At Fulham stone-ware of a fine quality seems to have been made by a Mr. Dwight as early as 1671. This, in the accounts of the day, was sometimes called “porcellane.” There is reason to believe that a good degree of advance was reached here, and that the work approached that made at Cologne, now called “Grès de Flanders.” Figures and busts were also made here, a few of which are still extant.
Two gentlemen named Elers, who came to England with William of Orange, were clever men, and one of them was a chemist. They discovered clay at Bradwell, and established a pottery there, where for a time they produced good ware from the red clay. But curious eyes were at work to discover their processes, and one Astbury, pretending to be a half-witted fellow, succeeded in doing it; and then their business was ruined and broken up.
From Paul Elers descended the wife of Richard Lovel Edgeworth, whose daughter is known as Maria Edgeworth.
A white salt-glazed stone-ware was made in Staffordshire about 1700, which has been called “Elizabethan.” This often had designs made from a mould applied to the surface.
Stoke-upon-Trent, in Staffordshire, very early became a centre for potter’s work, as it is to-day; the country there for miles being a string of villages, filled with furnaces and the houses of potters.
It is not my purpose to attempt a detailed history of the immense pottery industries which have been developed in and about Staffordshire—potteries which, for variety and extent, have never been equaled, unless perhaps in China. There is, however, one potter, whose life and work have had a distinguished influence upon the potteries of England, to whom some space must be given; he is Josiah Wedgwood.
Born in 1730 at Burslem, he came from an ancestry of potters, and he breathed the air of the potteries, so that he may be said to have been a born potter. He was one of thirteen children; he grew up with the small amount of school education then in vogue in that part of England—especially among his class of workers—and was apprenticed to a potter when he was but fourteen years old.
The English nation has in these latter days gone into a sort of frenzy upon the subject of school education, having got the impression that that will enable them to compete with or excel all the nations of the world. This I believe to be a mistake. I may, I think, fairly point to Germany, whose commissioner at the American Exhibition writes home that the productions of Germany are marked by lack of taste, lack of thoroughness, and lack of honesty; in other words, Germany, with the most thorough system of common-school education, is distinguished for the “cheap and nasty” in her work.
What was it, then, I may ask at this point, which made Josiah Wedgwood, this unschooled boy, the most able and successful potter of England, and perhaps of all the world? I attempt to answer it by stating my belief that he was not living for riches, but for excellence. He worked all his life to combine the useful with the beautiful more and more perfectly; and in a surprising degree he succeeded. This was not because of his intellectual ability, but because of his sense of honor.
The world has gone into a craze for intellect—not at all for honesty. I mean by honesty not a sickly sort of conscientiousness, which often hinders; but honesty of intention, showing itself in work. To illustrate my meaning, I may say that my own experience has been that the larger part of mankind are quite willing to “shab” a thing—to do it poorly—provided it will sell, and give them their wages.