Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 19.djvu/656

Rh 632 POTTERY [ENGLISH. clay. The whole was then covered with a coarse lead glaze, made from powdered lead ore (sulphide of lead), sprinkled through a sieve on to the soft clay. The process of firing produced a vitreous glaze, composed of silicate of lead, the silica being taken up from the clay body. Thomas and Ralph Toft made a number of large plates, drinking mugs or &quot;tygs,&quot; and candlesticks, decorated in this way with rather elaborate designs (see fig. 65). The potter s name and the date frequently occur among the slip ornaments, which are some times in red and brown on a white white on red. About the year 1 6 80 a new sort of glaze was in vented, very useful for the common kinds of hard stone ware, and ex tremely durable, namely, the &quot;salt FIG. 65. Coarse earthenware dish, with de- -&quot; i in slip, signed by Thomas Tc ri - (Museum of Geology, London.) glaze &quot; applied bv coration in sli P&amp;gt; signed by Thomas Toft, c. throwing common salt (chloride of sodium) into the hot kiln when the pro cess of firing was nearly complete. The salt was volatilized and decomposed ; the soda combined with the free silica in the clay, and a coating of hard silicate of soda Avas formed. A very high temperature is required for this process, which is chiefly used for drain-pipes and vessels to hold corrosive acids, the salt glaze being almost indestructible. John Towards the end of the 17th century a gentleman Dwight. named John Dwight spent many years in experiments to improve the manufacture of pottery, and also to discover the secret of true transparent porcelain. He appears to have been an artist of great ability, and not only made domestic pottery of Cologne ware but also modelled figures and large busts in pale-grey glazed stoneware ; the British Museum possesses a fine portrait bust of Prince Rupert by him, modelled with great truth and spirit, almost recalling the touch of the old Florentine sculptors in terra -cotta. In 1671 John Dwight took out a patent for his special methods of pottery and porcelain work, and set up kilns at Fulham. Many of his receipts for porcelain exist, and have been published in Jewitt s valuable work on The Ceramic Art of Great Britain (1877), but no specimens of this early English porcelain are now known. The Lambeth potteries were established at a very early period, but it was not till the 17th century that they produced ware superior to the common biscuit or lead- glazed varieties. Some pieces of about 1660 are marked with No. 21 mark. Certain Dutch potters settled at Lambeth early in the century, and started the f manufacture of a finer sort of pottery, covered *s with a tin enamel. Most of this is in the Potter s mark, style of the Delft wares, painted either in No - 21. cobalt blues alone or with the coarse green, yellow, and manganese purple used in the more gaudy kind of Delft. The Lambeth potters also imitated Palissy ware, with high reliefs of human figures or plants and reptiles, very poor copies of Palissy s originals, the modelling being extremely blunt. The enamel ground has a pink tinge, and the re liefs are picked out in various colours. Some specimens of this Lambeth ware are dated on the back in blue with various years during the reigns of Charles I. and Charles II. ^ Another variety has coarse imitations of late Italian majolica, while, other pieces have English designs, coarse Lambeth potteries. portraits of Charles II. and his queen, with arabesque borders, all very rudely executed. The beginning of the 18th century in England saw a great increase of activity in the production of many kinds of pottery. Numbers of patents were taken out and new kilns set up at a great many different places. Though many improvements were made in the preparation and combination of different clays and considerable advances in technical skill were gained, yet little pottery of any artistic value was made. Wedgwood Ware. The Wedgwoods were an old Stafford- Wed shire family, and one member at least was a potter in the W00( 17th century. This was John Wedgwood (1654-1705), warc the great-uncle of Josiah, who in the next century founded the great pottery which he called &quot; Etruria.&quot; Only one piece signed by John Wedgwood is known to exist; it is in the interesting historical collection of ceramic wares in the Jermyn Street Museum of Geology, London. It is a &quot; puzzle jug &quot; with three spouts and a hollow handle, made of coarse brown clay, covered with the usual green lead glaze. The potter s name and the date 1691 are incised round the jug. 1 In the middle of the 18th century, when Josiah Wedg wood was a young man, a great impulse had been given to the study and appreciation of classical art, partly through the discovery of the buried cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and also on account of the growing enthu siasm for the beautiful Greek painted vases, which were then being sought for with great avidity in the tombs of Etruria and Magna Graecia. Josiah Wedgwood devoted his life and great talents to an attempt to reproduce the severe beauties of the Greek and Roman pottery. Unfor tunately in this not unpraiseworthy aim he neglected the special requirements of fictile work. His productions, delicate and beautiful as they often are, have the charac teristics of anything rather than pottery. With great labour and expense he turned out from his workshops imitations, necessarily unsuccessful, of ancient engraved gems and camei, of jasper, basalt, or mottled marbles, of gem -like cut glass, such as the Portland vase, and dull copies, feeble in drawing and hard in texture, of beautiful painted Greek vases. Of natural methods of decoration suitable to pottery, or of the life and freedom of the plastic clay rising into graceful forms under the touch of the thrower s hand aided by the rhythmical movement of the wheel, he knew nothing. Nearly all his pottery is dully scholastic and archaeological in style, and therefore must, on the whole, be regarded as a failure, though often a very clever and even beautiful failure. Wedgwood s most characteristic ware, in the production of which he was aided by Flaxman and other able artists, consists of plaques and vessels, vases, cups, plates, and other forms moulded in clay, delicately tinted blue, brown, and various colours, on which minute cameo reliefs in white paste were applied while they were soft, and were then fixed by firing. Many of them have very beautiful figures, some copied from Greek and Roman gems or vases, others being specially designed for him ; but all are classical in style. Some of his pieces are quite astonishing for their microscopic delicacy of detail ; others have wreaths, foliage, and minute diaper ornaments applied in the same way. Wedgwood also produced very fine and porcelain -like varieties of white enamelled pottery, some even decorated with a metallic lustre, purple in colour, and mottled to imitate marble ; some are cleverly modelled to imitate large sea-shells. Indeed his technical methods were varied with the utmost ingenuity, and would need a treatise to them selves if even a rough outline were given of all the varieties. 1 For a full account of the Wedgwood family and their ware, see Jewitt, Life of Josiah Wedywood, 1865 ; and Meteyard, Wedywood and his Works, 1873.