Thomas Mason, of Derby, “China or Porcelain repairer,” bound himself by an agreement, dated September 2, 1772, for four years to Mr. Duesbury, at one guinea per week; Mr. Duesbury, by an additional clause, promising “to make Thomas Mason a present of five guineas at the end of each year over and above what is specified in the articles (according to his service).” Later on a Thomas Mason was a timekeeper.
M. Mason was an apprentice to Mr. Duesbury as a painter. He left Derby and engaged himself to Mr. Barr of Worcester, in October, 1792.
George Mellor, whose forte was painting flowers and insects, was an apprentice but left and went to Pinxton. After that he was employed at Coalport, and then in Staffordshire, but returned to the Derby works. He died in 1861. His son, George Mellor (now of London), was also a painter and gilder, as likewise was his daughter Sarah.
William Moore, Edward Belfield, John Morledge, Thomas Trundell, and Joseph Shipley, were throwers in 1774–6.
John Morlidge, son of William Morlidge, of Derby, hatter, was apprenticed for seven years, on the 21st August, 1777, “to learn the Art of Repairing of China or Porcelain Ware.”
Mullins, a figure and landscape painter, was engaged for one year certain to come down from London in 1795, to paint in enamel on porcelain by the piece, at a fixed scale of charges, on which for the first month he was to have 20 per cent., and the second month 10 per cent. additional. The prices, in the original list in my possession, are very curious.
John Musgrove, kiln man and labourer about 1796.
William Pegg, a Quaker, was a remarkable man in more ways than one. He was a tolerably clever painter, but of a very erratic and changeable character, and a religious enthusiast; indeed, judging from his writings, there can be but little doubt that he was not in all things perfectly sane. He wrote a singular account of himself, “Traits in the singular life of that persecuted man, for his obedience to the Truth, Wm Pegg, who joined the Society of the People called Quakers in the year 1800,” in which he traced his descent from Abraham, “who is said to be the Father of the Faithful,” because his family were of the seed of Esau, red; and that on his mother’s side he was descended from Ishmael, because she (his mother) and “all her kin are swarthy and marked with a brown freckle.” William Pegg was the son of Thomas Pegg, of Etwall, near Derby, who was a gardener at Etwall Hall, and a member of the parish choir, where he played the hautboy; from here he removed to Whitmore, in the Staffordshire pottery district. William Pegg was born in 1775, and two years afterwards his father removed to Shelton, where, at the age of ten, William Pegg was sent to work at a pottery. At fourteen he was put to learn the painting on china and earthenware, and when of age removed to Derby, and engaged himself at the china works till he was twenty-three, when he gave it up, and took to the stocking frame, at which he worked at one place or other for twelve years. He then, in 1812, returned to his old occupation, “making drawings and pictures and painting china,” till 1820, when he again gave it up, and commenced a small shop. He married Anne Hendley of Derby in 1814, and died in 1851. Pegg was a clever painter of flowers, and his productions had the merit of being, in almost every instance, painted from nature.
Thomas Pegg, a brother of William Pegg, was one of the gilders for many years.
William Pegg, of a different family, was an apprentice at the works in the beginning at the present century, but left, and became a clever designer for calico printers.