Yet another Staffordshire family founded on “blue-printed” ware is that of Ridgway. Ralph Ridgway was a master-potter at Chell, who failed in business in 1766, and departed with his family to Swansea, where the manufacture of porcelain was just commencing.[156] His younger son, Job (1759-1813), returned to the Potteries in 1781, and divided his time between acting as a Wesleyan missionary and work as a journeyman potter in Hanley.[157] There for some time he also manufactured lawn for the sieves used in sifting the clay slip, but this he gave up, on the strange ground that it led to bribery and drunkenness, and returned to his potter’s bench. At last, in 1792, he and his brother George started a factory of their own in Shelton, at the bottom of Albion Street, said to have been formerly that of Warner Edwards.[158] It has been the “Bell Works,” from the Blue Bell Inn which stood opposite. Of course they made “blue printed,” and prospered. In 1802 Job left his brother, and built the well-known house and works at Cauldon Place on the Cauldon canal, now occupied by the porcelain works of Brown, Westhead, Moore & Co.[159] At Cauldon Place the firm, “Job Ridgway & Sons,” began in 1808 to make china. Here, too, Job died in 1813, and was succeeded by his son John Ridgway, under whom the Cauldon Place china achieved so great renown. His other son William went back to the Bell Works, and, adding factory to factory, soon became by far the most important potter in Hanley.
JOB RIDGWAY
1759-1813
Photo by H. J. Gover & Co., Hanley
Job Ridgway married the sister of Elijah Meyer, and made the fortune of his family. But his potting was not so interesting as his religious zeal, so typical of the sentiments of the Potteries at this time; and as the Methodist revival of the last quarter of the eighteenth century had a profound effect upon the habits of the pottery people, and permanently changed their affections from cock-fighting to psalm singing, it is worth while, even in a history of potting, to mention this side also of the work of Job Ridgway. He was “converted” while working at Leeds in 1781. When he came to his brother’s house in Hanley, there were only twenty-five Methodists in Hanley. He formed a congregation and opened their first chapel in 1784. No sooner was Methodism firmly established than he quarrelled with these confining bonds also, and, in 1797, he did more than any other layman to establish the Methodist New Connexion.[160] Bethesda Chapel was built in the following year, and by 1802 Burslem and Lane End also had chapels of this new itinerant society. By 1843 there were five chapels of this denomination in Hanley alone. If you worked for Job Ridgway, you had to attend his chapel also.
There are some names of manufacturers on the 1802 map of the Potteries which have not received so far, and yet deserve, special mention. The brothers John and George Rogers, for instance, built their factory at Dale Hall near Burslem about 1780. John Rogers built too, about 1800, the house called “Watlands” in Wolstanton, the home of many potters, and lived there till his death in 1816. His son Spencer Rogers succeeded to the firm, which continued to flourish for over half a century as “John Rogers and Sons.”[161] Mr Samuel Ford now owns these works.
Joseph Machin of Burslem was the progenitor of the Machins of the Hole House Works, afterwards, in 1843, “Machin and Potts” of the Waterloo Works. This firm were the first successful manufacturers of porcelain in Burslem and they invented too the present method of printing the transfer papers from revolving steel cylinders, thereby greatly accelerating the work of producing these transfers and printing the ware.
The Goodwins of Cobridge had no fewer than four factories in the neighbourhood as late as 1843;[162] and the firm of John Glass & Sons appears to have existed in Hanley ever since the beginning of the 18th century and the days of slip dishes and “tygs.” William Baddeley, with his works at Eastwood on the banks of the Cauldon canal, was chiefly noted for his large flint-grinding mills. Miles Mason, of Lane Delf, and his son Charles J. Mason had their factory where the Stoke and Hanley tram-lines now branch. In 1813 the elder Mason introduced the patent “ironstone” china, which became very popular and was the precursor of the “granite” trade of later days.[163] The senior partner in the firm of Bourne and Baker of Fenton made a fortune, built the church at Fenton, and bought the Hilderstone Hall estate, where his descendants now live.
In Longton the firm of Charles Harvey is notable, since the proprietor became, about 1820, the first banker at the Longton end. Mrs Mary Cyples represents a family of potteresses whose factory is perpetuated in Cyples Lane. Messrs Cheetham and Wooley invented a hard white stone body resembling porcelain, very useful for relief decoration,[164] and flourished in Commerce Street for more than half a century. The Locketts are one of the few firms which have lasted over a hundred years.
The potting industry, like all others, suffered stagnation during the French wars. Till 1810 however the growing American trade compensated to a certain extent for the loss of the continental market. But in 1810 the Orders in Council stopped both the continental and American trade. These Orders were rescinded in 1812, but the continental trade languished till 1814, and had to be rediscovered and re-established as an entirely new business when peace came.
When at last the Continent was reopened to English china and earthenware one particular firm came to the front and took the greater part of the ornamental trade. This was the firm of John Davenport & Sons. John Davenport came of a small yeoman family settled near Leek, and he started in 1785, first as a workman and later as a partner, with Thomas Woolfe of Stoke. In 1794 he commenced making china on his own account at Longport.[165]
The first factory built on the canal at Longport was, appropriately enough, put up in 1773 by John Brindley, the younger brother of the engineer. Edward Bourne and Robert Williamson followed, and in 1795 Walter Daniel put up a fine house and factory at Newport near by. All these factories became, early in the nineteenth century, the property of the great firm of Davenport, attached to the “Unicorn Bank.” John Davenport had built the “Unicorn Bank” in 1794 for the manufacture of china. In 1797 they started the chemical preparation of litharge and white lead; and in 1801 was added the manufacture of flint glass.[166]
Davenport china and stained glass attained a very high reputation, and for many years the Davenports represented the type of the most successful potters of the age. They are said in 1836 to have produced earthenware and china alone to the value of nearly £100,000 and to have employed 1400 workpeople.[167] They had branch establishments at London, Liverpool, Hamburg and Lübeck. They enjoyed Royal favour and acquired princely fortunes. The first John Davenport bought Westwood near Cheddleton in 1813. He was a major of volunteers at the time of the French scare in 1803, and Conservative M.P. for Stoke-on-Trent from 1832 to 1841. His sons, John, Henry and William carried on the business and established themselves, John at Foxley, Co. Hereford, and William at Maer. William Davenport was Master of the North Staffordshire Foxhounds. The third generation also went into politics, and Henry T. Davenport, after failing to secure a seat at Newcastle and at Stoke in 1874, became, from 1880-6, member for the northern division of the county. As they lost touch with their works, however, the affairs of the Davenport firm gradually suffered. In 1868 they sold Westwood; in 1885 Maer; and in 1887 the “Unicorn Bank” was closed down and sold to Mr Thomas Hughes, who died in 1901.
The Davenports were the only manufacturers of glass of any importance in North Staffordshire, and no attempt is now made to rival the productions in this line of the southern part of the county.
The success of the Davenports with their china in the continental trade, which began to be marked during the short peace of 1803-4, affected, no doubt seriously, the trade of the Wedgwood firm, which since the first Josiah’s death had been carried on nominally by the second Josiah, but actually by Thomas Byerley. It is not surprising, therefore, to find that in 1805 Wedgwoods also commenced the manufacture of porcelain, and to find them repeating on china dinner and tea services the patterns which had been so successful on the Queen’s Ware. Josiah Wedgwood II bought Maer in 1803 (where he was succeeded by Davenport), and began again to attend to business. Though the new china and the jasper and black basalt with reliefs in Egyptian red turned out under his regime fully maintained the reputation of the firm—as witness the medallions of the admirals and the Egyptian basalt so typical of the second period[168]—yet they never recovered the undisputed position they had held in the ornamental trade of the Continent.
JOSIAH WEDGWOOD II
1769-1843
By 1819 or 1820[169] indeed they ceased to try and compete in the china trade, and it was not till 1872 that Wedgwoods again produced the porcelain for which they are now so famous. In 1828 even their London showrooms were closed down, and Josiah Wedgwood II committed the unpardonable vandalism of selling off the stock, patterns, and moulds there stored. The collections in the Mayer Museum at Liverpool and the collection now in the possession of Sir W. H. Lever were formed out of purchases made at this sale. After contesting Newcastle vainly in the interests of “reform” in 1831, Wedgwood was returned as first radical member for Stoke-on-Trent in the reformed Parliament of 1832, and died at Maer in 1843. From 1823 he had had the assistance of his eldest son Josiah, but from 1827 onwards the works were managed almost entirely by his third son, Francis Wedgwood. The firm, which had been called “Josiah Wedgwood” after Byerley’s death in 1810 and “Josiah Wedgwood & Son” until 1827, was thenceforth known as “Josiah Wedgwood & Sons,” which title it retains at the present day.
Pedigree of the Later Wedgwoods:
The progress of invention and specialization had brought into existence quite a number of manufactures subsidiary to potting, and we will take advantage of a little-known Directory of 1818 to show both the names of potters then in business, and also the number and nature of these dependent trades.
The Directory for 1818 was compiled by W. Parson and T. Bradshaw, and printed by Leigh of Manchester. The manufactories of earthenware on the list are as follows:
The trades of that day dependent on potting were: Makers of the crates wherein to pack the ware; gilders; cobalt-refiners and colour-makers, of whom Machin and Bagguley of the new “Waterloo” Road were perhaps the most important; enamellers; engravers of designs on copper, from which the transfer prints for the under-glaze blue printing were made; flint-grinders; lead and litharge makers for the glaze; saggar makers; lathe makers and lawn manufacturers.
The lawn manufacturers made the lawn sieve through which the clay body in the slip state was passed in order to remove all coarse particles. Indeed the preparation of the clay body was now carried out so carefully that magnets were used to attract any particle of iron that might be ground up with the flint; and the old process of evaporation which converted the slip into the solid clay body gave way about 1860 to the clay press now used to squeeze out the water from the clay. Samuel Allen, lathe maker of Dale Hall, is the sole representative to be found in 1818 of the makers of potters’ machinery, now so important a branch of manufacture. But the “jiggers,” which exactly reproduce plates by the thousand, and the “jollies,” for the mechanical moulding and pressing of hollow ware, were the creation of a much later age. Even now these machine tools may be said to be in their infancy though they are developing under the hands of skilled engineers such as Messrs Boulton of Burslem.
A subsidiary manufacture which does not appear on the 1818 list at all is that of borax. Borax, or as it was originally called “tincal,” had been first introduced about 1796 when it was brought from Thibet. In that year Ralph Wedgwood (see p. 87), who spent his life inventing things, and was then a master-potter at Ferrybridge in Yorkshire,[171] took out a patent for “making glass upon new principles” by using this tincal. By Hickling’s patent of 1799 it was also applied to the enamelling of metal vessels, and it appears again in the leadless glaze of Mr. Rose of Coalport in 1820.[172] All this time, however, the price was almost prohibitive of the commercial use of borax. In 1815 it cost 3s. to 4s. a lb., and it was only on the development of the Etruscan borax deposits in 1828 that it came into general use as a flux for the glazes, partially displacing the lead oxides. As the borax—as well as the soda used in the glaze—is soluble in water, glazes containing these have to be “fritted” or vitrified before being ground with the other components into a slip for dipping the ware. This melting or fritting, besides making the glaze insoluble in water and suitable for dipping, will, if the lead be fritted with the other components and not just ground in afterwards, make the lead more or less innocuous. Unfortunately, however, the fritted lead requires more exact firing to produce a good glaze, and can hardly compete commercially at present. Glazes can be made without any lead at all by using borax alone as a flux, but the surface is always full of imperfections and less glossy than that given by a leaded glaze.
The first important manufactory of borax in the Potteries was that of Wood, Kuntz & Co.,[173] a firm in which the sons of Enoch Wood were interested. Because the risk of lead poisoning is always present in the preparation and uses of the lead glazes, attempts have been made for 100 years to produce a good glaze free from lead—or rather free from unfritted lead—soluble in hydrochloric acid. Josiah Wedgwood produced such a glaze, but it gave a rough surface wherewith it was useless in those days to try to compete. The Society of Arts awarded its gold medal in 1823 to Job Meigh of Hanley for his invention of a leadless glaze. But Meigh’s leadless glaze was only to be applied to coarse red pottery.[174] Of recent years Mr. Furnival and Mr. William Burton have done most to make safe glazes commercially practicable. There is no doubt but that by the use of borax a safe glaze, free from lead, can be made; it will not be mechanically perfect perhaps, but artistically it need not be considered inferior to the heavy smooth lead glaze.
About 1826 an even more dangerous lead process was introduced by Henry Daniel, who began in that year to make stoneware “china” in Shelton. This was the process of “ground laying” and “colour dusting,” in which the enamel paints are dusted in a dry state over a sticky oily surface to which they adhere. The leaded particles of paint dust are easily breathed into the lungs and caused a heavy mortality. The ærograph, invented in 1890, which lays the ground mechanically, reduced the risks of this process, and more recently the Home Office regulations regarding ventilation, mufflers, etc., have helped in the same direction.
Among the Tunstall potters on the list of 1818 occur the names of Benjamin Adams and Jesse Breeze. Benjamin Adams was the son and successor of that William Adams who made jasper at Greengates and died in 1805. Within a year or two of 1818 he had to sell his factory, which was bought by John Meir, another Tunstall potter.[175] John Breeze had bought the house and factory built by Theophilus Smith in 1793 and called Smithfield. Smith had, in 1800, committed suicide in prison after failing three times to murder his wife’s lover.[176] His tragic end caused the name of his house to be changed to Greenfield; and in 1827 Jesse, son of this John Breeze of Greenfield, having no sons, married one of his daughters to William Adams, son of the successful potter of Stoke, and bequeathed his factory to him. In this way another branch of the Adams family returned to Tunstall. From 1827 to the present day the Adams family from father to son have continued to make earthenware at Greenfield. They have recently bought up Greengates also, and joined the two old Adams’ factories together. The firm has had a somewhat chequered career, but under the management of the present brothers and partners, William and Percy W. L. Adams, it has resumed its high reputation as one of the largest exporters of useful and ornamental ware.
WILLIAM ADAMS
1772-1829