One word in passing to collectors of this ware. Do not wash your specimens any more than you can help, as warm water has a deleterious effect on the lustre, and tends to make it less brilliant; we recommend our readers to polish their lustre ware with a soft cloth, and we wish them absolute and entire freedom from all mishaps. Treat the ware lovingly and kindly, it will never come again; the potters who made it are dead, the modern imitator is but a poor imitator, fraudulent at heart and feeble in result; if cunning lie in his heart it is not in his finger-tips, for, of a truth, his hand has lost its cunning. Besides the plain silver lustre, there is a decorated variety which is very handsome, and much sought after. Sometimes the ground is of silver lustre decorated in white, and sometimes the ground is white with an elaborate pattern of foliage, of fruit, or of birds, woven in silver thread. The rarest of this variety is the silver pattern on a canary ground. [Illustration: SILVER LUSTRE JUG (5 IN. HIGH). (White Decoration.) _From the Collection of Mr. W. G. Honey._] The first method, with the design left in white, was produced in handsome and highly artistic styles, and there is a pattern known as the “Resist” pattern which is much sought after. From Mr. W. G. Honey’s collection we have selected a very good example of this silver lustre with design in white. This is of the “Resist” pattern, its artistic excellence speaks for itself. [Illustration: GOLD LUSTRE JUG (Raised coloured flowers.) _From the Collection of Mr. W. G. Honey._] With regard to gold or purple lustre, the middle dish in the group in our illustration is gold lustre ware, and is probably of Swansea manufacture. Wedgwood produced a gold lustre of remarkable brilliancy. The dish above alluded to is decorated with stags and staghounds, but in some of the gold undecorated examples, such as Wedgwood’s, covered with a mottled ruby-gold lustre, the effect was due entirely to the shape and to the lustre. The reason that this variety is called gold or purple lustre is that in the lights it shines like gold, and the rest of the pattern in those pieces decorated with flowers and floral pattern, glows with a rich purple. This purple lustre shows more signs of the hand of time than any of the other lustres, and it is nearly always found to be partially worn off. We give an interesting example of a jug with gold lustre ground and raised coloured flowers from Mr. W. G. Honey’s collection. * * * * * NOTE.—Lustre ware is more fully treated in a chapter in the companion volume, “Chats on English Earthenware.” XIII LIVERPOOL WARE [Illustration: LIVERPOOL DELFT PUNCH BOWL. (Decorated with military trophies in blue, and having three-masted man-of-war inside.) Diameter, 20-1/2 in. _At Victoria and Albert Museum._] [Illustration: _In possession of Messrs. Fenton & Son._ OLD LIVERPOOL TILES. (Transfer-printed in black.)] XIII