Good Fortune sets me free;
And from great Guns and Women's tongues,
Good Lord, deliver me."
A Staffordshire blue-printed jug, made in 1793, shows the execution of Louis XVI. At the beginning of the nineteenth century there was quite a burst of Napoleonic jugs and mugs and busts, and some of Gillray's caricatures find themselves on earthenware. There is one lustre earthenware jug printed and coloured with caricatures entitled "Jack Frost attacking 'Bony' in Russia" and "Little 'Bony' sneaking into Paris with a white feather in his tail." This is in date about 1813.
A cover of an earthenware jar has the inscription printed in violet within a wreath, "Peace! May its duration equal the years of War."
The relations between England and America received attention at the Staffordshire potters' hands. There are cream-ware mugs and jugs and plates with portraits of Washington in date from 1785 to 1790. On one the inscription runs, "Success to the United States, America."
Prize-fighting, bear-baiting, cock-fighting, racing, coaching, all received their records on the earthenware of the late eighteenth century. Stag hunting, fox hunting, coursing, come as ready subjects to the transfer-printer. Cricket is recorded in earthenware on a printed mug representing the "Grand Cricket Match played in Lord's Ground, Mary-le-bone, June 20 and following day between the Earls of Winchester and Darnley for 1,000 guineas." The date of this is 1790. Even the velocipede and the balloon are not disregarded.
This list is but a rough outline of the mission of the transfer-printer in recording current events on his earthenware, for the pleasure of his own contemporaries and for the information and delectation of succeeding generations of collectors who may be something other than connoisseurs of pastes and bodies, and have learned to read aright the story of the china-shelf and enjoy to the full the secret pleasures in the byeways of collecting.
Types of Blue-printed Ware.—The black over-glaze transfer-printing came into Staffordshire in imitation of the transfer-printed delft tiles of Liverpool. But it rapidly acquired a strength and originality of its own. It lacked the delicacy of the transfer-printed black porcelain of Worcester, but its virility more than made up for its artistic defects.
Under-glaze blue-printed ware was an imitation from the porcelain printed at Caughley. Here again it may be said to have outstripped by new departures and broader effects the under-glaze blue-printing of the early china factories. In common with them its inspiration was from the Chinese. We illustrate ([p. 327]) four examples of Chinese porcelain plates, which are types of the Oriental china designs which served as models both for the English porcelain makers and for the earthenware of Staffordshire.