GLOSSARY
- Agate Ware.—Earthenware made either "solid" or in "surface" decoration to resemble the veinings of agate and other natural stones. The "solid" agate ware is produced by layers of different coloured clays being twisted together and cut transversely. The "surface" agate ware is splashed and grained decoration on an ordinary cream body.
- Astbury Ware.—A generic term applied to specimens in the manner of the Astburys, with raised floral decoration of white on a red unglazed body.
- Basalt.—Black Basalt, or "Egyptian" ware, is a solid black stoneware of great hardness, made by Wedgwood and by his school of followers.
- Biscuit.—This term is applied to earthenware and porcelain when it has been fired once. It is after the biscuit stage that decorations in colour are applied, and the specimen goes to the oven a second time (see Chapter I.).
- Body.—The body of a piece of earthenware is the clay of which it is composed irrespective of the nature or colour of decoration applied to its surface.
- China.—This term is applied to porcelain of all classes, whether true porcelain of hard paste, e.g., Chinese, Japanese, Meissen, Plymouth, Bristol, &c., or artificial porcelain of soft paste, e.g., Sèvres (pâte tendre), Worcester, Chelsea, Bow, Lowestoft, &c.
- China Clay.—The whitest clay known. Obtained in England from Devon and Cornwall. Used for porcelain, and also for light-coloured earthenware.
- China Stone.—Known also as Cornish stone; used in conjunction with the china clay for porcelain, and employed for stoneware bodies.
- Cream Ware.—This term applies to all light-coloured English earthenware from about 1750 to the present day. It varied in character from the Queen's Ware of Josiah Wedgwood, 1760, to the "chalk body" used by Wilson at the end of the eighteenth century. Cream ware of later date when broken shows a pure white body—a puzzling fact to beginners in collecting.
- Delft Ware.—A generic term given to earthenware with tin enamelled surface. True Delft ware was made at Delft in Holland after 1600, but it was successfully imitated at Lambeth, Bristol, Liverpool, &c.
- Earthenware.—All ware may be termed earthenware which when in the biscuit state is too porous for domestic use but requires a coating of glaze. As a rule, earthenware is opaque, differing in this respect from porcelain, which is translucent.
- Enamel Colours.—The colours applied either in painted or printed decoration over the glaze.
- Elers Ware.—A generic term used in regard to unglazed red stoneware with applied decoration in the style of the Elers brothers.
- Glaze.—The glassy coating applied to earthenware and porcelain.
- Lead-glaze.—The earliest form used in England was known as galena glaze, when sulphide of lead was in powder form dusted on the ware. Later liquid lead glaze was used, into which the vessels were dipped.
- Salt-glaze.—Common salt was thrown into the kiln, and the resultant vapour deposited a fine layer of glaze on the ware.
- Over-glaze.—This term applies to painted or printed decoration done after the glaze has been applied to the object—i.e., over the glaze.
- Under-glaze.—This applies to decoration, painted or printed, done before the glaze is applied to the object—i.e., when completed the decoration is under the glaze.
- Ironstone China.—An earthenware for which Mason took out a patent in 1813. The body contains a large proportion of flint and slag of ironstone.
- Jasper Ware.—A fine hard stoneware used by Wedgwood, and imitated by his followers. It is unglazed.
- Lustre Ware.—Earthenware decorated by thin layers of copper, gold, or platinum (see Chapter XIII.).
- Marbled Ware.—Ware of a similar nature to agate ware, having its surface combed and grained to imitate various natural marbles or granites.
- Marks.—In earthenware these makers' names or
initials or "trade marks" were usually impressed
with a metal stamp. Obviously this must have
been done when the ware was in plastic state;
therefore it is impossible to add such marks
after the ware is made, and when present on old
ware they are a sign of undoubted genuineness.
Of course a copy can be made bearing an impressed
mark.
Painted or printed marks sometimes occur on earthenware usually of a later date. Such marks may be under-or over-glaze; the former are not likely to have been added after the piece has been made. - Modern.—English earthenware may be termed "modern" when it is of a later date than 1850. Though, as is indicated in Chapter XIV., the modern renaissance in earthenware should be of especial interest to collectors.
- Over-glaze.—See Glaze.
- Oven.—The "oven," as the potter terms it, is a specially-built furnace in which the "saggers" containing the ware are placed during the firing (see Chapter I.).
- Paste.—This is another term for the "body" of the ware.
- "Resist" Pattern.—A term in silver lustre ware. For detailed description see Chapter XIII.
- Sagger.—A fire-clay box in which the earthenware is placed when being fired in the oven (see Illustration, Chapter I.).
- Salt-glaze.—See Glaze, and see Chapter VI.
- Semi-china. Semi-porcelain.—Terms applied to early nineteenth century earthenware having a very white or chalk body, and having the outward appearance of china or porcelain. Strongly imitative and false to the true qualities of earthenware. It is always opaque. Sometimes it is naïvely termed "opaque china."
- Slip.—A thick semi-solid fluid composed of clay and water.
- Spurs. Spur mark.—During the glazing of earthenware "spurs" or "stilts" of fire-clay are used to support the articles and keep them from touching each other. "Spur" or "cockspur" marks are found on the ware where it has rested on these supports (see Chapter IX., p. 298).
- Stoneware.—A variety of pottery distinct from earthenware, and more nearly approaching porcelain in its characteristics. Earthenware, as has been shown, needs a coating of glaze to protect its porous defects. Stoneware is a hard body needing no glaze. Glazed stoneware is frequently found, and the glaze employed is usually salt.
- Throwing.—The art of fashioning shapes on the potter's wheel (see Illustration, Chapter I.).
- Transfer Printing.—Printing employed as a decoration on ware by means of paper which had received a design from a copper-plate, and was transferred to the surface of the ware (see Chapter X.).
- Under-glaze.—See Glaze.
- "Wedgwood."—This has become a generic term for one or two classes of ware—e.g., jasper and black basalt, which were made by most of the potters succeeding Josiah Wedgwood. The word has, in common with Boule and Chippendale become popularly and erroneously used.
- Whieldon Ware.—A generic term covering all classes of ware of a mottled, cloudy, or splashed character—e.g., tortoiseshell plates, vases, figures, &c.