The industry was entering on a new phase. The introduction of moulds had required specialized block-cutters, flat and hollow-ware pressers and casters. And the specializing in the mixtures of the clay body lead to further changes. Till 1740 the same clay body served for both salt glaze and lead glaze, but about this time manufacturers began to specialize in either salt or lead glaze, and to use different bodies and mixtures to suit the varied glazes.

And, just as they had to arrange to import clays, so they had also to arrange to export their wares. A London agent, a Liverpool agent, perhaps a Birmingham agent became necessary. This sort of business could no longer be carried on by a master potter on sixteen shillings a week. The master potter became a capitalist. No business could be successfully carried on with a turnover of one ovenful a week. The first attempt to increase the output was made by either one Shrigley, of Burslem Hadderidge,[54] or by John Mitchell of the Hill Top.[55] As no potter, so goes the story, had ever had more than one oven, their inventive faculty went no farther than to construct a larger oven than usual. The pioneer, whoever he was, built a new one so large that it collapsed, to the great joy of his conservative rivals. Soon afterwards, however, the Baddeleys, said to have been the sons of a Moddershall flint-grinder, put up behind their factory at Shelton a row of no fewer than four ovens; and about 1743, Thomas and John Wedgwood, known as “of the Big House,” built a tiled factory with five ovens.[56]

The family of Baddeley continued as master potters in Shelton into the nineteenth century. They were, with the exception of Wedgwood and possibly Warburton, the largest exporters of earthenware of their day.[57] Their cream colour was good, but their renown with later generations is due to their basket-pattern salt glaze, often perforated. John Baddeley died in 1772, but the family carried on the making of enamelled and plain salt glaze to a later date than other manufacturers, certainly after 1780, and good salt glaze of late date is usually ascribed to the Baddeleys of Shelton.[58] The Wedgwoods of the Big House made the white salt glaze of a somewhat earlier description—the cast hexagonal cups and teapots in plain white—and with such financial success, that they built for themselves in 1750 a “Big House” in Burslem, which stands to this day at the corner of the Market Place looking south down the new Waterloo Road.[59] It is now the Conservative Club. Thomas was an expert thrower to begin with, and John the best oven fireman in the town.[60] They retired from business in 1765 with a large fortune.

It is said that in 1750 no fewer than sixty factories were making salt glaze in the Potteries, and every Saturday, for five hours at the time of firing up, the whole country was black with the smoke of the burning salt—so black, it is said, that people groped their way through the streets of Burslem. But meanwhile Enoch Booth at Tunstall had invented the fluid lead-glaze destined in time to turn plain earthenware into “cream-colour”; Josiah Wedgwood at Burslem was already devising new mixtures which should convert “cream-colour” into “Queen’s Ware”; and in Hot Lane, near by, John Warburton was starting that enamelling work which, applied to the Queen’s Ware, was to make it the standard earthenware of the whole world. These three potters were to alter entirely the course of the industry, and make salt glaze a thing of the past, for museums and collections. Unfortunately they did not abolish the smoke.

Enoch Booth had married Ann, daughter of Thomas Child of Tunstall. It was on his father-in-law’s land that, about 1745, he started the first considerable earthenware factory in Tunstall. Booth was the legitimate successor of Astbury. He took the earthenware body, white as Astbury had left it, and, instead of using it for salt glaze, he worked out the most suitable lead glaze, and the best way of applying it to the piece. Instead of dusting it over the ware in the dangerous dry condition, he ground the lead ore up with flint and clay and water. Into this fluid glaze the ware was dipped. Not only did this give a uniform glossy coat on each piece of ware, but different pieces were all glazed alike. Booth had the ware dipped after it had been fired, while it was in the porous or “biscuit” condition but sufficiently firm to be handled. A second firing to fuse on the glaze was given to the ware after dipping. These two firings, in the biscuit oven and in the “glost” oven, are the ordinary processes of manufacture to this day. Shaw gives 1750 as the date of this important improvement;[61] it is possible that fluid glazes were used before this and by others, but it was the combination of fluid glaze and double firing that is important, and this with some certainty we may put down to Enoch Booth and the year 1750.

Booth’s original factory at Tunstall was probably the “Old Bank” at the corner of Cross Street and Well Street, but he extended his works at an early date over the whole of the area now bounded by Well Street, Market Square, High Street and Calver Street, where he built the Phœnix Works. Sometime before 1781[62] he had been succeeded by Anthony Keeling who had married his daughter Ann. Anthony Keeling built Calver House in 1793, but his trade suffered in the French wars, and in 1810 he retired from business and went to Liverpool where he died in 1816.[63] The Phœnix Works were carried on by Thomas Goodfellow till they were pulled down about 1860.

Ware, besides being thrown, moulded or cast, and coated with the transparent glaze of salt or lead, requires decoration. This decoration could be given by coloured clay slips, after the manner of the old Toft dishes, or after the manner of Ralph Shaw’s “graffiato” ware, or as what is called “scratched blue.” But decoration could also be given by means of enamelling paints. Paints that is which are mixed with glass, and, on being heated, fuse into the glaze and become fast. This enamelling was in the early days a special trade and no part of the potter’s business. The shopkeeper might, if he liked, employ somebody called an enameller to enamel his particular cups and saucers. The enameller used a small “muffle” stove where the ware could be heated sufficiently to fuse the glaze and paint together, while at the same time it was kept away from direct contact with flames or smoke.

The best enamellers were to be found in London, engaged in enamelling the porcelain of Bow and Chelsea; but it soon became obvious that enamellers were wanted in the Staffordshire potteries also. It was again two Dutchmen who initiated into this art the native potters of Staffordshire. They probably knew the Warburtons and set up their enamelling ovens near them in Hot Lane.[64] Here they worked and attempted to keep their art secret, with the usual result of attracting special attention. Their stoves, their mixtures and their temperatures soon became public property, and a regular enamelling industry was soon established round Hot Lane. It is said to have been Ralph Daniel, the man who had brought the secret of plaster of Paris moulds from Paris, who did most to develop enamelling.[65] He imported workmen from London, Bristol and Liverpool, and soon after 1750 the enamelling of earthenware and salt glaze became a Staffordshire industry. Among enamellers too should be mentioned a Shelton potter, Walter Edwards, who was chemist and enameller as well as potter. He had as partner the Rev. John Middleton, curate of Hanley from 1737-1802, but Edwards, unlike the curate, died young in 1753, leaving a book full of receipts for glazes and enamels. The difficulty always was to get metallic oxides which would stand heat.

From an artistic point of view they had much better have left their salt glaze plain white, or drab, or uniformly tinted by a slip dip. The salt-glaze body compared with Chinese porcelain; their painting did not compare with Chinese painting, or only compared in an unfortunate sense for Staffordshire. Earthenware, being made for use, had less decoration, and what it got was less gaudy and more suited for serviceable articles.

There was however one very successful, or at least artistically successful, manner of colouring the salt glaze. It was practised by William Littler and Aaron Wedgwood (1717-1763), two brothers-in-law who about 1740 were making salt-glaze pottery at Brownhills. Taking a hint from Astbury, they dipped their ware in a bath of carefully lawned slip, so as to gave it a smooth surface before firing. In this slip they proceeded to put cobalt, which gave a beautiful uniform blue to the whole piece, and this smooth blue body, under the salt glaze, acquired a tint of great brilliance. On the strength of Shaw’s account of this process,[66] many writers have mistakenly attributed to William Littler and Aaron Wedgwood the first introduction of liquid glazes, but it is quite clear, as Mr Burton has pointed out, that this was no leaded blue glaze, but a blue slip subsequently glazed with salt.[67]

Their success with the salt glaze induced Littler and Wedgwood to make the first attempt to produce real porcelain in Staffordshire. The proper distinction between earthenware and porcelain is the complete vitrification of the body in the case of porcelain, as opposed to the vitrifying and glazing of the surface only in the case of earthenware.

The Bow porcelain factory had started in 1744, Chelsea in 1745, Worcester in 1751. In 1752 Littler and Wedgwood left their Brownhills factory and removed to Longton Hall. Here they began to make the well-known Longton Hall porcelain. Perhaps Wedgwood or Littler had worked at Chelsea. However that may be, the porcelain manufactured was of the Chelsea type. The body was largely made of ground glass, while china clay, the basis of true porcelain, was not used at all. The characteristic feature of this Longton Hall porcelain is the bright under-glaze blue that previously adorned Littler’s salt-glaze ware. This Longton Hall factory only continued till 1758.[68] Owing to the lack of demand for this kind of ware, they lost all their money in the venture and finally discontinued it. The stock-in-trade is said to have been bought up by Duesbury, who transferred it to the Derby porcelain factory, started in 1756.[69] It was not till the discovery of China Clay and China Stone and of their fusing properties in 1768 that porcelain was again attempted in Staffordshire. Through his daughter Ann this Aaron Wedgwood was the grandfather of William Clowes, known as the “founder” of Primitive Methodism.

While the manufacture of salt glaze was flourishing, more especially at the northern end of the district, the old soft-fired earthenware, mottled, black and cloudy, was still being made, and the old slip decorated ware had not entirely vanished. But the only famous potter in what might be called the old Staffordshire style was Thomas Whieldon.

Thomas Whieldon began making pots at Little Fenton about 1740. He was a better educated class of man than the ordinary potter. He potted well; enjoyed trials and experiments for their own sake; and, through his connection with both Wedgwood and Spode, he may be said to have had the same influence on the taste and education of the Staffordshire potters that Elers had unintentionally half a century before. If we are to believe Shaw, writing in 1828, he began in a very humble way. He says: “In 1740 Mr Thomas Whieldon’s manufactory at Little Fenton consisted of a small range of low buildings, all thatched. His early productions were knife hafts for the Sheffield cuttlers; and snuffboxes for the Birmingham hardwaremen, to finish with hoops, hinges and springs; which he himself usually carried in a basket to the tradesmen; and being much like agate they were greatly in request.”[70]

Plot mentions how the old potters used to marble their ware by combing together the different coloured slips, just as the paper on the inside of book-bindings is now marbled. Whieldon carried on this imitation work, and made it artistic and important. Instead, however, of marbling the slip or the glaze, he marbled his clay body in the solid. Flat “bats” of clay of different colours—coloured either naturally or else artificially with manganese, cobalt or copper—were laid on each other, and pressed and sliced again and again; care being taken to preserve the same run of the grain. In this way a streaked body was produced, which, when pressed into moulds, retained the curious markings of agate or marble. This was Whieldon’s “solid agate,” with which the new trade in snuff boxes and knife handles was supplied.[71]

He made toys, too, and chimney ornaments of this same new material, or else glazed with brilliant coloured glazes in splashes of irregular colour. He made larger goods also—teapots, dishes and vases in solid agate. All these were pressed in moulds; and for moulder or block-cutter he had, from about 1746 onwards, the celebrated Aaron Wood. The cream-coloured body, with Enoch Booth’s transparent lead glaze, afforded Whieldon another material on which to work. He took the colourless fluid glaze and turned it madder brown with manganese, or yellow with iron oxide, or green with copper, or blue with cobalt. Then he mixed them to give every shade of coloured glaze, and laid these glazes on the ware to give infinite variety. In this way he produced those beautiful tortoiseshell wares for which he is most renowned. His agate ware is solid; his tortoiseshell ware is a glaze.[72]

He had acquired fame as a skilful potter before Josiah Wedgwood joined him in 1754, and probably produced already both the solid agate and the tortoiseshell. In his last popular production—the melon, cauliflower, and pineapple wares, with their brilliant green glaze—it is probable that Wedgwood’s incessant experiments played a decisive part.

Besides having Wedgwood as a partner, he had in his employ such examples of the new race of potters as Josiah Spode, Robert Garner, J. Barker, and Wm. Greatbach. Jewitt[73] has preserved for us some of the hiring books and accounts of Thomas Whieldon, in which the names and pay of three of these four apprentices occur, and which, as they are unique evidence of wages, are here given:

Apparently workmen were hired by the year,[76] and the highest wages paid were 8s. a week. It will be seen that there has been practically no increase in wages since the early days of the century. One wonders where Wedgwood and Spode obtained the capital wherewith to start their businesses.

Josiah Wedgwood was Whieldon’s partner from 1754 to 1759. One of the stipulations of the partnership is said to have been that Wedgwood might keep his experiments to himself. It is certain that he did experiment extensively, and we may attribute to him the green glaze and successful patterns of the “cauliflower” and “pineapple” wares.[77] It would be a mistake to depreciate these patterns as being unsuitable and vulgar imitations of nature. The natural shapes were adapted and conventionalized in a thoroughly artistic way, as anyone who looks at Whieldon’s or Wedgwood’s samples of this ware preserved in the South Kensington Museum can see at a glance. Slavish imitations there were later, but that was not Whieldon’s way.

Taste changed, however, and Whieldon’s wares became unfashionable. It is only of quite recent years that the agate and marble, perfected later by Wedgwood, or the quaint cottage chimney ornaments and tortoiseshell ware of Whieldon, Wedgwood and Ralph Wood, have come to be valued as a native and genuine Staffordshire art. When Whieldon found that his market had left him he made no attempt to follow in the wake of his pupils, and about 1780 retired from business. His factory was just south of the present railway station at Stoke, and he built and lived in the house which still looks down upon the Trent and the railway. In 1786 he served as High Sheriff for the county. He died in 1798, and is buried at Stoke. His widow died in 1828, and one of his sons, Edward, was for many years Rector of Burslem, and lived at Hales Hall, near Cheadle. But his descendants are now no longer to be found in the potteries.

We know of two other manufacturers who made agate and tortoiseshell ware—Daniel Bird, called “the flint potter” because of his experiments with different proportions of flint in the clay body,[78] and John and Thomas Alders of Cliff Bank. There were probably many others. These two made buttons and knife handles very largely. Both worked at the Stoke end of the Potteries.

Before entering on the fresh epoch in the History of Potting which opens with the work of Wedgwood, it will be as well to recount the end of the salt-glaze industry. It was a risky manufacture. The ware was thin, and many accidents happened in firing. Therefore the ware was costly; and only small pieces could be so glazed. The fluid lead glazes used by the skilful potters of the latter half of the century gave a surface smoother and more suitable for food. The demand for ornamental salt glaze was small, and the enormous demand for useful ware sent all the best potters into the useful trade; while in the ornamental lines Wedgwood’s Greek and Etruscan shapes entirely ruled the market. All these causes conspired to ruin the salt glaze, and by 1770 it had fallen into general disuse. The last considerable makers of salt glaze were the Baddeleys and Christopher and Charles Whitehead of the Old Hall, Hanley.[79] No single maker of salt glaze occurs on the 1787 lists. It was a fine ware, characteristic of and peculiar to Staffordshire, and when one considers the difficulties under which its production was carried on, a tribute of praise is due to those potters who so quickly developed it to its highest state of perfection.

Shaw had an account, from the lips of an old man of eighty-three, born in 1720, showing the conditions under which this old-world industry was carried on.[80] And before we come to the modern life with its canals and steam and complete “factory system,” it is worth while to give this recollection of potting in 1750.

“Ralph Leigh was employed by John Taylor of the Hill Top, to look after his horses, and was the first man whose wages were raised from 10d. to 12d. a day. With four or six horses he went twice to Whitfield, or thrice to Norton, in a day for coals; of which each horse brought 2½ cwt. on its back; along lanes extremely dirty. At the pit, coals then cost 7d. the draught, whether 2, 2½, or 3 cwt., for the colliers guessed at the quantity. The charge for carrying each load from Norton to Burslem was 3d., a penny a mile.[81] During a long time he carried crates of pottery to Winsford, and brought back ball clay. Each horse carried a crate on a pack saddle, and a small panier on each side was used to hold two or three balls of clay, weighing 60 or 70 lbs. Each horse was muzzled to prevent it biting the hedges, and the roads were narrow and bad and without toll gates. Afterwards with a cart and four horses he went to Winsford and delivered his crates the same day; and on the second day brought back a ton of Chester clay to Burslem. He was allowed four days to take crates to Bridgenorth, and bring back shop goods for Newcastle. He went with crates to Willington Ferry, and returned with flint, plaister stone and shop goods. He has gone to Liverpool and also as far as Exeter, before there were regular carriers.”