Staffordshire Salt-glaze.—It is uncertain when and how the Staffordshire potters learnt that a highly siliceous pottery could be glazed by throwing common salt into the kiln at the height of the firing, for the practice had originated in the Rhineland more than a century before. Many writers have maintained that the practice was introduced by Elers, but this is uncertain. Early in the 18th century a fine, white, thin, salt-glazed ware was made in Staffordshire, in many quaint and fanciful forms largely influenced by Chinese porcelain—still an object of wonder and mystery. Teapots, coffee-pots, tea-caddies, plates, dishes, bowls, candlesticks, mugs and bottles were made in great variety, and at its best the ware is a dainty and elegant one, so that a brisk trade was developed in the district, and, for the first time, a distinctively English pottery was exported to the continent and to the American colonies.
English Earthenware.—The manufacture of tin-enamelled pottery scarcely obtained a foothold in Staffordshire, but the invention of the white salt-glazed ware paved the way for one of the greatest revolutions in the potter’s art that the world has ever seen. This was nothing less than the abandonment of the ordinary red or buff clays with a coating of white slip or of tin-enamel, and the substitution of a ware white throughout its substance, prepared by mixing selected white-burning clays and finely-ground flint (silica).[24] The change has generally been associated with Wedgwood, most famous of English potters, but he really only perfected, along with his contemporaries, the Warburtons, Turners and others, the work of half a century’s experiment and discovery. The ware compared most favourably, from the point of view of serviceableness, neatness and mechanical finish, with all that had gone before it, and as the tin-enamelled wares had almost everywhere in Europe sunk to the position of domestic crockery—for the Chinese, German, French and English porcelains had displaced it with the wealthy—this better-fashioned and more durable English ware gave it its final death-blow. English earthenware in its various forms was to be met with all over Europe, from London to Moscow, and from Cadiz to Stockholm; and, aided by emigrant English potters, the continental nations soon began a similar manufacture for themselves. Everywhere this great change was encouraged by the growing fondness for mechanical perfection, and it is not without a sigh that a lover of pottery can witness the gradual disappearance of the painted tin-enamelled wares—degenerate survivals though they were of Italian majolica, French faience and Dutch “Delft”—before the unconquerable advance of another form of pottery which in its inception was based on technical rather than artistic qualities, especially as nearly a century passed before the new material was turned to artistic account.
By general consent the name of Josiah Wedgwood has been pre-eminently associated with this great change, and with good reason, for though he had many contemporaries who equalled or even excelled him in certain kinds of pottery, no other potter ever approached him in the range of his products and the varied applications to which he turned the exercise of his remarkable talents.[25] True, he soon abandoned the simple Staffordshire wares, coloured with mottled glazes or clay-slips, to which the names of Astbury or Whieldon are commonly attached, but the varied productions of his factory united the best work of a district fruitful in new kinds of pottery, with something especial to Wedgwood himself. Thus he adopted and improved the green and yellow glazes which had come down from medieval times (see the cauliflower ware piece, Plate X.), and gave a new direction to their use in his green-glazed dessert services, candlesticks, &c. He carried on the manufacture of hard-fired red-clay teapots, mugs, coffee-pots, cream-jugs, &c., introduced by Elers; and, along with his fellow-potters, he invented drab, grey, brown and other colours in similarly hard-fired unglazed bodies. He neither invented nor alone perfected the Staffordshire cream-coloured earthenware, but he made it so well that his “Queen’s ware” was the best of its class. He undoubtedly invented the Jasper ware, in which on grounds of unglazed blue, green, black, &c., white figures and ornamental motives, adapted from the antique by Flaxman, Webber and other sculptors, were applied; and he even attempted to reproduce the painted vases of the Greek decadence in dry colours painted over a hard black body.
Wedgwood’s “Jasper ware,” his most original production (see Plate X.), differed both in nature and composition from all the species of pottery that had preceded it. In an attempt to obtain the qualities of the finest porcelain biscuit, Wedgwood discovered, after years of experiment, that by mixing together a plastic white clay and “cawk” or barytes he could obtain a “body” which might be “thrown” on the wheel or “pressed” in moulds, and which, while it fired to a white and sub-translucent pottery, was capable of being coloured, by the usual metallic oxides, to various shades of blue, green, yellow, lilac and black. The ware resembled “biscuit” porcelain in that it needed no glaze to render it impervious to water, and it thus marked the culmination of those “dry” or unglazed wares that had been so largely made in China, Japan and Europe, where the quality resides in the fired clay material without any adventitious aid from a glaze. The general practice was to make the body of the vessel of a coloured material and to ornament this with applied figures or ornamental reliefs, in “white” of the same kind, “pressed” from intaglio moulds and then applied by wetting the surface and squeezing—leaving the fire to unite the vessel and its applied ornament into one piece. Sometimes the ornament was in a coloured clay applied on a white body, and we get in the same way black on red, buff on red or black, and red or black on buff and drab bodies. The variety of bodies produced by Wedgwood and his followers in this way is exceedingly great, and is only to be equalled by the diversity of their application, for the pieces made include plaques, vases, plates, dishes, jardinières, bulb-pots, teapots, cups and saucers, inkstands, scent-bottles, buttons, buckles, and, in a word, every kind of thing that could be made in clay. Many of the applied designs, whether of figures or ornament, were very beautiful in a way, being copied or adapted from Greek and Roman gems, vases, &c. At their best they are marvellous for the precision and delicacy of their execution, and it is impossible to imagine that anything better could have been done in this style. So perfectly did they represent the taste of their period that attempts were made at Sèvres, Meissen, Berlin and Buen Retiro to produce something of the same kind in porcelain; but none of these can be compared with the works of Wedgwood, or his great contemporary Turner (see Plate X.), in beauty of colour or perfection of workmanship.
It is obvious nowadays that much of this work was inspired by mistaken motives; that it was founded on an imperfect view of ancient art; and that it was marred by its mechanical ideals; but it must be remembered that it was in perfect harmony with the spirit of the times, and that while it emphasizes for us the pseudo-classic taste of the late 18th century, it marks an advance in the technical skill of the potter, which is simply astounding. The co-ordination of labour, which had gone further with the Greek and the Italian potter than is generally supposed, was now brought to a climax. Mechanical appliances were introduced for the performance of many portions of the potter’s work that had hitherto been indifferently performed by rude and exhausting manual toil; and while the application of mechanism was pushed too far—so that in the first half of the 19th century we find the most inartistic pottery the world has ever seen—we must regard this even more as a cyclic movement of human feeling than as the work of any individual, or group of men. The late 18th century marks the period when pottery was no longer produced, as Italian majolica, the Henri-Deux ware, the Palissy wares, the best faience of Nevers, Rouen, Moustiers, Delft or Nuremberg had been, for the noble or the wealthy, but when it was largely in demand by the poorer classes, anxious in their turn to have a useful ware which should imitate the more costly porcelain used by the great. France, Germany, Sweden, Russia, and later the United States, all followed in the wake of the English potters, and the printing-press was applied in all countries to produce elaborate engraved patterns in blue, brown, green, &c., in order to get an effective-looking ware in harmony with the spirit of the times, and at the same time cheaper in price than the simple painted patterns of the vanquished tin-enamel.
Collections.—The British and the Victoria and Albert Museums naturally contain the most representative collections of English pottery. The museums at Liverpool, Bristol, Burslem, Hanley and Nottingham, also have good collections, while Birmingham, Manchester and Stoke-upon-Trent may be mentioned. The Guildhall Museum, London, is rich in early wares found or made in London and its vicinity. Continental collections of English pottery are meagre in the extreme and badly described, even in the ceramic museums at Sèvres and Limoges. The collection at Dresden is interesting, as it was purchased from the collection made by Enoch Wood, a Staffordshire potter. In America, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Metropolitan Museum of New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts at Philadelphia, contain interesting examples of wares exported to America in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Literature.—The earliest compilations, such as Jewitt’s Ceramic Art in Great Britain (1878), and Life of Josiah Wedgwood (1865); Chaffers, Marks and Monograms (1863; 9th edition revised, 1900); Meteyard’s Life of Wedgwood (1865-1866), and Shaw’s History of the Staffordshire Potteries (1829; reissued London, 1900), must always be of interest as original sources of information; but the later works, such as Church, English Earthenware (1884; new edition, 1906); Josiah Wedgwood (1894, reissue 1903 and 1907); Solon, Art of the Old English Potter (1883; 2nd ed., 1885); Hobson, Catalogue of English Pottery in the British Museum (1903); Burton, English Earthenware and Stoneware (1904), are the best authorities.
(W. B.*)
Chinese Pottery and Porcelain[26]
In China, as in every other country where pottery-making has been practised for centuries, we find a natural progression from primitive pottery akin in shape, decoration and manufacture to the pottery of other primitive races the world over. We find too the early use of bricks, tiles, &c., as in Egypt and Assyria; and then the usual succession of domestic utensils, funeral vases, and vessels for religious ceremonials. There is nothing to show that the potter’s wheel made its appearance in China earlier than elsewhere, and the Chinese potters have used the simple methods of carving and “pressing” from moulds which preceded the use of the potter’s wheel, even more than other nations. In books of the Chow dynasty (1122-249 b.c.) the difference between the processes of “throwing” and of “pressing” from moulds is clearly described,[27] and it is instructive to note that many early as well as late forms of Chinese pottery are remarkably like their works in bronze. In the same way there is no definite date to which we can refer the introduction of glazed pottery. The earliest specimens of glazed ware known are referred by the Chinese to the times of the Han dynasty (206 b.c.-a.d. 220), a date much later than that of the earliest glazed wares of Egypt and Assyria. Remembering the intercourse between China and the West, at times historically remote, it is not impossible that the idea of coating a vessel of clay with a glaze was carried into China from Chaldaea or Assyria. In any case the Chinese developed the potter’s art on their own lines, for we have ample evidence that from very early times they fired their pottery to a much higher temperature than was common in the west of Asia, and so discovered types of glaze and of pottery that remained for centuries a mystery elsewhere. The glazed wares of the Han dynasty already mentioned are quite unlike any contemporary pottery produced in Syria, Egypt or Europe, for the body of the ware is so hard that it can scarcely be scratched by a knife, and the dark-greenish glaze has become iridescent by age as though it contained oxide of lead. The easily-fired friable wares of Assyria, Egypt and Greece seem to have had no attraction for the Chinese, and the glazes on their hard-fired wares were naturally different from those already described. The Chinese appear to have been the first potters in the world to discover that at a sufficiently high temperature pottery can be glazed with powdered felspathic rock mixed with lime. At first these glazes were used on any ordinary refractory clay which might burn red, drab or buff; but in this technique lay the germ of Chinese porcelain, the most advanced form of pottery the world has yet seen. It is necessary to consider the pottery that preceded porcelain, for not only was it the matrix out of which porcelain grew, but in certain districts of China, where the necessary materials for porcelain are not found, similar wares have been manufactured without intermission to the present time. Naturally, in progress of time, the technique of this pottery has been greatly improved, both by developments in the preparation and mixture of the clays, the shaping and modelling of the wares, the introduction of coloured enamels or glazes, and the like. Dr Bushell, who is our great authority on the Chinese arts and handicrafts, rightly seizes on two outstanding types of Chinese pottery other than porcelain which have exercised considerable influence on the doings of European potters.