Wedgwood’s financial success with his Jasper and Black Etruscan ware, a success hitherto quite unique in the experience of the Potteries, led every potter of any capacity to attempt the same lines. They cannot be blamed for trying to imitate what was demanded by the fashionable market. The whole progress of the industry had been based upon the copying of successful processes, and Wedgwood did not patent his patterns or methods, even could he have done so.

All over the Potteries they followed in his steps, content to reap with little trouble the advantages of his past labours—reproducing his patterns and avoiding all dangerous novelty. Invention died and the wares, tamely and ignorantly copied by inartistic workmen, sank artistically throughout the next half century. The copyist, imitator or rival, who annoyed Wedgwood most in his lifetime was Humphrey Palmer of Hanley. Most of the Palmer and Neale ware we now know of seems original enough—and good enough—but from 1769-1776 Wedgwood regards him as a copyist of the most objectionable description.[111] It must be said however that he always stamped his imitations with his own name and not Wedgwood’s; a precaution which is not always observed at this present day, even with a patent law to enforce a man’s right to his own trade-mark. It is noticeable too that when Wedgwood did, in 1771, patent the method of painting with an encaustic red on the Black Etruscan ware, Palmer produced the same results and forced him to share the patent rights.[112] Palmer however got into financial difficulties, in 1776, and his business was taken over by his brother-in-law Henry Neale. Neale, in conjunction later on with David Wilson, continued the same style of ornamental ware, and so excellent are some of his granitic ornamental pieces now in museums that he must take rank as a rival rather than as an imitator of Wedgwood. Both Neale and Palmer had married daughters of that Thomas Heath who tried to make Delft ware at Lane End early in the century. Another daughter is said to have married Mr Pratt, a potter of Lane Delf, whose descendants have ever since continued to make pottery on what may be the very spot where Thomas Heath made his original Delft ware.[113]

John Turner, of Lane End, was another competitor of Wedgwood. He was almost as confirmed an experimenter, and produced a jasper ware very close on Wedgwood’s heels. He was born in 1738,[114] and started his own works at Lane End in 1762, and his chief productions were the fashionable cream colour and a cane-coloured stoneware. He was one of the first to appreciate the value of the newly discovered china stone for the cream-coloured body, and he therefore took an active part in opposing the extension of Cookworthy’s patent. Afterwards, in 1775, he joined Wedgwood in leasing some of the Cornish clay mines. A discovery of a good local clay at Green Dock, close by Longton Cemetery, led to his most characteristic production—the cane-coloured stoneware, ornamented with embossed decoration in the same colour. The material was also found very suitable for busts and statuettes. It is recorded that he could, in this material, make a most life-like representation of pie-crust, and that once, as a tour de force, he reproduced exactly an entire banquet with everything, from the roast beef to the custards, realistically translated into stoneware. It will be understood from this that there was room for a revival of taste in pottery. Turner’s jasper is quite different to that of Wedgwood, or of those who made it when the secret of the mixture had become known. Its ground is an unfortunate slaty blue, which does not improve the appearance of the ware, and the designs of the bas-reliefs are rococo, which is worse than neo-classical.

John Turner died in 1786, and was succeeded by his two sons, John and William, who continued to produce black basalt as well as this strange jasper. Their business was ruined by the French wars, and in 1803 they were compelled to close down. John Turner, jun., became manager to Thomas Minton, then starting his historic factory in Stoke.

We have seen that Turner went to Lane End in 1762. “About 1750,” says Shaw, but probably some years later, “Mr John Barker, with his brother and Mr Robert Garner, commenced the manufacture of shining black and white stoneware salt glaze at the Row Houses, near the Foley, Fenton, where afterwards they made tolerable cream colour. They realized a good property here; and Mr R. Garner erected a separate manufactory and the best house of the time in Lane End, near the old Turnpike Gate.”[115] This was after 1762, for among the Wedgwood MSS. is an account of that date from Messrs Robert Garner and J. Barker jointly for brown china tea-pots and pineapple jars supplied to Wedgwood at Burslem,[116] doubtless to complete an order. Roger Woods too is said to have built in 1756 a factory, afterwards known as Sampson Bridgwoods, by the brook at the Lower Market Place in Longton. And about the same time Thomas and Joseph Johnson started making good salt glaze just opposite Lane End church.[117]

In this manner potting spread to the Longton end of the Potteries. In 1756 there are said to have only been 100 houses in Longton and Lane End, and even by 1773 an old estate map of the Heathcotes’ shows but 180 houses, or a population of less than 1,000.

As early as 1770 we obtain a familiar glimpse of the working of the factory system. Some of the master-potters in that year tried, for the first time on record, to form a ring to keep up prices. The bond runs as follows: “We whose hands are hereunto subscribed do bind ourselves ... in £50 ... not to sell ... under the within specified prices, as witness our hands: John Platt, John Lowe, John Taylor, John Cobb, Robt. Bucknall, John Daniel, Thos. Daniel jun., Richd. Adams, Saml. Chatterley, Thos. Lowe, John Allen, Wm. Parrott, Jacob Warburton, Warburton and Stone, Jos. Smith, Joshua Heath, John Bourn, Jos. Stephens, Wm. Smith, Jos. Simpson, John Weatherby, J. and Rd. Mare, Nic. Pool, John Yates, Chas. Hassells, Ann Warburton and son, Thos. Warburton, Wm. Meir.” A list of prices for dishes, tureens, saucers, etc., is given; and manufacturers of the present day will be interested to see the first attempt at checking those “rebates” which have successfully broken down this and all subsequent attempts to keep prices artificially high. “To allow no more than 5 per cent for breakage, and 5 per cent for ready money.” Then follows a sentence which misled Shaw and made him think that these potters made salt-glaze stoneware: “To sell to the manufacturers of earthenware at the above prices, and to allow no more than 7½ per cent, beside discount for breakage and prompt payment.”[118] It was the custom of many, particularly the larger manufacturers, to buy ware from other makers, either to decorate, or, more usually, to complete orders in lines which they did not happen to have in hand; (orders were far more all-embracing in those days). Thus we find William Greatbach starting a works at Lower Lane in 1762 under an agreement with Wedgwood to be paid by him fixed prices for his ware.[119] In any case Shaw is obviously wrong in calling these men salt-glaze potters, for makers of salt glaze did not usually apply it to the baking dishes and chamber pots whose prices were under discussion; and it is only in common and standard lines that prices can ever be regulated by a ring. Makers of ornamental salt glaze would have been the last people to combine, and the only ones known to have been making salt glaze at this time, Christopher Whitehead and the Baddeleys, do not appear on this list of Shaw’s at all.

The most notable potters on this list of 1770 were the Warburtons and the Daniels of Cobridge. When the art of enamelling became localized at Hot Lane about 1750, John and Ann Warburton were among the most successful. They were potters of old standing, for a Warburton appears as a master-potter in the Burslem district in 1710-15. They did most of the enamelling for Wedgwood in his early days, and their son, Jacob Warburton (1740-1826), became a potter of great repute, above all on the Continent where his business was very extensive.[120] He spent many years travelling abroad and was a strange man among the rough potters of that day—a Roman Catholic, a great linguist, a famous skater; and for some reason he was always known as Captain Warburton. He was an intimate friend of Wedgwood, and in 1771 acted as his arbitrator in his case against Palmer.[121] When Enoch Booth invented the fluid glaze, the Warburtons were among the first to take it up, and their cream-coloured ware, enamelled with all their exceptional artistic skill, is often confounded with Wedgwood’s best productions.

But to Jacob Warburton the Potteries are chiefly indebted for the revival of Littler’s attempt to introduce the manufacture of hard paste porcelain into Staffordshire. It will be remembered that Richard Champion of Bristol had in 1775 obtained an extension of his monopoly of the use of china clay and china stone in the manufacture of porcelain. In spite of this monopoly he met with but little success in Bristol, and in 1781 he sold his patent to a company in Staffordshire—the first instance recorded of a potting company. Of this company Jacob Warburton was the moving spirit. After John Turner, of Lane End, and Anthony Keeling, of the Phœnix Works in Tunstall, had withdrawn from the scheme, the company—consisting then of Warburton, Sam. Hollins (the red china potter of Shelton) and two financiers—settled their manufactory at Shelton New Hall.[122] Their porcelain is always spoken of as “New Hall China,” but it was of little importance or artistic merit. John Daniel, son of that Richard Daniel who had introduced plaster of Paris moulds from France, was appointed manager and became a partner some years before his death in 1821.[123] Jacob Warburton himself died at Rushton in the old Abbey Grange in 1826, but even before that time the manufacture of hard paste porcelain at the New Hall had ceased.[124]

Another enameller who attained success by perfecting the cream-coloured ware was Elijah Mayer. He is said to have been originally foreign agent for the Chatterleys, and as late as 1787 he appears as an enameller pure and simple, though already in business on his own account. Soon after this date his factory at Hanley began turning out not only cream colour, admirably enamelled in the sober artistic style of Wedgwood’s best Queen’s Ware, but also black basalt, which is every bit as good and has as good a reputation as the best that was turned out at Etruria.[125]

Other very early makers of porcelain were Messrs Baddeley and Fletcher. For some time after 1763 they attempted, with William Littler as manager, to make glassy porcelain similar to that of Longton Hall. Mr Fletcher was the father of Sir Thomas Fletcher, M.P. for Newcastle, and ancestor of the Fletcher-Bougheys, Baronets of Aqualate. Mr John Baddeley the elder was the father of Ralph and John Baddeley, who carried on the works and made an early success with blue printed earthenware.[126]

The Chatterleys of Shelton were another very successful potting family of this date. Dr Samuel Chatterley made the ordinary black Egyptian teapots, but Charles Chatterley went in for the newer cream colour and secured a large foreign connexion. His brother Ephraim became his partner, and ultimately carried on the business alone till 1793, when he handed it over to his nephews, James and Charles Whitehead, sons of Christopher Whitehead of the Old Hall Factory.[127] Ephraim Chatterley lived at what is now Chatterley House, and had the singular distinction of being, in 1784, the first of a long and honourable series of “mock mayors” of Hanley.[128] Though Hanley and Shelton were united in 1812, yet it was not till 1856 that they became incorporated as a borough, and obtained their first genuine Mayor, John Ridgway of Cauldon Place.

The list of potters of 1787, which has already been quoted from, occurs in a rare “Survey of Staffordshire” made by Wm. Tunnicliffe. The Survey consists of little but an itinerary of the main roads, and lists of the manufacturers in each town. As we have to rely so much on the fallible recollections of Shaw, this piece of contemporary evidence is worth quoting in full.

Of course this list is fallible. Josiah and Thomas Wedgwood potted at Etruria, not Fenton; John Turner, shown at Fenton, should probably be the Turner of Lane End; the Josiah “Wood” of Burslem is almost certainly Josiah Wedgwood, who owned at that time the old Churchyard Works, in which he had been born. (They were sold in 1795 to Thomas Green, and on his bankruptcy in 1811 passed to John Moseley). Again, both S. and J. Cartlich, and Wm. Adams, who certainly potted at Golden Hill and Greengates respectively, are included with other Tunstall potters in the Burslem list.

This William Adams of Greengates (1745-1805)[129] achieved a great reputation for his Jasper and Black Basalt ware. He was a cadet of the Adams family, a family which is almost as much identified with the potting industry as is the family of Wedgwood. Four generations had potted at Burslem “Brickhouse” in succession to Thomas Adams who died a “potter” in 1629, and at the end of the eighteenth century the representative of this branch of the family, another William Adams, was a master-potter at Cobridge, and could lay some claim to the introduction of under-glaze blue printing into Staffordshire. The life of Adams of Greengates is given in “William Adams—an old English Potter,” Ed. by Wm. Turner, F.S.S. Born in 1745, he was apprenticed to Josiah Wedgwood, and became his most adept pupil. He commenced manufacturing on his own account at Greengates about 1787, and the jasper he turned out is difficult to distinguish from that of Wedgwood. No doubt he had full particulars of body and firing, but other potters had that information and yet failed to produce the same class of ware.[130] This William Adams died in 1805, and his son wasted his property and sold the Greengates works about 1820 to John Meir.[131] Of recent years, however, the Greengates works have been repurchased by the senior branch of the Adams family, and it is now managed in conjunction with their old Greenfield works adjoining.

For the first time in 1787 the mail coaches to London began to run daily. The best days of coach travel were yet to come, but even these early coaches kept up a steady seven miles an hour. Their time table is given as follows: London (“Swan with Two Necks”) 9 p.m., St Albans 11 p.m., Coventry 9 a.m., Lichfield 1 p.m., Stone 5 p.m., Newcastle (149 miles) 7 p.m., Warrington 2 a.m., Carlisle 2 p.m.[132]

Three other potters on the 1787 list deserve special mention: John, Ralph and Enoch Wood. They all came of one still celebrated potting family. Ralph Wood, miller, of Burslem, was their common ancestor. His eldest son, Ralph, was a modeller of distinction, and about 1754 started a works at Burslem, where he, and his son Ralph after him, made those quaint Staffordshire figures now in such demand. They are usually decorated with coloured tortoiseshell glaze, applied with a brush, and have a singularly decorative effect. Ralph Wood, the first figure maker of the name, married the sister of that Aaron Wedgwood who had once made china at Longton Hall. He died in 1772, and was succeeded in his work by his sons John and Ralph.[133] John Wood soon left his brother, and began, in 1782,[134] to pot at Brownhills. Ralph kept to figures, and adopted the enamel process of decoration for some of his busts and figures. Other makers who were prolific in this style of figure decoration were John Walton of Burslem (1800-40), Robert Garner of Lane End, c. 1786, son of that Robert Garner of the Foley Works who married Margaret Astbury, Ralph Salt of Hanley (1812-46), Lakin and Poole of Hanley (1770-94).[135]

Meanwhile the eldest son, John Wood, was making ordinary earthenware at Brownhills. This John Wood was murdered in 1797 by Dr Oliver of Burslem, a rejected suitor of his daughter.[136] His son married the heiress of John Wedgwood of Bignal End, with whom he acquired a large fortune.[137] He removed the factory from Brownhills to Tunstall, where he erected the Woodlands Works in 1831-5.[138] A third John Wedg Wood of Brownhills carried on these pot works in Tunstall in partnership with Mr Edward Challenor. He died in 1857, and was succeeded at the Woodlands Works by his brother Edmund Thomas Wedg Wood. This factory was in 1887 sold to Mr W. H. Grindley.[139]

Ralph Wood, the miller, had another son—that Aaron Wood who made for himself so great a reputation as a block cutter when block moulds were first introduced and the salt glaze was at the height of its glory. Aaron Wood worked for Dr Thomas Wedgwood, Thomas Mitchell of the Hill Top Works, Burslem, and for Whieldon of Fenton. His eldest son, William, was apprenticed to Josiah Wedgwood in 1762, and worked with him, first at the Burslem “useful” works, and afterwards at Etruria, all his life long. Most of the Queen’s Ware articles made by Wedgwood are said to be from block moulds of his carving.[140]

But it was the youngest son of Aaron Wood, Enoch by name, to whom potters of all time are most indebted, for he was the first collector of pottery. And he collected it to illustrate specially what his family and district had done, and how the industry had progressed. His splendid collection was never catalogued, and as it was divided into four parts at his death and scattered,[141] it is of less value than it ought to have been; but, without it, this or any account of the North Staffordshire Potters’ work must have been a shadow indeed.

Enoch Wood (1759-1840) was apprenticed to Palmer of Hanley and remained there some time as a modeller. In 1783 he commenced business at Fountain Place, Burslem, so called from the fountain or pump which he erected there for his factory and work people.[142] He was at first in partnership with his cousin Ralph Wood, who made the Staffordshire figures. About 1790 he was joined by James Caldwell of Lindley Wood, and the firm became “Wood and Caldwell.” He bought Mr Caldwell out in 1819, and thenceforth conducted business as “Enoch Wood and Sons.” He had 12 children and died in 1840 at Fountain Place, the patriarch of the Potteries. His most famous work probably was the well-known bust of John Wesley, made in 1781 when Wesley was stopping at his house during one of his preaching tours in the Potteries. His factory turned out the usual cream colour, black basalt and jasper,[143] but soon after his death the firm got into financial difficulties and closed down. His third son, Edward, was fortunate in being associated with a clever Italian, Count Kuntz, in the development of Italian borax, introduced into the Potteries first in 1828 as a flux for the glaze. In this new business they realized a fortune, and Edward Wood’s descendants are now settled at Browhead in Cumberland. But the borax works in Newcastle are carried on as “H. Coghill and Son” by Douglas and Archibald Coghill.