The brothers Elers are supposed to have come from Amsterdam in the train of the Prince of Orange. Jewitt has studied their pedigree and says they were originally of a noble family of Saxony—their father an ambassador, their grandfather an admiral! However that may be, the first notice we have of them is in a note in the Philosophical Transactions of 1693 by Dr Martin Lister. He says: “I have this to add, that this clay Haematites, is as good, if not better, than that which is brought from the East Indies. Witness the teapots now to be sold at the potters in the Poultry in Cheapside, which not only for art, but for beautiful colour too, are far beyond any we have from China; these are made from the English Haematites in Staffordshire, as I take it, by two Dutchmen incomparable artists.”[16] We too may call them incomparable artists if we compare this evidence with Plot’s account of fifteen years before, or their teapots sold at a guinea a time,[17] with the almost barbaric puzzle-jars of the native potter.

It has hitherto been assumed from this statement of Dr Lister’s that the Elers were in Staffordshire in 1693. It does not follow from the extract that the teapots were made in Staffordshire, only that the clay came from thence. In the same year, 1693, they were sued by Dwight of Fulham for copying his red teapots, and in the suit they are described as “of Fulham.” Moreover Dr Martin Lister, writing again in 1698 in his “Account of a Journey to Paris in the Year 1698,” says, after speaking of the porcelain made at St Cloud, “As for the red ware of China, that has been and is done in England.... But we are in this particular beholden to two Dutchmen who wrought in Staffordshire, as I have been told, and were not long since in Hammersmith.”[18] This, it will be seen, confirms the supposition that they first made their teapots and stoneware in Fulham or Hammersmith.

The important Chancery Suit, discovered by Prof. Church, in which Dwight sued his copyists at Fulham, Nottingham and Burslem is as follows:

June 20, 1693. The complaint of John Dwight of Fulham in the County of Middlesex, gentleman, showing that the complainant having ... invented and set up at Fulham several new manufactures of earthenwares called White Gorges, marbled porcelaine vessells, statues and figures and fine stone gorges and vessells never before made in England or elsewhere, and alsoe discovered the mystery of opacous red and dark coloured porcelaine and china ... obtained lettres patent dated June 12, 1684 ... he and his servants have for several years past used ... said invention ... and sold them.... But having formerly hired one John Chandler of Fulham ... and employed him in the making ... thereupon John Elers and David Elers, both of Fulham (who are forreigners and by trade silversmiths) together with James Morley of Nottingham and also Aaron Wedgwood Thomas Wedgwood and Richard Wedgwood of Berslem in the County of Stafford and Matthew Garner ... did insinuate themselves into the acquaintance of the said John Chandler and ... inticed him to instruct them ... and to desert the complainant’s service to enter into partnership together with them to make and sell the said wares ... but far inferior to them.... And the said confederates, “the better to colour their said unjust and injurious practises,” pretend that the earthenwares made and sold by them are in no way like those invented by the complainant but differ from them in form and figure and have several additions and improvements ... whereas the truth is they are made in imitation of the complainants wares ... prays that writs of subpena be directed to John Chandler, John Elers, David Elers, Aaron Wedgwood, Thomas Wedgwood, Richard Wedgwood and Matthew Garner and James Morley.

The answer, dated June 8, 1694, of the man with the Staffordshire name of Garner to this Bill of Complaint, shows that he was apprenticed about 1680 for eight years to one Thomas Harper of Southwark, potmaker, and he says that, afterwards, he invented a way of making earthen brown pans and mugs, which art he still practises. The answer of David Elers to the same Bill, dated July 28, 1693, states that he learnt at Cologne the manufacture of “earthenware commonly called Cologne or Stone wares,” and that about three years ago he and his brother began to make brown mugs and red teapots “within this kingdom of England,” and employed John Chandler. He says that neither he nor his brother nor Morley nor any of the other defendants knew John Chandler while he was in the employ of Dwight. He denies that James Morley was ever a partner with him or his brother, or that Chandler was more than a hired labourer. He complains that he and his brother ought not to be deprived of their living.

An order was made on August 10, 1693, for a trial of the action against Morley and the Elers for the making of a brown mug and two red teapots in imitation of china. Before the trial came on in November the Elers came to terms with Dwight, and Morley put off his case by claiming that he only made brown mugs and not the red teapots. On December 15, 1693, the three Wedgwoods were ordered to be added to the Bill as defendants, and on May 5, 1694, Matthew Garner was added also. On May 19, 1694, the Wedgwoods “for delay have craved a dedimus to answer in the country,” and yet in the meantime proceed to make and vend the several wares, against which continuance the plaintiff Dwight obtained an injunction “until they shall directly answer to the complaint and the Court shall make other order to the contrary against them their workmen servants and agents.” On June 21, 1694, a similar injunction was obtained against Matthew Garner; and on July 26, 1695, against Morley. Garner in his turn wanted his witnesses examined in the country, and the cases against him and Morley and one Luke Talbott dragged on till July, 1696, though nothing more is to be found of the suit against the Wedgwoods. Probably they too compromised on the basis of each paying their own costs, for the last notice there is of these suits is one dated July 1, 1696, which shows Dwight suing his solicitor for excessive costs.

This suit, given by Professor Church in the “Burlington Magazine” (February, 1908) upsets a good many preconceptions, and throws considerable light on the stage at which the development of the potting craft had arrived in 1693. In the first place Garner, a Staffordshire lad to judge from his name, is apprenticed to a London potter. This shows communication between London and Staffordshire, and a clear desire to improve a potting trade in Staffordshire by contact with more civilized methods. Then the injunction obtained against Aaron Wedgwood and his sons, “Doctor” Thomas and Richard “of the Overhouse,” shows that they were making in 1693 the red teapots, known to collectors as Elers and Dwight, and the brown stoneware which, glazed with salt, was later the characteristic work of Dr Thomas Wedgwood. We must, therefore, call these Wedgwoods and Matthew Garner the first known Staffordshire makers of stoneware, and as Garner was out of his apprenticeship in 1688, and Elers started in Fulham in 1690, we can give the date 1690 as the starting point of the stoneware glazed with salt in Staffordshire.

If there was a definite partnership between the Elers and the Wedgwoods I expect it was confined to the supply of red Staffordshire clay to the factory at Fulham. It may well be that, as a result of this very action, the Elers determined to shift their workshops and put them up in the place whence hitherto they had got their clay, and where the unfortunate leakage that had perhaps betrayed Dwight’s secrets could, in their case, be more easily prevented. Be the cause what it may, between 1693 and 1698 John Philip Elers, the elder brother, was established in a secluded farm in Bradwell Wood under Red Street. It should be noticed that at this time, and for half a century afterwards, Red Street was important as a potting village. Messrs Mayer & Moss of Red Street were, about 1740, among the most considerable potters of their day.

Here, at Bradwell, the Elers put up their workshops and small kiln, while they lived at another old house, Dimsdale Hall, which is still standing about a mile to the south. Shaw[19] had a legend about an elaborate underground speaking-tube, fixed from Bradwell to Dimsdale, through which notice might be given to the works of the approach of strangers. And it is a curious tribute to the value of such legends that, within the last few years, white earthenware voice-pipes have actually been dug up on the site of the Bradwell factory. They did not, of course, really extend from Bradwell to Dimsdale, but they went from one part of the factory to another, and were probably devised to secure secrecy rather than modern economy. These pipes are now to be seen in the Hanley Museum, and the curious thing is that one of them is glazed with salt. This, besides confirming the legend of the voice-pipes, is the only certain living witness that the Elers used salt glaze.

We have spoken of the two brothers going to Staffordshire, but the recently accepted view is that John Philip Elers alone worked at Bradwell, while David remained in London at the shop in the Poultry, where he sold his brother’s teapots at from 12s. to 24s. apiece.[20]

The first pottery ware made at Bradwell was the same as Dwight’s “red porcelaine.” On the land at Bradwell Farm was the seam of red clay which formed the foundation of the ware, giving when fired a dense hard red stoneware of fine texture.[21] There are in the South Kensington Museum two pieces of “red porcelain” credited by Burton to Elers and illustrated in his book. They are in marked contrast to the slip decorated and marbled Staffordshire ware of the same time. They have been turned in the lathe after throwing, and thus made thin and light. The clay body is homogeneous and smooth, showing greater care in the preparation of the body. The ornamentation is delicate and artistic, and has been made by sealing a soft piece of the clay on to the ware with a metal seal pressed over the soft clay. There is no glaze, but a high fire has produced a ware so hard as to be almost forged solid. These things show the hand of the ex-silversmith in size and shape and finish. The Burslem imitators—Garner and the Wedgwoods—never made things like these. Elers, though he may have stolen Dwight’s secrets, went ahead and showed the possibilities of potting. He is said also to have produced black ware of a similar character by mixing oxide of manganese—the “magnus” of Dr Plot—with the clay body, and, though no known pieces of black Elers ware can now be certainly identified, it is this black ware that his copyists chiefly developed.[22]

For Nemesis overtook John Philip Elers, and in spite of all his secrecy, perhaps because of it, he was copied. Two potters, Twyford and Astbury,[23] one of whom at least had already made pots after local methods in Shelton, set themselves independently to acquire the arts of the Dutchman. To lull the suspicions of Elers, Twyford shammed stupidity, and Astbury, who was younger, passed himself off as an idiot. Recommended by these strange qualifications, they asked and obtained employment and, in time, the knowledge they desired. They went back to Shelton with their acquired arts, and, in a few years, the most intelligent potters of North Staffordshire knew how to make civilized pottery. But by 1710 John Philip Elers was tired of his exile and of the treatment he had received. The true porcelain which should detect poison was still unattained, and his “red porcelain” and his black ware were become by somewhat sharp practice a staple product of the district. So he shook off the clay of Staffordshire from his feet and rejoined his brother in London.

Years later Josiah Wedgwood, who had every reason to know the history of the potteries from hearsay, legend and family tradition, gave an account to his partner Bentley of what John Philip Elers had done. The son, Paul Elers, had asked Wedgwood to make a medallion of his father’s head, surrounded by the motto: “Plasticis Britannicae Inventor.” Josiah Wedgwood—looking back on the long array of his ancestors, all potters born and bred in Burslem before ever Elers put his hand to the thrower’s wheel—says the motto “conveys a falsehood,” and that John Philip Elers merely improved the Art. “The reason,” he writes in 1777, “for Mr Elers fixing upon Staffordshire to try his experiments, seems to be that the Pottery was carried on there in a much larger way, and in a more improved state, than in any other part of Great Britain.” “The improvements Mr Elers made in our manufactory were precisely these. Glazing our common clays with salt, which produced Pot d’Grey or Stone Ware.... I make no doubt but glazing with salt, by casting it among the ware while it is red hot, came to us from Germany, but whether Mr Elers was the person to whom we are indebted for the improvement I do not know.... The next improvement introduced by Mr Elers was the refining our common red clay by sifting, and make it into Tea and Coffee ware in imitation of the Chinese red Porcelain, by casting it in plaster moulds, and turning it upon the outside upon lathes, and ornamenting it with the tea-branch in relief.”[24]

It is impossible to say why Wedgwood attributed “casting in plaster moulds” to Elers, for all the evidence goes to show that the process known technically as “casting” only came in with the introduction of alabaster “blocks” and pitcher moulds after 1730. As to the far more important and debatable point—the introduction of the process of glazing with salt—this evidence of Wedgwood’s is perhaps the most reliable that we can get.

As the invention of salt glazing not only made, at one stroke, a new manufacture possible, but one that was peculiar to North Staffordshire, it may be as well to examine more closely the evidence as to its discoverer and its discovery.

The idea that salt glazing was accidentally discovered at Bagnal by some strong brine solution boiling away in an earthen pot which became automatically glazed[25] may be dismissed at once for the simple reason that it could not happen as described. It may be urged too in Elers’ favour that, long before this, salt glazing was practised in Germany. Again, Aikin in his “History of Manchester,” written in 1794, gives an elaborate account of the novelty as practised by Elers. He writes: “It was in the memory of some old persons with whom a friend of ours was well acquainted that the inhabitants of Burslem flocked with astonishment to see the immense volumes of smoke which arose from the Dutchmen’s ovens on casting in the salt; a circumstance which sufficiently shows the novelty of this practice in Staffordshire Potteries.”[26] Probably this part of Dr Aikin’s work was written by Alex. Chisholm, secretary to Josiah Wedgwood.

At least the same story was told to Josiah Wedgwood in 1765 by an old workman named Steel, aged 84, who could remember the Dutchmen at work at Bradwell, and who joined those who ran to the place amazed at this unusual mode of firing. No doubt this is what was in Wedgwood’s mind when he wrote to Bentley in 1777, as quoted above.

On the other hand we have the evidence of Simeon Shaw,[27] first that William Adams and Thomas Miles produced salt glaze in 1680 (a very doubtful supposition in view of the Chancery suit recently discovered), and then that “Mr. John Mountford, 27 years since (i.e. in 1801), took down the remains of the (Elers’) oven, and he states that the height was about 7 feet, but not like the salt-glaze ovens.” And again: “E. Wood and J. Riley both separately measured the inside diameter of the remains, at about 5 feet; while other ovens, of the same date, in Burslem, were 10 or 12 feet. The oven itself had 5 mouths, but neither holes over the inside flues nor bags, to receive the salt, had any been used by them.” “The foundations,” he adds, “were very distinctly to be seen in 1808, though now covered by an enlargement of the barn.”

Also there is the fact that no salt glaze ware that could be conclusively shown to be Elers’ has ever been excavated on the site of his factory, except the white voice-pipes previously mentioned.

Taking everything into consideration—the impossibility of saying definitely who the makers of early pieces of salt glaze were; the possibility of Elers having made his salt-glaze in a different oven and on a different site to that seen and excavated; the fact that in 1710-1715 Staffordshire potters were making stoneware, and that Plot does not mention it in 1677—none but Garner and the Wedgwoods were sued for making even stoneware in 1693—we may assume that the Elers did, in actual fact, introduce the salt glaze into North Staffordshire.

The red and black bodies made by Elers are still in fashion, but even more valuable than the doubtful invention of the particular ware was his careful method of refining and mixing the clay body, and the exact turning of the pieces to extreme thinness and precision of outline. On the excellence of his work, rather than on inventions which were not really new, his fame deserves to rest. He may not, for example, have been the first to introduce the method of sealing on the clay ornaments, but the ornaments themselves were for the first time in really good taste. It was this refined taste and precision of execution—and the proof that it paid financially—which taught the Staffordshire potters the most valuable lesson.

Thus it was that, when Queen Anne and tea drinking came in, North Staffordshire had not only the clay and the coal, but also the tradesmen to make the ware required.