We may compare this claim with the similar statements made about the same time in the petitions of Poterat and others. In neither case is there any sign of an acquaintance with the Chinese _materials_. In France the aim was to make something that should combine the properties of earthenware and glass; while in the case of Dr. Dwight’s ware, hardness and infusibility were the points sought for. The portrait busts and statuettes in the British Museum, and a famous piece at South Kensington, are all that remain of Dr. Dwight’s wares. These were until lately in the hands of his descendants, and are, therefore, thoroughly authenticated.[150] In the former collection are two figures, a sportsman and a girl with two lambs, which in spirit and sharpness of execution compare favourably with our later imitations of Meissen porcelain in soft paste. A thin, apparently non-plumbiferous glaze covers a white body, which is undoubtedly of great hardness and possibly just translucent (‘approaching in some cases to translucency,’ says the writer of the ‘Jermyn Street’ Catalogue). Unfortunately there has survived nothing to illustrate his imitations of Chinese and Persian ware. Dr. Dwight was a man of some social position, and a Master of Arts of Christ Church, Oxford. The very considerable merit of his stoneware figures (and we may add, the pathetic interest attaching to the little figure of a dead child, at South Kensington, inscribed ‘Lydia Dwight, dyed March 3rd, 1673’) have established his position as the father of English ceramics, and on this ground he has found a place along with Duesbury and Wedgwood in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. For us his stoneware has a special interest. It is perhaps the only ceramic ware in existence that has so many of the characteristics of true porcelain--its hardness, its resistance to high temperatures, and to some extent also its translucency and whiteness of paste--but which in origin and chemical composition differs so entirely from the normal type. Dr. Place of York was a contemporary of Dwight; he devoted much time to experiments on various kinds of clay. Although he has some claim to rank as an artistic potter, I do not think that there is any proof that he ever made porcelain of either hard or soft paste. It is certainly remarkable that during the following fifty years and more we hear nothing in England of any attempt to manufacture porcelain, nor is there any patent or contemporary notice bearing on the subject during the interval between Dr. Dwight’s specification of 1684 and the date of Frye’s first patent. A claim to make porcelain by working up the ground fragments of Oriental ware with some gummy materials is perhaps the only exception.