Dr Plot seems to have visited the Potteries in 1677. In 1686 he published his “Natural History of Staffordshire.” Although he obviously takes the most lively interest in the dances of witches, and that strange chemical process called “striking with galls,” yet he was also a keen observer, and found time to set down the earliest account—and at the same time an intelligent account—of the North Staffordshire potting industry. A contemporary account of this early date must obviously be of the greatest importance, and it is here given in full.

“As for tobacco-pipe clays, they are found all over the County ... whereof they make pipes at Armitage and Lichfield ... also at Darlaston, but of late disused, because of better and cheaper found in Monway field betwixt Wednesbury and Willingsworth, which make excellent pipes. And Charles Rigg, of Newcastle, makes very good pipes of three sorts of clay; a white, and a blew, which he has from between Shelton and Handley Green.”

“The most preferable clay of any is that of Amblecot, of a dark blewish color, whereoff they make the best pots for the glass-houses of any in England; ... Other potters clays for the more common wares, there are ... at Horseley Heath, Tipton and in Monway field ... of these they make diverse sorts of vessells 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 severall sorts of pots they have as many different sorts of clays, which they dig round about the towne, all within half a miles distance, the best being found nearest the coale; and are distinguished by their colours and uses as followeth:—

all which they call throwing clays, because they are of a closer texture, and will work on the wheel;

“Which 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

neither of which clays or slips must have any gravel or sand in them; upon this account before it be brought to the wheel they prepare the clay by steeping it in water in a square pit, till it be of a due consistence; then they bring it to their beating board, where with a long spatula they beat it till it be well mixed; then being first made into great squarish rolls, it is brought to the wageing board, where it is slit into flat thin pieces with a wire, and the least stones or gravel pickt out of it; This being done, they wage it, i.e. knead or mould it like bread, and make it into round balls proportionable to their work, and then tis brought to the wheel, and formed as the workman sees good.

“When the potter has wrought the clay either into hollow or flat ware, they are set abroad to dry in fair weather, but by the fire in foule, turning them as they see occasion, which they call whaving: when they are dry they stouk them, i.e. put ears and handles to such vessels as require them: These also, being dry, they then slip or paint them with their several sorts of slip, according as they design their work,—when the first slip is dry, laying on the others at their leasure, the orange slip making the ground, and the white and red the paint; which two colours they break with a wire brush, much after the manner they do when they marble paper, and then cloud them with a pensil when they are pretty dry. After the vessels are painted they lead them, with that sort of lead ore they call smithum, which is the smallest ore of all, beaten into dust, finely sifted and strewed upon them; which gives them the gloss, but not the colour;[10] all the colours being chiefly given by the variety of slips, except the motley colour, which is procured by blending the lead with manganese, by the workmen called ‘magnus.’[11] But when they have a mind to show the utmost of their skill in giving their wares a fairer gloss than ordinary, they lead them then with lead calcined into powder, which they also sift fine and strew upon them as before, which not only gives them a higher gloss, but goes much further too in their work, than lead ore would have done.

“After this is done they are carried to the oven, which is ordinarily above 8 foot high, and about 6 foot wide, of a round copped forme, where they are placed one upon another from the bottom to the top: if they be ordinary wares such as cylindrical butter pots &c. that are not leaded, they are exposed to the naked fire, and so is all their flatware though it be leaded, haveing only parting-shards, i.e. thin bits of old pots put between them, to keep them from sticking together. But if they be leaded hollow-wares, they do not expose them to the naked fire, but put them in shragers, that is, in coarse metall’d pots, made of marle (not clay) of divers formes, according as their wares require, in which they put commonly three pieces of clay called Bobbs for the ware to stand on, to keep it from sticking to the shragers; as they put them in the shragers to keep them from sticking to one another (which they would certainly otherwise doe by reason of the leading) and to preserve them from the vehemence of the fire, which else would melt them downe, or at least warp them. In 24 hours an oven of pots will be burnt, then they let the fire goe out by degrees which in 10 hours more will be perfectly done, and then they draw them for sale, which is chiefly to the poor cratemen, who carry them at their backs all over the whole Countrey, to whome they reckon them by the piece, i.e. Quart, in hollow ware, so that 6 pottle, or 3 gallon bottles make a dozen, and so more or less to a dozen, as they are of greater or lesser content; The flat wares are also reckon’d by pieces and dozens, but not (as the hollow) according to their content, but their different bredths.”[12]

Again, in discussing the great dairy produce market at Uttoxeter, at which the Cheesemongers of London had thought it worth while to set up a “factorage,” Plot says:—“the factors many mercat days (in the season) lay out no less than £500 a day, in these two commodities [butter and cheese] only. The butter they buy by the pot, of a long cylindrical form, made at Burslem in this County of a certain size, so as not to weigh above 6 lbs. at most, and yet to contain at least 14 lbs. of butter, according to an Act of Parliament made about 14-16 years agoe, for regulating the abuses of this trade in the make of the pots and false packing of the butter.”[13]

Later on, too, he describes how the lead ores are “dug in a yellowish stone, with cawk and spar, on the side of Lawton Park;[14] where the workmen distinguisht it into three sorts, viz. round ore, small ore, and smithum.” He describes how the ores are cleaned; “which done, it is sold to the potters at Burslem for 6 or 7 pounds per tun, who have occasion for most that is found here for glaseing their pots.”

For a contemporary inventory of a nascent industry Plot’s account is extraordinarily full and accurate. It is so important and so unique, that no apology need be made for quoting it at length.

The pot-oven described by Plot would be surrounded by a wall of clods of turf to keep in the heat, or by a “hovel” with walls of broken saggars, roofed with boughs and clods of earth. Each pot-works consisted of a hovel such as this, some thatched open sheds for drying the ware, and an open tank or sun-pan in which the clay mixed with water was evaporated. These sun-pans or sun-kilns were 12 to 20 feet long and wide and about 18 inches deep. One portion partitioned off, and deeper and lined with flag-stones, was used for mixing. Here the clay was “blunged” by a man with a long pole or paddle, and thoroughly mixed with the water. The mixture was then poured through a sieve from the blunging vat into the sun-pan.

A pot-works of almost exactly this description is to be seen to-day at Garshall Green near Stone, for making flower pots; even here, however, a pugmill has taken the place of the blunging pole.

It was a very raw industry in 1677. What led to the artistic development of pottery in England as a whole was the trading contact with the advancing civilization of Holland and Germany. The English were learning all through the reigns of Elizabeth and the Stuarts to adapt pottery to drinking and eating purposes; and the London and Bristol potters were learning to copy the tin-enamelled dishes from Delft, and the stoneware drinking mugs from the Rhine. The ideas which Holland and Germany had passed on to London, found their way at last to North Staffordshire. In that narrow area were to be found the requisites needed for a manufacture;—the clays to make, the coals to fire, the men with experience. All that was still needed was the artist and experimental chemist. It might even be said that the artists were already there and in a sense they were.

Probably the commonest production of the North Staffordshire Potteries in 1677, after the redoubtable butter-pots, was the marbled ware that Plot mentions. This method of decoration consists of laying on lines or splashes of the different coloured slips, and then combing or sponging them together. This marbled ware remained popular for a hundred years, and was the legitimate precursor of the solid agate wares of Whieldon and Wedgwood.

A later historian, Simeon Shaw, writing in 1828, tells us on the authority of tradition that, besides makers of the butter-pots, and the mottled and marbled ware, and the slip-decorated ware, there was in 1685 a potter, Thomas Miles of Shelton, who was even then making from a local clay, mixed with white sand from Baddeley Edge, something which he calls “stone-ware.”[15] Certain it is, as will be shown later, that Aaron Wedgwood and his sons Thomas and Richard and also Matthew Garner were making brown stoneware and red teapots in Burslem in 1693. Stoneware, as we understand it, is so hard and dense that it requires no glaze to make it impervious to water, because it can be fired at such a high temperature as to partially fuse the body of the ware. This stoneware, afterwards glazed with salt, was to be the most distinctive product of North Staffordshire.

These peasant potters “fired” and “drew out” one oven a week. They drew the cold oven on Monday; refilled it with new ware about Thursday, and fired it on Friday, giving it a last stoking up on Saturday morning, after which it cooled till Monday again. The ordinary ware was at this time only fired once, and only fired to a moderate temperature, just sufficient to melt the dusted lead ore and fuse it into a glaze on the surface of the ware, thus making it impervious to water. Though the native potters were even then trying to improve their craft from the German or Dutch potters employed in London, yet, as M. Solon has shown, they owed very little to the science or knowledge of the world, even the limited knowledge of that period. The colouring properties of Copper Oxide were known and employed throughout England at this period, yet there is no trace on the wares of the North Staffordshire potters till the eighteenth century is well advanced of the distinctive blue given by this invaluable colouring material.

The ware produced was sold to the travelling packmen, and, at great cost, distributed on horseback throughout the country. Everything was coarse and elementary. There were no turning lathes to give neatness to the thrown article; there was no white body or ground upon which to enamel colours; there were no moulds for any but the smallest ornamental “spriggs”; no enamel paints; and there was practically no means of getting to a market.

Such was the state of the Staffordshire potting trade in the year 1693, when those mysterious foreigners, John Philip Elers and David Elers, appeared upon the scene, like Cortez among the Mexicans, and broke up for ever the placid uneventful course of the old peasant industry.