struck out for themselves, and imparted more originality in their ware. Landscapes appeared on the ware, but not seen through Dutch eyes, and a slight variation was given to the form of the bases of the bowls and plates, falling into line with typical shapes employed by other English potters.

We illustrate a very remarkable piece of Bristol delft which is dated 1740, and bears the initials I.F., which may probably stand for Joseph Flower, whose factory was on the quay at Bristol. This plate, which is 13½ inches in diameter, has a painted illustration with the inscription in a medallion, "A Voyage to the Moon, by Domingo Gonsales from the Ile of Tenerife."

We do not know what is the particular story connected with the making of this plate, nor why such a subject should have been chosen. But there is no doubt that the painter of the plate took his design from a book entitled "The Man in the Moone, or a Discourse of a Voyage thither, By Domingo Gonsales, The Speedy Messenger." We give a facsimile of the title-page. This was a romance written by Francis Godwin, bishop of Hereford, and in the second edition of 1657, the title-page has the addition, "By F.G.—B. of H." There were many editions of this book, which became very popular. A French edition under the title of L' Homme dans La Lune, is dated 1671, and has the same illustration as the first English edition, with the exception of the inscription on the medallion.

This is not the place to give details of this interesting volume, which describes in language as faithful as that of Defoe, the voyage of Domingo Gonsales, a shipwrecked Spanish adventurer, from Teneriffe to the Moon in a car he invented, which was carried by a flock of wild geese he had trained in his solitude. After a stay of a year in that country, and meeting with adventures with the inhabitants of that kingdom, he sets sail for the earth and lands in China. He by great fortune hears of some Jesuit fathers hidden away in Far Cathay, who welcomed him, "much wondering to see a lay Spaniard there," and by them his story is committed to writing.

Written in 1638, the following sentence in the Preface sounds quite modern, "That there should be Antipodes was once thought as great a paradox as now that the Moon should be habitable. But the knowledge of this may seem more properly reserved for this, our discovering age." There is no doubt that the book had a very considerable circulation, and it is not improbable that Swift knew of it and incorporated some of the ideas of the author in his "Gulliver's Travels," which appeared in 1726. But it is not easily explained why this delft plate, dated 1740, bears the inscription and illustration of a volume published nearly a century earlier.