Catalogue of specimens illustrative of the composition and manufacture of British pottery and porcelain : from the occupation of Britain by the Romans to the present time / by Sir Henry De La Beche, C.B., director, and Trenham Reeks, curator.
- Museum of Practical Geology (Great Britain)
- Date:
- 1855
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Catalogue of specimens illustrative of the composition and manufacture of British pottery and porcelain : from the occupation of Britain by the Romans to the present time / by Sir Henry De La Beche, C.B., director, and Trenham Reeks, curator. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![imbibe moisture, by which the butter appeared of greater weight than that actually sold.* The clays used in the seventeenth century appear to have all come from the neighbourhood, and for the most part from the coal measures. Fine sand, for admixture with them, was obtained from the hilly part of Baddeley Hedge and Mole Cob. Plott, in his Plott's account History of Staffordshire, published in 1686, presents °£USed us with a valuable statement as to the clays then used, and the manufacture at that time, including the mode of glazing.} Up to 1680, the glazing employed seems * Dr. Shaw, writing in 1829, remarks, “ that the common people of the district, at the present day, call Irish tub butter, pot butter.” Plott, Nat. Hist. Staffordshire, 1686, p. 108, says, “ The butter they buy by the pot, of a long cylindrical size, made at Burs- lem, in this county, of a certain size, so as not to weigh above six pounds at most, and yet to contain at least fourteen pounds of butter, according to an Act of Parliament made about 14 or 16 years agoe, for regulating the abuses of this trade.” He also mentions that the cheesemongers of London had established a factory at Uttoxeter, and that the parties laid out, in the season, more than 500Z. on market days for butter and cheese. The factors kept a surveyor, who tried the pots with an instrument. It was an object that the pots should be hard, and not so porous as to imbibe much water, which might be counted in the weight for butter. f The following is Plott’s account: After mentioning the Amblecot clay as the best, and as used at the glasshouses at Amblecot, and other places in Staffordshire, for their pots, he continues, “ Other potter’s clays for the more common wares, there are at many other places, particularly at Horsley Heath, in the parish of Tipton ; in Monway Pield, abovementioned, where there are two sorts gotten, one of a yellowish colour mixt with white, the other blewish ; the former stiff and weighty, the other more friable and light; which mixt together, work better than apart: of these they make divers sorts of vessels at Wednesbury, which they paint with slip, made of a reddish sort of earth gotten at Tipton. But the greatest pottery they have in this county, is carried on at Burslem, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, where for making their several sorts of pots, they have as many different sorts of clay, which they dig round about the towne, all within half a mile dis- tance, the best being found nearest the coale, and are distinguish’t by their colours and uses as followeth :— 1. Bottle clay, of a bright whitish streaked yellow colour. 2. Hard fire clay, of a duller whitish colour, and fuller intersperst with a dark yellow, which they use for their black wares, being mixt with the 3. Red blending clay, which is of a dirty red colour. 4. White clay, so called, it seems, though of a blewish colour, and used for making yellow-colour’d ware, because yellow is the lightest colour they make any ware of. All which they call throwing clays, because they are of a closer texture, and will work on the wheel. “ 26' mich none of the three other clays, they call slips, will any of them doe, being of looser and more friable natures ; these mixed with water, they make into a consistence thinner than a syrup, so that being put into a bucket it will run out through a quill, this they call slip, and is the substance wherewith they paint their wares ; whereof the ]. Sort is called the orange slip, which before it is work’t, is of a greyish colour mixt which orange balls, and gives the ware (when annealed) an orange colour. °](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2485458x_0137.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
