STONEWARE BUST OF JAMES II.
By Dwight, of Fulham. (About 1686.)
(At Victoria and Albert Museum.)
DWIGHT STONEWARE FIGURES.
Children reading.
(At British Museum.)
The illustration of the bust of James II. ([p. 139]) is not so well known as the famous Prince Rupert, nor is it of the same superlative power; but it is a fine example of stoneware.
The two figures illustrated of Children Reading have just been added to the national collection, and exhibit the mastery of Dwight over his medium.
There is no doubt that John Dwight is coming into his own. Among the fathers of English pottery there are Dwight and Elers, and Astbury and Whieldon, and Josiah Wedgwood, and the greatest of these is unquestionably Dwight. Dr. Plot, in his "History of Oxfordshire," published in 1677, passes this eulogy upon him: "He has so advanced the Art Plastick, that 'tis dubious whether any man since Prometheus have excelled him, not excepting the famous Damophilus and Gorgasus of Pliny." And yet this Dwight is reported to have destroyed most of his formulæ and many of his papers connected with his inventions in the hope that his descendants would not engage in so unprofitable a business.
It is not known when Dwight was born; 1638 is the conjectured date. He was M.A. and B.C.L. of Christ Church, Oxford, and was secretary to the Bishop of Chester. Between 1671 and 1676 he settled at Fulham. It appears that he had previously established a factory at Oxford with considerable success. He died in 1703, and the pottery was continued by his son Samuel, who died in 1737. The works were carried on by his widow, and subsequently by William White, who married her, and the pottery remained in the hands of the White family until 1862.
Of his portrait busts and statuettes, the Victoria and Albert Museum and the British Museum have about thirteen examples, and there is a fine statuette of Jupiter in the Liverpool Museum. Besides this class of ware, he certainly made stoneware jugs of the Cologne type, and red-ware teapots. He was known to use small raised ornaments on this ware, produced by the use of metal stamps. His vases have marbled decorations, and he was fully aware of the use of pounded flint, which gave his ware a porcellanous character, "a discovery which was not apparently known to the Staffordshire potters until about 1720."[1]