Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/281

 the expiration of his first, and from entries in a pocket-book (one of two now in the possession of the present proprietor of the pottery founded by him at Fulham) he is proved to have been alive in 1698. If he began to experiment in pottery before 1640, he must have been an old man by the close of the century, and the suggestion that he died in 1737 is clearly indefensible. In this year died Dr. Samuel Dwight [q. v.] of Fulham, who was possibly the son of Dwight. Dwight is sometimes styled Dr. John Dwight, but this is probably an error, as he is called simply John Dwight, gentleman, in both his patents, and is not dubbed doctor by any contemporary.

Both the patents are printed in extenso in Jewitt's ‘Ceramic Art in Great Britain.’ The first was granted on the strength of the statement in Dwight's petition that ‘John Dwight, Gentl. had discovered The Mistery of Transparent Earthenware, comonly knowne by the Names of Porcelaine or China, and Persian Ware, as also the Misterie of the Stone Ware vulgarly called Cologne Ware; and that he designed to introduce a Manufacture of the said Wares into our Kingdome of England, where they have not hitherto been wrought or made.’

Although his claim to make what would now be called porcelain is discredited, and it is thought by some experts that stoneware had been made before in England, there is no reason to doubt the bona fides of the statements in Dwight's petition, and it is certain that at the date of it he had made long and patient investigations and experiments, and had brought, or was on the eve of bringing, the manufacture of stoneware to a perfection unknown before in England or perhaps elsewhere. So much is proved by a dated piece of great beauty and importance now in the South Kensington Museum. It is a half-length effigy of his daughter Lydia, lying with head raised upon a pillow as she appeared after death, and is inscribed on the back ‘Lydia Dwight, dyd March 3, 1673.’ It is also certain that he made a substance which might have appeared to him to have been porcelain, for Professor A. H. Church says: ‘Dwight did nearly approach success in the making of a hard translucent ware similar to hard oriental porcelain. The applied ornaments on his grey stoneware jugs and flasks, and even the substance of some of his statuettes, were distinctly porcellanous.’

Six years after the grant of his first patent we find evidence not only of his fame as a potter, but also of the commercial success of the Fulham works. In the ‘History of Oxfordshire’ (published 1677) by Dr. Plot, the antiquary and keeper of the Ashmolean Museum, there occurs the following passage: ‘The ingenious John Dwight, formerly M.A. of Christ Church College, Oxon., hath discovered the mystery of the stone or Cologne wares (such as d'Alva bottles, jugs, noggins), heretofore made only in Germany, and by the Dutch brought over into England in great quantities; and hath set up a manufacture of the same, which (by methods and contrivances of his own, altogether unlike those used by the Germans), in three or four years' time, he has brought it to greater perfection than it has attained where it hath been used for many ages, insomuch that the Company of Glass-sellers of London, who are the dealers for that commodity, have contracted with the inventor to buy only of his English manufacture, and refuse the foreign.’

The same writer notes among Dwight's other discoveries ‘the mystery of the Hessian wares and vessels for reteining the penetrating salts and spirits of the chymists,’ and ‘ways to make an earth white and transparent as porcellane,’ and states that ‘to this earth he hath added the colours that are usual in the coloured china ware, and divers others not seen before,’ and that ‘he hath also caused to be modelled statues or figures of the said transparent earth (a thing not done elsewhere, for China affords us only imperfect mouldings), which he hath diversified with great variety of colours, making them of the colour of iron, copper, brass, and party-coloured as some Achat-stones,’ and again: ‘In short, he has so advanced the Art Plastic that 'tis dubious whether any man since Prometheus have excelled him, not excepting the famous Damophilus and Gorgasus of Pliny (Nat. Hist. lib. xxxv. c. 12).’

That this panegyric was scarcely excessive we have the testimony of one of the greatest living authorities. M. L. Solon, in ‘The Art of the Old English Potter,’ says of Dwight: ‘To him must be attributed the foundation of an important industry; by his unremitting researches, and their practical application, he not only found the means of supplying in large quantities the daily wants of the people with an article superior to anything that had ever been known before, but besides, by the exercise of his refined taste and uncommon skill, he raised his craft to a high level; nothing among the masterpieces of Ceramic art of all other countries can excel the beauty of Dwight's brown stoneware figures, either for design, modelling, or fineness of material.’

Two of the finest of these figures (Mars and Meleager) are now in the British Museum. In the same collection, recently enriched from those of Mr. A. W. Franks and Mr. H. Willett, are a magnificent life-sized