BLACK BASALT TEAPOT, UNGLAZED.
Impressed mark Birch. (About 1802.)
(In the possession of Mr. F. W. Phillips, Hitchin.)
These illustrations show the imitativeness of this school of potters and the difficulty of identification.
The Spodes brought something new into Staffordshire earthenware. The elder Spode evidently had a strong love for Oriental subjects, as in the "willow pattern," which he "lifted" from Caughley porcelain. He broke away—and others followed him readily enough—from the cupids and psyches and gods and goddesses of the old world, and followed the newer-imported ideas in Chinese taste, now the fashion at Worcester, Bow, and other china factories. Leeds and Swansea were not slow in snatching at this new Oriental style of decoration.
In the Staffordshire cream-ware jug we previously illustrated painted in under-glaze colours, somewhat brown owing to the imperfect knowledge of the Staffordshire potter in under-glaze work submitted to great heat, we see an example of painted design in Oriental style, which came shortly to be more perfectly done in under-glaze blue, as in the painted plate of Leeds ware illustrated ([p. 303]).
But much in the same manner work such as the painted scenery on services like that made by Wedgwood for Catherine II. was shortly supplanted by black and purple and red transfer-printing done at Liverpool, so the short-lived under-glaze blue painting on earthenware was quickly killed by Spode and the other Staffordshire potters when they rapidly developed the under-glaze transfer-printing in blue.
It was quite an original departure, and owed nothing to Josiah Wedgwood (who never employed transfer-printing in blue), though it was adopted very successfully by the firm after his death. And Josiah Spode the elder most certainly had a strong influence in the potters of his day in acclimatising the "willow pattern" in Staffordshire, and in assimilating the best efforts of Chinese decoration as applied to blue-and-white ware. And Josiah Spode the Second, with equal originality, took up the next stage in adopting the gorgeous colouring of Japan.
This brings the story of the development of Wedgwood's cream-ware up to modern times. And the same chain of development might be traced in the history of some of the other great potters whose descendants still carry on the manufacture. Cream-ware at first painted, then transfer-printed in black or red, then painted in blue under-glaze—which was killed by the blue under-glaze printing—finally emulated the rich colours and gilding of porcelain.
To return to Elijah Mayer (1770–1813). From 1786 he appears to have produced black basalt tea ware; his fine teapots with the seated figure at the apex are well known, and his unglazed cane-coloured ware is much prized, with its simple decorations in lines of green and blue. We illustrate ([p. 271]) an example of a Black Basalt Teapot, and beneath it an illustration of a similar model by Birch, showing the imitativeness of this school of potters and how difficult it is to identify specimens. His cream-ware deserves especial attention, as his enamelling was in very artistic manner, and it stands out prominently among a crowd of imitators of Wedgwood's cream-ware borders. Every maker not only took the body of the ware, but in so doing he followed the designs by Flaxman or some of Wedgwood's other artists, still found in the old pattern-books to-day at Etruria. As an example of this imitation in detail, see the Swansea cream-ware plate illustrated ([p. 397]).
Mayer made black glazed tea ware, and this, when unmarked, is very commonly attributed by beginners to Turner. The marks impressed are E. Mayer, and after 1820 E. Mayer & Son. At a later period the mark was Joseph Mayer.