Ralph Wood, the miller, had another son—that Aaron Wood who made for himself so great a reputation as a block cutter when block moulds were first introduced and the salt glaze was at the height of its glory. Aaron Wood worked for Dr Thomas Wedgwood, Thomas Mitchell of the Hill Top Works, Burslem, and for Whieldon of Fenton. His eldest son, William, was apprenticed to Josiah Wedgwood in 1762, and worked with him, first at the Burslem “useful” works, and afterwards at Etruria, all his life long. Most of the Queen’s Ware articles made by Wedgwood are said to be from block moulds of his carving.[140]
But it was the youngest son of Aaron Wood, Enoch by name, to whom potters of all time are most indebted, for he was the first collector of pottery. And he collected it to illustrate specially what his family and district had done, and how the industry had progressed. His splendid collection was never catalogued, and as it was divided into four parts at his death and scattered,[141] it is of less value than it ought to have been; but, without it, this or any account of the North Staffordshire Potters’ work must have been a shadow indeed.
Enoch Wood (1759-1840) was apprenticed to Palmer of Hanley and remained there some time as a modeller. In 1783 he commenced business at Fountain Place, Burslem, so called from the fountain or pump which he erected there for his factory and work people.[142] He was at first in partnership with his cousin Ralph Wood, who made the Staffordshire figures. About 1790 he was joined by James Caldwell of Lindley Wood, and the firm became “Wood and Caldwell.” He bought Mr Caldwell out in 1819, and thenceforth conducted business as “Enoch Wood and Sons.” He had 12 children and died in 1840 at Fountain Place, the patriarch of the Potteries. His most famous work probably was the well-known bust of John Wesley, made in 1781 when Wesley was stopping at his house during one of his preaching tours in the Potteries. His factory turned out the usual cream colour, black basalt and jasper,[143] but soon after his death the firm got into financial difficulties and closed down. His third son, Edward, was fortunate in being associated with a clever Italian, Count Kuntz, in the development of Italian borax, introduced into the Potteries first in 1828 as a flux for the glaze. In this new business they realized a fortune, and Edward Wood’s descendants are now settled at Browhead in Cumberland. But the borax works in Newcastle are carried on as “H. Coghill and Son” by Douglas and Archibald Coghill.
MAP OF BURSLEM IN 1800
CHAPTER VIII.
SPODE AND BLUE PRINTING.
When earthenware or salt glaze was enamelled at Hot Lane it required artists to do the work. But the eighteenth century was the age of mechanical invention, and the hand artists were continually being superseded by mechanical processes. Saddler and Green, for instance, invented the method of printing designs on top of the glaze, so that the artist had only to fill in the outline with colours. But there was something hard and crude about the effect of the on-glaze printing, which prevented it ever really competing with the best hand-painted ware. The under-glaze printing, particularly the under-glaze blue printing, was a more difficult competitor for the artist to meet; for the glaze gave a rich soft tone to the colouring matter underneath it which was partly absorbed in the biscuit ware. And if this blue printing, with which the willow pattern will be always associated, drove out the girl artists from their pleasant work on the pot-banks, yet the new decoration caused an enormous expansion in the demand for cream-coloured earthenware. From 1790 onwards “blue printed” seems to have superseded every other sort of earthenware. It was the first opportunity common folk had had of getting a decorative plate to eat off; and it made the fortunes of the Spodes, the Adamses, the Bournes, the Mintons, the Ridgways, and many another master of the good old days. As a mechanical process under-glaze printing was an unqualified success, and in course of time the artists too rediscovered their work in decorating that porcelain which, on the tables of the rich, replaced the now vulgarized earthenware. The last ten years of the eighteenth century were devoted to blue printed, but with the new century came that development of Staffordshire porcelain with which run the names of Spode, Minton and Davenport.