A later historian, Simeon Shaw, writing in 1828, tells us on the authority of tradition that, besides makers of the butter-pots, and the mottled and marbled ware, and the slip-decorated ware, there was in 1685 a potter, Thomas Miles of Shelton, who was even then making from a local clay, mixed with white sand from Baddeley Edge, something which he calls “stone-ware.”[15] Certain it is, as will be shown later, that Aaron Wedgwood and his sons Thomas and Richard and also Matthew Garner were making brown stoneware and red teapots in Burslem in 1693. Stoneware, as we understand it, is so hard and dense that it requires no glaze to make it impervious to water, because it can be fired at such a high temperature as to partially fuse the body of the ware. This stoneware, afterwards glazed with salt, was to be the most distinctive product of North Staffordshire. These peasant potters “fired” and “drew out” one oven a week. They drew the cold oven on Monday; refilled it with new ware about Thursday, and fired it on Friday, giving it a last stoking up on Saturday morning, after which it cooled till Monday again. The ordinary ware was at this time only fired once, and only fired to a moderate temperature, just sufficient to melt the dusted lead ore and fuse it into a glaze on the surface of the ware, thus making it impervious to water. Though the native potters were even then trying to improve their craft from the German or Dutch potters employed in London, yet, as M. Solon has shown, they owed very little to the science or knowledge of the world, even the limited knowledge of that period. The colouring properties of Copper Oxide were known and employed throughout England at this period, yet there is no trace on the wares of the North Staffordshire potters till the eighteenth century is well advanced of the distinctive blue given by this invaluable colouring material. The ware produced was sold to the travelling packmen, and, at great cost, distributed on horseback throughout the country. Everything was coarse and elementary. There were no turning lathes to give neatness to the thrown article; there was no white body or ground upon which to enamel colours; there were no moulds for any but the smallest ornamental “spriggs”; no enamel paints; and there was practically no means of getting to a market. Such was the state of the Staffordshire potting trade in the year 1693, when those mysterious foreigners, John Philip Elers and David Elers, appeared upon the scene, like Cortez among the Mexicans, and broke up for ever the placid uneventful course of the old peasant industry. CHAPTER III. ELERS AND ART.