CHAPTER V

EARLY STAFFORDSHIRE WARE

THOMAS WHIELDON:

HIS CONTEMPORARIES AND HIS SUCCESSORS

The forerunners of Whieldon--The position of Staffordshire Ware--Whieldon as a potter--Early Staffordshire Art--The rivalry with salt glaze--Form _versus_ Colour--The last years of the Eighteenth century--The English spirit--Prices.

"Early Staffordshire" is a generic term used to include much of the unknown ware of the early period between about 1720 to 1760. It is not early enough to go back to the butter-pot days of Charles II. nor to include the school of Toft and his contemporaries, with their quaint native humour. But it is an important period when earthenware was in a transitional stage. It is, in fact, the period when Staffordshire may be regarded as the great nursery of potters in swaddling clothes who came into their majority later with full honours.

The chronological table at the head of this chapter shows the great events that were shaping the destiny of this country, and, in politics, in art, and in letters, it must be admitted that the age of Anne and the first two Georges was prolific enough in incident. It was during the greater portion of the first half of the eighteenth century that English earthenware was finding itself. Attempts at classification nearly always leave the borders overlapping. In trying to gather in our net a band of representative potters with work peculiarly illustrative of this period which was essentially English--as English as Toft--but progressing towards something that should stand as worthy of our art, several great potters, such as the Woods, have escaped, and will be treated separately later. It must be granted that the influence of the Whieldon school was not obliterated even by the great rise of the classic school of design as exemplified by Wedgwood, Turner, and Adams. The strong English robustness and the national insularity of design never wholly died out in the eighteenth century. It was eclipsed by classic frigidities from across the Alps, and it suffered discomfiture from the rococo insipidities from France first naturalised at Chelsea and at Derby. But it lingered in the hearts of the common people like the tunes of some of the old ballads in spite of the fashions of Gluck and of Handel. Thus it comes to pass that, side by side with the Iphigenias, the Andromaches, the Venuses, the Minervas, and the other esoteric personages from among the gods and goddesses of Olympus, with their accompaniment of foreign fauns and satyrs, there were the very English (founded on Gillray and Rowlandson), almost Rabelaisian, grotesques in the army of Toby Jugs and the sporting, rural, nautical, historic, commemorative, and satiric jugs and mugs and figures, with English doggerel and with idiosyncrasies enough to make our earthenware essentially national.

Unfortunately in the early days it is impossible with any degree of certainty to assign many of these older pieces to any particular potter. The collector can only lament "the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattering her poppy," as Sir Thomas Browne puts it. It is without doubt rightly believed that Thomas Whieldon had a great and lasting influence upon the potters of his generation, but his own actual work has been swallowed up by the covering phrase "Whieldon ware," which, like "Elers ware" and "Astbury ware," has come to mean a good many things, and these are names of types rather than persons.

=The forerunners of Whieldon.=--It is necessary briefly to recapitulate the events immediately from the commencement of the eighteenth century to the day when Whieldon established his status.

There was a continuous chain of potters working in Staffordshire from the days of the Elers (1690-1710), to the period when Josiah Wedgwood became a master potter on his own account in 1760; he was then thirty years of age.

Wedgwood's own estimate of the Elers is interesting. Speaking of what Elers did for Staffordshire he says, "It is now about eighty years since Mr. Elers came amongst us ... the improvements made (by him) in our manufactory were precisely these--glazing our common clays with salt which produced _Pot d'grey_ or stoneware, and this after they had left the country was improved into white stoneware by using the pipe clay of this neighbourhood and mixing it with flint stones calcin'd and reduced by pounding in to a fine powder."

There is not a word about Dwight in all this; evidently Josiah seems not to have known of the legal action against Elers and one of his own kinsmen amongst others. The invention of flint is an allusion to Thomas Astbury about 1720, but Dwight also knew of this formula as his recorded notes prove.

To continue, "The next improvement by Mr. Elers was the refining of our common red clay by sifting and making it into tea and coffee ware in imitation of the Chinese red porcelain by the casting it in plaster moulds and turning it on the outside upon Lathes, and ornamenting it with the tea branch in relief, in imitation of the Chinese manner of ornamenting the ware. For these improvements--and very great ones they were--we are indebted to the very ingenious Messrs. Elers, and I shall gladly contribute all in my power to honour their memories and transmit to posterity the knowledge of the obligations we owe to them."

This is in respect to a jasper medallion portrait of John Philip Elers. Wedgwood is wrong in one or two particulars. The salt glaze question is open to doubt, and most certainly Elers never used moulds for their ware.

We give this as showing the continuity which existed between Elers and Wedgwood, the latter certainly owed his application of the ornamentation in relief to the method which Elers had introduced into Staffordshire. We do not say invented, because there is always Dwight standing in the background.

To give Elers his due he certainly set Staffordshire talking and wondering, and he unwittingly filled Twyford and Astbury with new ideas which they were not slow to adopt. Astbury comes as the echo which Elers left behind in Staffordshire, a substantial enough echo, for Astbury took his master's ideas and created a ware with white stamped ornaments in relief, to which his own name is given as a generic term. John Astbury the elder died in 1743, and Thomas, his son, commenced potting as early as 1723. And the Astburys rub shoulders with Thomas Whieldon, whose apprentice and sometime partner (1752-1758) was Josiah Wedgwood.

It will thus be seen that Thomas Whieldon (1740-1780) came upon the scene in the history of the Staffordshire potteries when the art was in a somewhat transitional stage. New fields were opening and new ideas developing that were shortly to bring English pottery into line with that on the Continent.

=The position of Staffordshire Ware.=--It is necessary to show the stage at which English pottery had arrived in order to place Whieldon aright and to show the various impulses which led to the outburst of potting which stirred Staffordshire. Stoneware in crude form or in highly finished foreign style in Cologne ware had been gaining ground since Tudor days. Later the use of delft had won favour and was still in full swing at Lambeth, at Bristol, and at Liverpool when Whieldon commenced potting. It had also become acclimatised in Staffordshire. Toft's and other slip ware was contemporary with delft as a native art. And now, looking forward, we see the oncoming triumph of stoneware, in its finely potted and highly artistic Staffordshire form, which was to overthrow delft and slip ware, and in turn be stamped out by the utilitarian cream ware of Whieldon's apprentice, Josiah Wedgwood, who built up his fortune at Etruria on this domestic ware.

The Whieldon period (1740-1780) was an important one in ceramic events. In 1744 Bow commenced to make porcelain. In 1745 is the earliest dated piece of Chelsea porcelain, the year that the Pretender won the battle of Preston Pans, near Edinburgh, and invaded England, bringing his army as far as Derby. In 1750, Derby made earthenware, and in 1751 commenced to make porcelain, which is the same year in which Worcester commenced a glorious record in the making of porcelain. Longton Hall, Bristol, and Liverpool continued the same story, and transfer-printing was practised at Worcester by Hancock on porcelain, and at Liverpool on delft tiles by Sadler and Green. Lowestoft opened a kiln in 1756. Leeds ware was made in 1760, and, finally, Wedgwood's queen's ware in 1762, and four years before Whieldon gave up his work Wedgwood had invented his jasper ware.

=Whieldon as a potter.=--Not a great deal is known of Whieldon's personality. He must have commenced in a small way of business as he tramped from place to place with specimens of his wares on his back in pedlar fashion. But he became of considerable importance as he held the office of High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1786, some six years after he retired from his pottery. Whieldon numbered among his apprentices some young men who afterwards became famous. There was Josiah Wedgwood, who became his partner from 1753 to 1759, Josiah Spode, and William Greatbach, Edge, Heath, Marsh, and there was Aaron Wood, who was employed at Little Fenton for some time. On account of his apprentices having become famous, it has been suggested that he was probably indebted to them for much of his fame. On reflection it may possibly be seen that the opposite conclusion may very well be true, and it is not improbable that Wedgwood and Spode and Greatbach and the others owed a considerable debt to Whieldon for having received a highly technical training at his hands.

In regard to cream ware, undoubtedly this was in an experimental stage, and Whieldon in common with Astbury made those queer little figures with yellow heads and red or yellow bases, but the tortoiseshell flown colouring apparently denotes some of the specimens made by Whieldon. He made salt glaze, he made tea and coffee pots with the Astbury decorations, but with a strong leaning to the earlier Elers style in his avoidance of too strong contrast between white pipe-clay ornament on a dark body. Whieldon toned his ornaments with touches of his own in green and yellow and brown. His solid agate ware and his tortoiseshell and clouded wares, and his cauliflower ware have become so memorable in the cabinets of collectors that they have won him fame, and he has in consequence been credited with all specimens of these classes of ware. We illustrate (p. 161) an example of the Whieldon _Cauliflower Teapot_ with vivid green and yellow colouring.

Of this early period, the fine group we illustrate (p. 171) with a _coffee-pot_ of glazed red ware, a kaolin of deep cream colour decorated in red, may not unreasonably be attributed to John Astbury, while the little _Figure_ of flown colouring, with red base and brown shoes, may be either by Whieldon or possibly by Thomas Astbury.

The "solid agate" of Whieldon is something far more artistic than the combed ware of earlier days or the very rough attempts at solid agate made by clumsier hands than his own prior to his experiments.

Surface decoration in imitation of agate had been produced by employing two different coloured clays on the surface of a vessel, and when in a wet state combing them to represent the desired veining of the stone to be simulated. "Solid agate" is another process of placing layers of clay of different colours and cutting them in section to show the bands of colour. In Whieldon's hands the layers were thin and the waves and twists, cut off the clay with a wire like cheese is cut, showed in the finished result something more artistic than had ever been attempted before. He made jugs and sauceboats, teapots, teapoys, and other table utensils of this ware, including knife handles. No two pieces are exactly alike, and there is a considerable variety in the breadth of the veining and in the ware, some being intentionally coarser in order to suit the subject potted.

There is no doubt that this ware, standing in a measure in a _cul de sac_ of ceramic art, is highly effective, and Wedgwood used with great skill both the solid agate and the surface colour for his ornamental pieces and vases of classic type, in imitation of granite, Egyptian pebble, jasper, porphyry, and several kinds of agate. His range of colour was more extended than that of Whieldon, but there is little doubt that he gained his first knowledge of the properties and possibilities of this variegated ware when he was with Whieldon.

Casting about for something equally effective with possibly less technical difficulties, Whieldon evolved his celebrated clouded wares. Here he took advantage of the new cream ware as a body, the surface of which is splashed or sponged with various tints in imitation of tortoiseshell, although many of the colours introduced depart from tortoiseshell tones and introduce something fresh and original in earthenware decoration.

There is the patent taken out by Redrich and Jones, Staffordshire potters in 1724, for "staining, veining, spotting, clouding, or damasking earthenware, to give it the appearance of various kinds of marble, porphyry, and rich stones, as well as tortoiseshell." And Ralph Wood, of Burslem, made variegated ware of a particular kind which may well be termed "tesselated," as small pieces of tinted clay were affixed or inlaid on the surface of vessels to be decorated, and subsequently glazed. This mosaic work in imitation of granite was employed also at Leeds.

To return to Whieldon. There is no doubt that he found this variegated ware in a somewhat inchoate state in regard to technique, and the more scientific exactitude which he employed has gained for his wares their fame. We illustrate (p. 167) two fine examples of tortoiseshell ware, a _Teapot_ embossed with hawthorn pattern design, and a finely decorated _Bowl and Cover_ having a running floral pattern in relief.

The many coloured dessert plates, sometimes of octagonal shape, made by Whieldon in this later mottled manner, in which the surface only is decorated, are well known to collectors. In Whieldon's own examples the potting is more perfect than in those of other potters. His plates are to be recognised not only by their colour, but in the very subtle way he has handled it. The deft touch of blue or yellow or green, has in other hands become a patch of obvious crudity, striking a discordant note at once. The deep grey octagonal plates by him are loved by connoisseurs as exhibiting his subtlety at its best. We illustrate two examples of this class of Whieldon tortoiseshell plates with rich brown colouring flecked with green and yellow (see p. 161).

The mechanical mottling by his imitators, seemingly dabbed on in spots by a sponge, should not be easy to distinguish after having seen one of his best examples. In regard to the potting, Whieldon ware plates have a flat broad rim, which almost invariably has a border of applied strips laid crosswise.

But it must not be forgotten that, when once the fashion for "Whieldon ware" became general, other potteries came into line. At Liverpool this class of mottled and clouded ware was made, and also at the Castleford pottery, near Leeds, and consequently many unmarked examples may be attributed to these potteries. Some of the Castleford tortoiseshell plates are impressed "D.D. & Co."

=Early Staffordshire Art.=--Among the earlier figures of the Astbury pottery the elder Astbury worked from 1736 to 1743, and his son continued his traditions later. There are a number of quadrupeds and birds which are assigned by collectors to the elder Astbury, which are, although crude, extremely interesting as showing the experiments in coloured clays and in lead glazing. Agate figures of cats of intermingled clays, and diminutive figures of men, some six inches in height, with splashed or clouded decoration, all come into this indeterminate period. The figure in the group (p. 171) already referred to is a case in point.

In the illustration of a fine specimen of an agate cat, in height only 4 inches, the body colour is light grey with dark brown solid marbling, and the front and ears are splashed with blue. Another miniature animal figure belonging to this period is the salt-glaze jug in form of a bear, only 3-1/8 inches high (see illustration, p. 171).

We illustrate two animals, one of the tortoiseshell variety, a beast of formidable appearance and having considerable power in the modelling and strongly suggestive of the jaguar, but it must be remembered that beasts as depicted in contemporary books have an inclination towards heraldic monsters such as "never were on land or sea." The splashed cream ware elephant, only 3-3/4 inches in height, is fairly well modelled. But these, in common with the many diminutive figures of a like nature, belong to a period when Staffordshire was endeavouring to found an English school of potters, blindly groping along in almost untutored fashion--lame in design and feeble in inventiveness. From out of this chaos it seems impossible that there should arise soul enough to set the fashion later--nearly fifty years later--to the continent of Europe, and make English earthenware the formidable rival in point of cheapness, and often in point of beauty, to anything produced on the Continent. But the earthenware of Staffordshire was able to teach new points in technique concerning body and glaze to the continental potter.

In the illustration showing the group of _St. George and the Dragon_ it will be seen that the modelling begins to assume a more pretentious character. The prevailing colours of the knight are green and cream, the horse and the base of the group are of the familiar tortoiseshell colouring. Beside this St. George are two early Staffordshire figures representing two old women as hucksters. Here the feeling is instinctively English, as national as are the Dutch beggars of the seventeenth-century Dutch etchers. Pity it is that this class of figure, recording national and local types, did not develop on uninterrupted lines. It is true, and of these we shall speak later, that the family of Wood in their types carried on the tradition, but the unfortunate classic influence monopolised the talents of the best modellers.

We illustrate two fine examples of _Toby Jugs_ belonging to the Whieldon period. There is a strong family likeness between the two. The left-hand one is richly glazed and mottled in tortoiseshell markings. The other has the fine translucent colouring and glazing so noticeably prominent in this school. They are both remarkably good specimens of the Whieldon manner, and of unusual interest, as they represent the Toby jug in its earliest form.

=The rivalry with Salt-glaze.=--This "Whieldon ware" (of course it must not be forgotten that Whieldon made salt-glaze too) was contemporaneous with undecorated salt-glaze ware, which at its best exhibited in no small degree a complete knowledge of the strength and beauty of form unaided by colour. But in this school of Whieldon there is a distinct appeal to colour as a leading feature of the ware as opposed to form. There is a fine artistic blending of the colours and the variation of the glazes which palpitate with life and give extraordinary power to pieces possessed of the "Whieldon" touch. Not only on flat surfaces such as the well-known octagonal plates, but in figures and groups such as we have illustrated, these colour effects were employed with considerable dexterity. So that, in the contemplation of black-and-white illustrations of "Whieldon ware," everything is lost which gave the beauty and richness and mellowness which have an irresistible charm to those collectors who confine themselves to this early school of colourists.

=Form _versus_ Colour.=--The salt-glaze potters, when they left their ideals of form and essayed to become colourists as well, made this attempt chiefly for two reasons.

(1) They had a very laudable desire to emulate the coloured porcelain made at Worcester, Bow, Chelsea, and Derby, which had become a serious competitor in their markets.

(2) They recognised a certain weakness in their ware in regard to its inapplicability to figures and groups. Unless the modelling is of the highest order the salt-glaze figures are insipid.

With regard to enamelled salt-glaze in general this is dealt with in another chapter, but it may here be remarked as touching the second point--the salt-glaze figure--that the salt-glaze potter brought himself directly in comparison with the figures and groups of earthenware of the later Whieldon school. Realising that if he must stand at all as a figure potter his modelling must be superlative, we find the salt-glaze figures, which are mainly small in size, taken direct from the antique or from porcelain models. But feeling the lack of colour he added touches here and there by applying reliefs of different coloured clays to heighten the effect. The salt-glaze potter rarely enamelled his figures in colours. In the illustration of a salt-glazed figure (p. 351) there are slight touches of blue.

So that in the contest between salt-glaze (the pre-eminent art of the Staffordshire potter in early eighteenth-century days) and its two great rivals, English porcelain and Staffordshire coloured earthenware, in other words--Form _versus_ Colour--the first fall it received was at the hands of "Whieldon ware." The coloured and exquisitely clouded tortoiseshell plate, with its fine gradations of tone throbbing with colour, more than holds its own with the salt-glaze plate, even although its clear-cut arabesque designs and intricate patterns exhibit the excellence of its potting.

=The Last Years of the Eighteenth Century.=--Enough has been said to show that this typically English school had firmly established itself in Staffordshire. Whieldon, Dr. Thomas Wedgwood, Aaron Wood (block cutter to Whieldon), Josiah Spode the first, Greatbach, Enoch Booth, and many others, firmly adhered to their love of colour and their desire to see cream ware triumphant. The struggle for the supremacy of earthenware over English porcelain was still waging. And Wedgwood, with his marvellous invention of jasper ware and his equally stupendous innovation in the introduction of severe classic ornament, did not impose his style on all Staffordshire. We shall see in a later chapter how he had a crowd of followers and imitators, but at the same time many, very many, productions were potted contemporary with him that owed nothing in design to him, and on the face of them bear no traces of the classic influence.

It is this overlapping period, during which so many examples are unmarked, which is so puzzling to the collector. "Old Staffordshire," they certainly are, "Early Staffordshire" they may not be, but they exhibit a national and original feeling which it is impossible not to recognise and value.

We illustrate two groups of jugs which belong to this period. In the top jug of the upper group, which is pencilled with blue floral decoration, the spout betrays a trace of Worcester and a tinge of classicism in the acanthus leaf ornamentation at its base. But the inscription drops at once into the homely vernacular, "William and Mary Harrison One Nother and Then." The quaint phonetic spelling tells its own story of the mission of the ale-house jug, with its invitation to another burst of hospitality.

The three jugs below are of the same species. The handles vary slightly, showing the inclination to adopt silver models. The left-hand one has a panel with figure of Miser in relief each side. The middle jug, with the heart-shaped panel, is decorated in relief with group of Children at play. Such subjects had not appeared on jugs before Wedgwood's day, but the idea might easily have been derived from contemporary prints of the pretty school of Bartolozzi and Angelica Kauffman. The right-hand jug, with its Peacocks in relief, is evidently derived from the exotic birds of Worcester.

In the other group of jugs, the uppermost betrays in the spout and neck distinct traces of its indebtedness to classic forms. It is translucent green in colour, and with coloured figures in high relief. At the front is Shakespeare, with figures of _Miser_ and _Spendthrift_ each side. Between these (one is just visible in illustration) are classic medallions. This is an incongruous style of decoration, and shows how little the Staffordshire potter who made it understood the meaning of ornament. He realised that the classic style was becoming popular, and so he half hesitatingly affixed two cameos to his otherwise harmonious production. The granite-ware jug, finely mottled, with two black-and-white bands as ornament round body, is the newer development of the early variegated ware. The right-hand jug is, in its gnarled and bulgy protuberances, known as the crabstock variety, the moulding, in the form of satyr's head crowned with vines, is an addition and is extraneous to the usual crabstock form. Obviously this is a welding together of the English and classic grotesque, and the combination is not too harmonious.

The early Staffordshire potters, apart from the splashed and variegated ware associated with Whieldon, made a variety of ware in pre-Wedgwood days and in the late eighteenth century. Obviously such a jug as that illustrated (p. 189) is an Oriental design taken straight from the contemporary English porcelain, or even from the actual Chinese original. But the Staffordshire potter was conservative in his shapes. Similarly, such jugs as that illustrated (p. 189) with the rustic design in crude painting, or seemingly in parts applied with a sponge, must have been general in the latter half of the eighteenth century. The scene is suggestive of Herrick and maypoles and haywains and rustic junketings, and such early cream-ware cider-mugs and ale-jugs are not uncommon. The _Mug_ (illustrated p. 189) shows distinctive qualities. It is by Enoch Wood. It is decorated with translucent bands at top and base, and ornamented with a diaper-pattern stamped and coloured brown, with alternate lines of grey. These jugs and mugs are here illustrated to impress upon the reader the fact that in the Whieldon period (1740-1780) other forms than variegated ware were being made, and much unidentified early Staffordshire ware belongs to the later years of the eighteenth century.

=The English spirit.=--These forms--and the field is a great one for detailed study--were growing up in spite of foreign and un-English fashions, and long after Wedgwood's day they existed. It seems as though it was a dogged and obstinate attempt on the part of the potter to ignore classic models, and produce something "understanded of the people." Obviously such ware did not rise to elaborate ornamental vases, but confined itself to mugs and jugs and useful articles in common use. So that, in spite of the enormous influence of Wedgwood, both in technique, but more especially in decoration, upon his contemporaries and his successors, it would seem that there was always an undercurrent of pottery which, even if crude, was extremely national. It appealed to no cosmopolitan _clientèle_, and the potters who made it were not important enough to issue price lists in three or four languages. Their message--as conveyed by their quaint inscriptions, "One Nother and Then," "I drink to you with all my hart, Mery met and mery part," and a host of other naïve sentiments--comes direct from the heart of the potter to his friend and neighbour who bought his wares. In a word, we may say that much that is native, much that is racy of the soil, in the long line of queer Staffordshire figures of animals and birds and of homely individuals, grotesque in their diminutive personality, owe direct kinship to Whieldon and the pre-Wedgwood school of potters, forgetful of the cold classic day, and, in the words of William Blake, snug by the glad sunshine of "the Alehouse so healthy and pleasant and warm."