About this same time a workman named Alsager perfected the potter’s throwing wheel as we know it at this day.[46] And now that potters were using these mixed ingredients, Devon clay, ground flint syrup, and native clay in special and patented proportions, the old method of evaporating the slip under the sun in an open pan had to go. It is said to have been Ralph Shaw, a most litigious personage, who began specially to mix clays in a liquid form in a fire-heated trough—locked, of course, that no neighbour might discover the “mystery.”[47] This same Ralph Shaw, of Burslem, took out a patent in 1732, professing—as was almost common form in those days—to make earthenware like Chinese Porcelain. It was to be white within, and white when required without. It was made in reality by dipping the ordinary ware in a white clay dip—just the process Astbury had invented some twenty years before. But there was this that was new to North Staffordshire; Shaw scratched away the white dip on the outside of the jug so that the blue ground became visible. He produced indeed what the mediæval Italians called “graffiato” ware, and very beautiful much of it is.[48] Shaw, however, tried to prevent anybody using the white slip at all, and became such a nuisance to his neighbours that they united in 1736 to take up the case of John Mitchell, of Burslem Hill Top, who was prosecuted by Shaw for infringing his patent.[49] Great was the rejoicing in the Potteries when the Judge at Stafford declared, or is reported to have declared:—“Gooa whomm, potters, an’ mak what soourts o’ pots yoa leykin.” “An,” says our narrator, “when they coom ’nto’ Boslum, aw th’ bells i’ Hoositon (Wolstanton), and Stoke, and th’ tahin, wurn ringin’ loike hey go’ mad, aw th’ dey.” Ralph Shaw is said to have been so disgusted at the result that he emigrated to Paris, where he made pots for many years.[50] Ralph Shaw’s ware was known as “bit-stone ware.” The “bit-stones” were put between two pieces of ware when they were fired in the saggars in order to keep them from sticking to each other. They were the more necessary in that Shaw’s ware was dipped in a light slip. The “bit-stones” have long since been replaced by “spurs” and “stilts” and other small earthenware objects, the special manufacture of which is now a great industry by itself. The single stilt and spur factory of Thos. Arrowsmith in Burslem employs now 230 hands on this manufacture alone. [Illustration: BURSLEM IN 1750 Scale 100 yards to the inch Based on a plan by Enoch Wood]