For now we begin to find potters thick on the ground in Burslem.
In legal documents the practice grew of adding after any man’s name, his trade; leases, depositions, wills, all show this. After 1600 one would certainly expect to find some trade description, and at last, in 1616, we find our first “potters.”
1616. Richard Middleton demises to Thomas Danyell of Burselem senior, potter, a pasture called Brownehills and another pasture called The Hill in Burslem containing 3 acres, with right to dig claye, “ffillinge upe the pitts after him,” for 21 years at a rent of 4s. He demises also to John Leigh 3 acres in Withiemore, with liberty to dig clay in the Withiemore when need be. (Tunstall Court Rolls.)
Next year, 1617, William Adams of Burslem describes himself in his Will as “potter”; and among the depositions of witnesses in the Chancery suit of “Mainwaring v. Shaw” of 1640, one of the witnesses, Ralph Simpson of Burslem, aged 80, is described as “potter.” Thereafter every reference to Burslem or Tunstall is replete with “potters” or “earth-potters,” and men trained to the trade were acquiring the skill necessary for the localization of the coming industry.
The men were ready. The clay and coal are found together cropping out in the country of the Staffordshire Potteries. The clay, though not now used for earthenware, is, and always has been, suitable for the saggars in which the ware is packed while being fired, and for the fire-bricks of the kiln in which the ware is baked. The coals were so cheap that, in 1680, they cost apparently only 16d. a ton at the pit’s mouth, and although such coal had to be carried usually on horseback, yet it never had to be carried more than two miles to reach the pot ovens.
One other raw material was wanted—lead. It was the most expensive, almost the only part of the master potter’s equipment that required capital. The ore was got at Lawton Park, six miles to the north. The capital stock-in-trade of the early potter is shown by the Will of John Colclough alias Rowley, of Burslem, who died in 1656, leaving “to Thomas Wedgwood of the Churchyard of Burslem ... all my pottinge boards and all other necessary implements and materialls belonginge to the trade of pottinge (lead and lead orre onely excepted).” This same Thomas Wedgwood was great-grandfather of Josiah Wedgwood, and he, as well as two of his brothers, Aaron and Moses, also describe themselves in their Wills as “Potters.”
Burslem was by 1670 full of potters; making no doubt butter-pots or the commonest of ware.[3] A little further off, in the valley of Tinkersclough, Thomas Toft was actually attempting decoration. The Toft dishes are well known. They are signed with the name, Thomas Toft or Ralph Toft, written in liquid slip clay upon the plate. They are made of red, buff or yellow clay, and other coloured slip-clays are dribbled over them through a quill, so as to make pictures of Charles II, or Queen Anne, or a pelican picking its breast to feed its young. Then the whole is dusted over with powdered lead ore, and fired till the lead fuses into the plate and forms a rich yellowish glaze.
Some of these productions, of what has come to be called the Toft school, are dated. There is a candlestick, very elaborate, dated 1649, and claimed for Staffordshire. Shaw mentions two dishes marked, one “Thos. Sans,” and the other “Thos. Toft,” each dated 1650.[4] M. Solon had seen a slip dish, in a cottage in Hanley, bearing this inscription scratched on its back, “Thomas Toft, Tinkers Clough, I made it 166-.”[5] A dish with the picture of a soldier bearing a sword in each hand, and inscribed in slip “Ralph Toft, 1677” is also mentioned by M. Solon.[6] Another, marked Ralph Toft, and bearing the image of a very wasp-waisted lady is in the Salford Museum, dated “1676.”[7]
Other makers of this school were Thomas and William Sans, Ralph Simson and William Taylor. They made two-handled drinking mugs called “tygs” with similar decoration; and small model cradles made in clay and slip—presents for young married couples, according to their local custom. Puzzle Jugs were another “freak” production, speaking the humour of the time. The jug was so contrived with multiple spouts and hidden passages as to spill however one tried to drink from it. A sample of these puzzle jugs in stoneware bears the inscription “John Wedgwood 1691.”[8] This man was the eldest son of the Thomas Wedgwood previously mentioned, and did not pot himself. I think this jug was made for him by his nephew, Richard Wedgwood, to whom he both leased the Overhouse Works and married his daughter and heiress. Several pieces are marked with the name “Joseph Glass,” who is known to have been a potter in Hanley in 1710-15.
All these early master potters were handy men of many trades. They made their pots in sheds at the “backsides” of their dwelling houses, alongside the cow-shed. They dug their own clay, often in front of their own front doors. The Wedgwoods at least owned and dug their own coal, wherewith to fire the oven. It was a peasant industry, carried on by the family, among the pigs and fowls; and when they were not making show pieces for presentation they made butter-pots, in which farmers might market their butter at Uttoxeter—at least so says Dr Plot.