At least the same story was told to Josiah Wedgwood in 1765 by an old workman named Steel, aged 84, who could remember the Dutchmen at work at Bradwell, and who joined those who ran to the place amazed at this unusual mode of firing. No doubt this is what was in Wedgwood’s mind when he wrote to Bentley in 1777, as quoted above.
On the other hand we have the evidence of Simeon Shaw,[27] first that William Adams and Thomas Miles produced salt glaze in 1680 (a very doubtful supposition in view of the Chancery suit recently discovered), and then that “Mr. John Mountford, 27 years since (i.e. in 1801), took down the remains of the (Elers’) oven, and he states that the height was about 7 feet, but not like the salt-glaze ovens.” And again: “E. Wood and J. Riley both separately measured the inside diameter of the remains, at about 5 feet; while other ovens, of the same date, in Burslem, were 10 or 12 feet. The oven itself had 5 mouths, but neither holes over the inside flues nor bags, to receive the salt, had any been used by them.” “The foundations,” he adds, “were very distinctly to be seen in 1808, though now covered by an enlargement of the barn.”
Also there is the fact that no salt glaze ware that could be conclusively shown to be Elers’ has ever been excavated on the site of his factory, except the white voice-pipes previously mentioned.
Taking everything into consideration—the impossibility of saying definitely who the makers of early pieces of salt glaze were; the possibility of Elers having made his salt-glaze in a different oven and on a different site to that seen and excavated; the fact that in 1710-1715 Staffordshire potters were making stoneware, and that Plot does not mention it in 1677—none but Garner and the Wedgwoods were sued for making even stoneware in 1693—we may assume that the Elers did, in actual fact, introduce the salt glaze into North Staffordshire.
The red and black bodies made by Elers are still in fashion, but even more valuable than the doubtful invention of the particular ware was his careful method of refining and mixing the clay body, and the exact turning of the pieces to extreme thinness and precision of outline. On the excellence of his work, rather than on inventions which were not really new, his fame deserves to rest. He may not, for example, have been the first to introduce the method of sealing on the clay ornaments, but the ornaments themselves were for the first time in really good taste. It was this refined taste and precision of execution—and the proof that it paid financially—which taught the Staffordshire potters the most valuable lesson.
Thus it was that, when Queen Anne and tea drinking came in, North Staffordshire had not only the clay and the coal, but also the tradesmen to make the ware required.
CHAPTER IV.
THE SALT-GLAZE POTTERS.
The successors of Elers—Robert Astbury, Joshua Twyford, and especially Dr Thomas Wedgwood—built up the reputation of the salt-glazed stoneware, which for fifty years was the glory of North Staffordshire; and, in the improvements they effected, the first two atoned for anything that to the modern mind was irregular in the manner by which they got their start.
It was to Dr Thomas Wedgwood (1655-1717), and his son Thomas (1695-1737), who made stoneware at “Ruffleys” in Burslem, that local tradition ascribes most of the improvements in salt-glazed wares. Mr Burton writes of the younger Dr Thomas: “It has never been suggested that Dr Thomas Wedgwood, like Twyford or Astbury, learned anything directly from Elers, but as he was a man of intelligence and commercial aptitude, as well as one of the best practical potters of the day, he would naturally adopt such new ideas as were brought in his way. Judging by the fragments of drab salt-glazed stonewares that have been found on the site of his old works in the centre of the town of Burslem, collectors are in the habit of attributing to him, with some show of justice, the finest pieces of this type.”[28][29]