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.