“Ralph Leigh was employed by John Taylor of the Hill Top, to look after his horses, and was the first man whose wages were raised from 10d. to 12d. a day. With four or six horses he went twice to Whitfield, or thrice to Norton, in a day for coals; of which each horse brought 2½ cwt. on its back; along lanes extremely dirty. At the pit, coals then cost 7d. the draught, whether 2, 2½, or 3 cwt., for the colliers guessed at the quantity. The charge for carrying each load from Norton to Burslem was 3d., a penny a mile.[81] During a long time he carried crates of pottery to Winsford, and brought back ball clay. Each horse carried a crate on a pack saddle, and a small panier on each side was used to hold two or three balls of clay, weighing 60 or 70 lbs. Each horse was muzzled to prevent it biting the hedges, and the roads were narrow and bad and without toll gates. Afterwards with a cart and four horses he went to Winsford and delivered his crates the same day; and on the second day brought back a ton of Chester clay to Burslem. He was allowed four days to take crates to Bridgenorth, and bring back shop goods for Newcastle. He went with crates to Willington Ferry, and returned with flint, plaister stone and shop goods. He has gone to Liverpool and also as far as Exeter, before there were regular carriers.”
ETRURIA WORKS
CHAPTER VI.
WEDGWOOD AND THE CREAM COLOUR.
Such were the conditions under which the salt glaze of Staffordshire and the agate of Staffordshire were produced and perfected; and having traced these manufactures to their climax, it now remains to describe the rise of cream-coloured earthenware—the cream colour, which under Wedgwood became universal and perfected as we know it to-day. But it would be a mistake to attribute all good cream colour to Wedgwood. Just as all red teapots get put down to Elers; or as salt glaze is divided between Dr Thomas Wedgwood and Astbury according to character; and just as all another class of ware with irregular splashes of coloured glaze is called “Whieldon,” so much that Wedgwood never put his hand to has got dubbed with his name, to the exclusion of contemporaries as enterprising, such as Warburton and Turner, and to the neglect of predecessors who, like Astbury and Booth, had already done very much to make Wedgwood’s development of the cream colour possible.
The ordinary earthenware cream-colour body was composed of ball clay from Dorsetshire, calcined flint, and the lighter burning local clays. After the discovery of china clay and china stone in Cornwall about 1770, these two bodies both came to be added to the standard mixture, and the local clays were gradually dropped.[82] The glaze invented by John Greatbach while at Etruria, and called “Greatbach’s China Glaze,” finally completed the development of the cream colour.[83] In practice the results depended so largely upon the exact composition of body and glaze, the exact temperature of firing in biscuit and glost ovens, and the subsequent decoration, that different potters achieved different results from their cream ware, and very different reputations. Josiah Wedgwood, with whom we must now deal, with his so-called Queen’s Ware, achieved undisputed pre-eminence, and became the greatest agent in the world-wide distribution of the cream-coloured earthenware of North Staffordshire.[84]
Josiah Wedgwood, thirteenth child of Thomas Wedgwood, master potter of the Churchyard works in Burslem, was baptized in Burslem church on July 12, 1730. He was a son, grandson and great-grandson of potters. His brothers, his cousins and his uncles made pots, and many had left an enduring reputation behind them. Josiah too was apprenticed to the trade in 1744 in his eldest brother’s works by the Churchyard side at Burslem.
In 1752 he went into partnership with John Harrison, a tradesman of Newcastle, and they took the factory of the Alders’ at Cliff Bank, Stoke. Here they turned out the agate knife-blades and buttons that Alders had produced before. In two years Wedgwood was able to leave this partnership and join with Whieldon, the best potter of the day. For five years at least these two men were in partnership. Whieldon supplied the skill and traditional knowledge, and Wedgwood the extraordinary energy which was his chief characteristic. His experiments were incessant, and the fine green glaze seen on his cauliflower ware, his first real success, was his reward.