Another enameller who attained success by perfecting the cream-coloured ware was Elijah Mayer. He is said to have been originally foreign agent for the Chatterleys, and as late as 1787 he appears as an enameller pure and simple, though already in business on his own account. Soon after this date his factory at Hanley began turning out not only cream colour, admirably enamelled in the sober artistic style of Wedgwood’s best Queen’s Ware, but also black basalt, which is every bit as good and has as good a reputation as the best that was turned out at Etruria.[125]

Other very early makers of porcelain were Messrs Baddeley and Fletcher. For some time after 1763 they attempted, with William Littler as manager, to make glassy porcelain similar to that of Longton Hall. Mr Fletcher was the father of Sir Thomas Fletcher, M.P. for Newcastle, and ancestor of the Fletcher-Bougheys, Baronets of Aqualate. Mr John Baddeley the elder was the father of Ralph and John Baddeley, who carried on the works and made an early success with blue printed earthenware.[126]

The Chatterleys of Shelton were another very successful potting family of this date. Dr Samuel Chatterley made the ordinary black Egyptian teapots, but Charles Chatterley went in for the newer cream colour and secured a large foreign connexion. His brother Ephraim became his partner, and ultimately carried on the business alone till 1793, when he handed it over to his nephews, James and Charles Whitehead, sons of Christopher Whitehead of the Old Hall Factory.[127] Ephraim Chatterley lived at what is now Chatterley House, and had the singular distinction of being, in 1784, the first of a long and honourable series of “mock mayors” of Hanley.[128] Though Hanley and Shelton were united in 1812, yet it was not till 1856 that they became incorporated as a borough, and obtained their first genuine Mayor, John Ridgway of Cauldon Place.

The list of potters of 1787, which has already been quoted from, occurs in a rare “Survey of Staffordshire” made by Wm. Tunnicliffe. The Survey consists of little but an itinerary of the main roads, and lists of the manufacturers in each town. As we have to rely so much on the fallible recollections of Shaw, this piece of contemporary evidence is worth quoting in full.

“Survey of the Counties of Stafford, Chester and Lancaster, compiled and published at Namptwich in 1787 by Wm. Tunnicliffe, land surveyor, of Yarlet near Stone; and a Directory of the principal merchants and manufacturers.”

In the Potteries they give:—

(a) Of Greengates Tunstall; (b) afterwards of Newport; (c) of Hill Top; (d) of the Phœnix Works, Tunstall; (e) of Hill Top; (f) of Longport; (g) of Brownhills; (h) of Fountain Place; (i) of Market St.; (j) of Shelton New Hall; (k) of High St.; (l) of Vale Pleasant; (m) of Shelton Old Hall; (n) of Broad St. Works; (o) of Cliffgate Bank; (p) afterwards Copelands; (q) afterwards Adams’; (r) of Market St., Longton; (s) of the Foley Works; (t) of High St., Longton.

Of course this list is fallible. Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood potted at Etruria, not Fenton; John Turner, shown at Fenton, should probably be the Turner of Lane End; the Josiah “Wood” of Burslem is almost certainly Josiah Wedgwood, who owned at that time the old Churchyard Works, in which he had been born. (They were sold in 1795 to Thomas Green, and on his bankruptcy in 1811 passed to John Moseley). Again, both S. and J. Cartlich, and Wm. Adams, who certainly potted at Golden Hill and Greengates respectively, are included with other Tunstall potters in the Burslem list.