CHAPTER II

EARLY WARE

Mediæval Tiles (thirteenth to sixteenth centuries)--Slip Ware--Wrotham (Kent) (1656-1703)--Staffordshire Makers (1660-1700)--Prices of Early Ware.

As will be seen from the table at the end of the preceding chapter, the main body of English earthenware to which collectors can give their attention, belongs chiefly to the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The beginnings of pottery and the first steps towards perfection in art are always interesting, but in the realm of English pottery the beginner had better push forward as the subject is a very complex one, and the general collector is perforce obliged to confine attention to the later periods.

It will therefore suffice if a hasty survey be made of the chief earthenware prior to the eighteenth century.

=Mediæval Tiles.=--From the thirteenth century to the dissolution of the monasteries the ecclesiastical tiles used in England were of a particularly noticeable character. The tiles vary in size, the earlier ones, as at Chertsey Abbey, were not more than three or four inches square. The earlier the tile, as a rule, the smaller is its area. The tiles were ornamented in various ways. They had incised, raised, inlaid, or painted patterns. The incised and relief tiles are the most uncommon, probably being the earlier. The designs are very numerous, and vary in character in the different abbeys at which they originated. Specimens have been found at Great Malvern, Denny Abbey in Norfolk, Castle Acre Priory, Jervaulx Abbey, Lewes Priory, St. Alban's Abbey, and at Chertsey Abbey, which latter had "one of the finest, if not the finest, inlaid tile pavement in existence" (Hobson). The Chertsey tiles are of different shapes, sometimes being round or half-circular to meet the exigencies of the design, and in general they are very quaint and original in their conception. The British Museum has some fine examples of these Chertsey tiles in composite pictures made up of many tiles.

The designs found on mediæval tiles consist of the figures of animals, mythical and heraldic, of birds, of human heads and grotesques, as well as conventional, floral, and geometric patterns. They are highly artistic and of great technical excellence.

It is generally believed that the monks made these tiles themselves in the great religious houses, and possibly some of them may have had foreign inspiration or have been made here by foreigners. But as the tiles at Malvern and at Chertsey are finer than any found on the Continent it opens up a field for conjecture. Mr. Solon says, "I have often thought that considering the French pavements of the earliest periods have mostly been found in the provinces then under English domination, it would be worth while inquiring whether the art of tile-making had not been imported from England--a point which has never yet been sifted."

So here, then, is a subject ready to hand for the collector willing to specialise in a branch of ceramic study and collecting not greatly inquired into, and the way has already been pointed out by experts. There is every reason why these ecclesiastical tiles should be studied with as much assiduity as are the Bristol delft painted tiles and those of Liverpool.

=Slip Ware.=--This ware is peculiarly English and owes little or nothing to any foreign influences, as no ware like it has ever been made on the Continent. White or light-coloured clay was used in the form of "slip," that is, a mixture of water and clay of such consistency as to be dropped in fanciful pattern upon the darker body of the ware much in the same manner as the confectioner ornaments his wedding-cakes with sugar. Candlesticks, cups, tygs (drinking vessels having several handles for use in passing round), posset-pots, jugs, besides the large ornamental dated dishes by Toft and others were all made of this slip-decorated ware.

=Wrotham, in Kent=, claims superiority in the manufacture of this ware, of which many pieces exist. The earliest Wrotham specimen is dated 1656 (Maidstone Museum). There are other dated pieces, one as early as 1621, of red clay with more elaborate slip decoration than is found in Staffordshire and elsewhere, and in some cases with fine incised decoration cut through the white dip and exposing the red body beneath. But considerable doubt exists as to whether to ascribe some of this slip ware to Kent or to Staffordshire. It is probable that it was made at many other places, certainly in Derbyshire, in Wales, and in London. As some undoubted Wrotham pieces betray a slightly advanced type of decoration although prior in date to other pieces made elsewhere, it has been fairly conjectured that the style originated in Kent, and was brought thither by some foreign refugees from the Continent. But as it became practised more generally in England it assumed a national character entirely its own, and took to itself a quaint humour racy of the soil.

=Toft Ware.=--The names of Ralph Toft and Thomas Toft appearing on certain large dishes, usually about eighteen inches in diameter, decorated in slip in a somewhat crude manner, have given the name to this class of ware, which at best is peasant pottery. The Tofts had their works near Shelton in Staffordshire. Similar dishes were made at Derby and at Tickenhall. The following names occur on examples in the National and other collections with dates, Ralph Toft, Thomas Toft, 1671; Robert Shaw, 1692; William Chaterly, 1696; Ralph Turnor, 1681; William Talor, 1700; John Wright, 1707; initials S. M., 1726, _Dublin Museum_ (possibly Samuel Mayer, of Derby); John Wenter, 1686; I. W., 1706. The manufacture of this slip ware continued, in more or less spasmodic manner, throughout the eighteenth century. Pots and jugs had illiterate inscriptions on them in halting verse, or pious mottoes.

Toft ware, that is, the large dish form, apparently was made solely for ornament. There is a remarkable Toft dish in the Grosvenor Museum at Chester, having the inscription in Toft's peculiar orthography, "Filep Heues, Elesabeth Heues" (Philip and Elizabeth Hughes), signed Thomas Toft and dated 1671. This is evidently a marriage plate. There is the royal arms above, a favourite design in Toft ware, probably copied from some of the more elaborate foreign Bellarmine jugs. The slip potters had a fondness too for royal portraiture which ended lamentably in becoming dreadful caricatures of the subject. As many as nine crowned heads are found on one dish by Ralph Toft, signed "Ralalph To." These have as much art as the Stuart stump-work pictures in needlework, which were contemporary with them, in which kings and queens were represented in no more pleasing manner than on a pack of cards. In speaking of Toft's portrait dishes in general, and of the Grosvenor Museum example in particular, Mr. Frank Freeth, no mean connoisseur, says, "It must not be forgotten that these dishes were ornamental, and intended to occupy a conspicuous place in the homes of loyal citizens, just as oleographs of the King and Queen, that one often sees in country cottages, are made for the purpose in the present day. The same idea has remained; but the form of its expression has changed."

Looking at slip ware as a whole, one must not be too critical in regard to its somewhat inartistic appearance. It certainly has a charm about it which cannot be denied. It is native to the soil, and this peasant industry (if one can appropriately term it such), is chiefly to be regarded from the standpoint of what might have been if it had been allowed to develop on natural and untrammelled lines. But it was pressed on the one side by stoneware, such as the Bellarmine jugs and mugs imported from Germany, and it finally succumbed to foreign delft, which was largely used here prior to the Englishman's determined attempt, at Lambeth, at Bristol, and at Liverpool (where it was the staple industry for some time) to make his own wares.

It is the same story with the fine stoneware, the salt glaze of Staffordshire, which was a magnificent outburst of English art of the highest order, which fell before the cheapness of Wedgwood's and other cream ware, after a heroic struggle in its enamelled stage with the coloured ware of the new English china factories. These precedents might be continued further up to the present day, when German, Austrian, and Japanese competition have driven English potters into the position of attempting to hold their own against foreign art.

It is the opinion of the present writer that the coats-of-arms on the Toft dishes were a deliberate attempt to copy those frequently found on the belly of the Rhenish stoneware jugs. From the days of Elizabeth coats-of-arms and heraldic devices were a feature in these jugs used in this country. Among those at the British and the Victoria and Albert Museums, and in the fine collection at the Guildhall, the use of crests is seen to be a striking characteristic (see illustration, p. 135). As a conclusive proof that the maker of earthenware had his eye on these stoneware models, we give as an illustration a jug in _earthenware_ (not stoneware) of Bellarmine form made in England, undoubtedly by an English potter. The arms on it are those of the Earl of Dorset, not improbably those of the sixth Earl, Charles Sackville, who lived from 1637 to 1706, and was the author of the well-known song, running--

"To all you ladies now on land We men at sea indite; But first would have you understand How hard it is to write"--

written in 1665, when he attended the Duke of York as a volunteer in the Dutch war, and this song he composed when with the fleet on the eve of battle.

There is a sort of heraldic touch about some of these Staffordshire dishes of the Toft class. The same idea seems to have possessed the workers of the Stuart stump-pictures in needlework, which were contemporary with these dishes. Coins and medals and Stuart marriage-badges are evidently the source from which Toft and his school on the one hand, and the gentle needlewoman on the other, derived their inspiration in design. Various animals and birds are used symbolically with great freedom. The caterpillar and butterfly nearly always accompany needlework portraits of Charles I., and the unicorn was the device of his father James I. There seems some similarity to this idea in the use of the _Mermaid_ in the dish by Thomas Toft. Another dish of his, entitled "The Pelican in her Piety," depicts that bird with her young, the idea being that the pelican used to feed her brood with her own blood. The Latins called filial love _piety_, hence Virgil's hero is always termed _pius Aeneas_. "Ralph Simpson" is another name found on this pelican dish.

We give an illustration of a fine posset-pot of Staffordshire origin, dated 1685, in slip ware, with yellow ground and conventional ornament in brown, with dotted work. It is inscribed, "William Simpson, His Cup." It has three handles and three loops, and is quite a typical piece of this class of ware. It recently sold for fifty-five pounds (p. 89).

_Metropolitan Slip Ware._--There is a slight distinction between pieces made in London and found during excavations, and those discovered elsewhere. The slip decoration is lightly done and there is a tendency to incised decoration of conventional floral design. One noticeable feature in this type of ware is its inscriptions, written in doggerel, always of a pious nature. "When this you see, Remember me,--Obeay God's word"; or "Drink faire, Don't sware"; or "Be not hyminded but feare God, 1638." This class of ware savours strongly of the Puritan influence, and it is evident that the potters who made these pieces were of the "Praise God Barebones" order of visionary, not uncommon at a time when books with titles like the following appeared, "Some fine Baskets baked in the Oven of Charity, carefully conserved for the Chickens of the Church, the Sparrows of the Spirit, and the sweet Swallows of Salvation."

It seems absurd in regarding the productions of this school of English slip workers, from middle Stuart days down to the early years of the eighteenth century, to consider that Vandyck had painted his galleries of beauties; that Hollar, with his etching needle, had drawn a long procession of figures in costume, thousands of etchings which surely must have caught the eye of some Toft or some Simpson. There was Grinling Gibbons working his artistic profusion in wreaths of flowers and fruit carved in wood, and there were the treasures of the silversmith, to say nothing of the sumptuous furniture that was beginning to make its way in England. But these slip ware dishes seem to stand somewhat like the Jacobean chairs made in Yorkshire and Derbyshire, of the same date, apparently unaffected by any of the æsthetic movements of the period. Simply and naturally, and, be it said, crudely representing the artistic aspirations of the ordinary craftsman when he was left to himself, it is _naïve_, standing as it does for English native art at a time when Bernard Palissy, the French potter, had been dead a hundred years.

EARLY WARE PRICES.

WROTHAM WARE. £ s. d.

Loving cup, four handled, fine specimen, decorated in slip; initials W.L.R. and H.I.; dated 1656. Sotheby, January, 1906 56 0 0

Wine jug, brown with yellow slip, inscribed Samuel Hugheson and dated 1618; 8 in. high. Sotheby, June, 1906 10 0 0

Cradle, with inscription, "Mary Overton, Her cradle, 1729." Puttick and Simpson, May, 1908 17 0 0

TOFT WARE.

Plate (17 in. diameter), with figure of soldier, in relief, with sword in each hand; trellis border; dated 1677. Warner, Leicester, March, 1906 86 0 0

SLIP WARE.

Brown posset-pot, two handled with lid, inscribed "William and Mary Goldsmith," date incised "June ye 7th, 1697"; 9 in. high. Bond, Ipswich, April, 1906 15 0 0

Dish, bearing royal arms of England, inscribed "G. R. 1748"; 18-1/2 in. diameter. Sotheby, June, 1906 21 0 0

Posset-pot, three handled, inscribed "Robert Shaw." Sotheby, June, 1906 35 0 0

Posset-pot, larger, inscribed "God save the Queen 1711." Sotheby, June, 1906 26 0 0

Posset-pot, two handled, inscribed "Iohn Taylor, 1690." Sotheby, November, 1907 12 15 0

Dish, slip decorated and salt glazed, inscribed on rim, "Joseph Mosson, the Best is not too good for You 1727." Sotheby, May, 1908 13 10 0

Dish, trellis pattern, on rim in brown and yellow slip, portraits of Charles II. and Catherine of Braganza; inscribed with maker's name "George Taylor"; 17-1/2 in. diameter. Sotheby, May, 1908 53 0 0

Posset-pot, yellow ground, conventional ornament in brown, with dotted work, inscribed "William Simpson, His Cup." Dated 1685. Sotheby, December, 1908 (see illustration, p. 89) 55 0 0

III

ENGLISH DELFT