[79] Ward, “Stoke-on-Trent,” p. 372.
[80] Shaw, op. cit., pp. 148-9.
[81] This makes 6s. 8d. a ton delivered at the Pot Bank.
[82] Professor Church quotes the following memorandum, done in red enamel on the back of a large dish of Wedgwood’s Queen’s Ware in the possession of Mr Sidney Locock:—“This dish was made at Etruria by Messrs Wedgwood & Bentley, the first year after Messrs Wedgwood & Bentley removed from Burslem to Etruria. Ric. Lawton served his apprenticeship at turning with them, and has had it in his house more than fifty years. It is my brother William’s modelling. It was turned on a hand lathe, as plates were at that date. I preserve this to show the quality of common cream ware before the introduction of growan or Cornwall stone. This body is formed of flint and clay only, the same as used for salt-glazed ware at that time, and flint and lead only instead of salt glaze, and it is fired in the usual and accustomed way and manner, as usual for glazed tea-pots, tortoiseshell, mottled, and agate, and cauliflower, &c. Also sand from the Mole Cop and Baddley Edge was used either in the body or glaze. N.B. Before flint was used they used a certain proportion of slip for the body in the glaze to prevent crazing, and to make it bear a stronger fire in the glaze oven. I was the first person that made use of bone in earthenware when in my apprenticeship at Mr Palmers at Hanley Green.
Burslem, Sept. 26th, 1826.
Enoch Wood.”
Church, “English Earthenware,” pp. 81-82.
[83] Shaw, op. cit., p. 184.
[84] Many “lives” of Wedgwood have been written, and this is not the place to repeat them. Miss Meteyard has two large volumes on him; Jewitt has one; Smiles holds him up in a recent work as a model of self-help; Professor Church has written a monograph on him and his Jasper Ware; and lastly, Mr Elbert Hubbard, of New York, has made his courtship and marriage the subject of an exhaustive and wholly imaginary study. But many of these works, and some of the Histories of Potting too, are marred by indiscriminating eulogy and a fertile imagination. Simeon Shaw, for instance, within 120 pages, manages to distinguish no fewer than 47 favoured manufacturers by name with praise of this stereotyped character:—“of whom we may observe that great professional ability is in him joined with philanthropy, and a readiness to accelerate every meritorious enterprise.” This, however, is perhaps preferable to the style:—“Wedgwood, poor dear, old soul, got terribly worried,” which distinguishes another of these Histories.
[85] Wedgwood MS., Bills for carting goods to the “new works.”