1. Red china teapot, probably by Elers. c. 1700.
2. Sample of later date, with moulded spout. Stoke-on-Trent Museums.
Samples of solid agate ware made by Wedgwood or Whieldon. c. 1760.
From the Stoke-on-Trent Museums ([see p. 74]).
For Nemesis overtook John Philip Elers, and in spite of all his secrecy, perhaps because of it, he was copied. Two potters, Twyford and Astbury,[23] one of whom at least had already made pots after local methods in Shelton, set themselves independently to acquire the arts of the Dutchman. To lull the suspicions of Elers, Twyford shammed stupidity, and Astbury, who was younger, passed himself off as an idiot. Recommended by these strange qualifications, they asked and obtained employment and, in time, the knowledge they desired. They went back to Shelton with their acquired arts, and, in a few years, the most intelligent potters of North Staffordshire knew how to make civilized pottery. But by 1710 John Philip Elers was tired of his exile and of the treatment he had received. The true porcelain which should detect poison was still unattained, and his “red porcelain” and his black ware were become by somewhat sharp practice a staple product of the district. So he shook off the clay of Staffordshire from his feet and rejoined his brother in London.
Years later Josiah Wedgwood, who had every reason to know the history of the potteries from hearsay, legend and family tradition, gave an account to his partner Bentley of what John Philip Elers had done. The son, Paul Elers, had asked Wedgwood to make a medallion of his father’s head, surrounded by the motto: “Plasticis Britannicae Inventor.” Josiah Wedgwood—looking back on the long array of his ancestors, all potters born and bred in Burslem before ever Elers put his hand to the thrower’s wheel—says the motto “conveys a falsehood,” and that John Philip Elers merely improved the Art. “The reason,” he writes in 1777, “for Mr Elers fixing upon Staffordshire to try his experiments, seems to be that the Pottery was carried on there in a much larger way, and in a more improved state, than in any other part of Great Britain.” “The improvements Mr Elers made in our manufactory were precisely these. Glazing our common clays with salt, which produced Pot d’Grey or Stone Ware.... I make no doubt but glazing with salt, by casting it among the ware while it is red hot, came to us from Germany, but whether Mr Elers was the person to whom we are indebted for the improvement I do not know.... The next improvement introduced by Mr Elers was the refining our common red clay by sifting, and make it into Tea and Coffee ware in imitation of the Chinese red Porcelain, by casting it in plaster moulds, and turning it upon the outside upon lathes, and ornamenting it with the tea-branch in relief.”[24]
It is impossible to say why Wedgwood attributed “casting in plaster moulds” to Elers, for all the evidence goes to show that the process known technically as “casting” only came in with the introduction of alabaster “blocks” and pitcher moulds after 1730. As to the far more important and debatable point—the introduction of the process of glazing with salt—this evidence of Wedgwood’s is perhaps the most reliable that we can get.
As the invention of salt glazing not only made, at one stroke, a new manufacture possible, but one that was peculiar to North Staffordshire, it may be as well to examine more closely the evidence as to its discoverer and its discovery.
The idea that salt glazing was accidentally discovered at Bagnal by some strong brine solution boiling away in an earthen pot which became automatically glazed[25] may be dismissed at once for the simple reason that it could not happen as described. It may be urged too in Elers’ favour that, long before this, salt glazing was practised in Germany. Again, Aikin in his “History of Manchester,” written in 1794, gives an elaborate account of the novelty as practised by Elers. He writes: “It was in the memory of some old persons with whom a friend of ours was well acquainted that the inhabitants of Burslem flocked with astonishment to see the immense volumes of smoke which arose from the Dutchmen’s ovens on casting in the salt; a circumstance which sufficiently shows the novelty of this practice in Staffordshire Potteries.”[26] Probably this part of Dr Aikin’s work was written by Alex. Chisholm, secretary to Josiah Wedgwood.