Enoch Booth had married Ann, daughter of Thomas Child of Tunstall. It was on his father-in-law’s land that, about 1745, he started the first considerable earthenware factory in Tunstall. Booth was the legitimate successor of Astbury. He took the earthenware body, white as Astbury had left it, and, instead of using it for salt glaze, he worked out the most suitable lead glaze, and the best way of applying it to the piece. Instead of dusting it over the ware in the dangerous dry condition, he ground the lead ore up with flint and clay and water. Into this fluid glaze the ware was dipped. Not only did this give a uniform glossy coat on each piece of ware, but different pieces were all glazed alike. Booth had the ware dipped after it had been fired, while it was in the porous or “biscuit” condition but sufficiently firm to be handled. A second firing to fuse on the glaze was given to the ware after dipping. These two firings, in the biscuit oven and in the “glost” oven, are the ordinary processes of manufacture to this day. Shaw gives 1750 as the date of this important improvement;[61] it is possible that fluid glazes were used before this and by others, but it was the combination of fluid glaze and double firing that is important, and this with some certainty we may put down to Enoch Booth and the year 1750. Booth’s original factory at Tunstall was probably the “Old Bank” at the corner of Cross Street and Well Street, but he extended his works at an early date over the whole of the area now bounded by Well Street, Market Square, High Street and Calver Street, where he built the Phœnix Works. Sometime before 1781[62] he had been succeeded by Anthony Keeling who had married his daughter Ann. Anthony Keeling built Calver House in 1793, but his trade suffered in the French wars, and in 1810 he retired from business and went to Liverpool where he died in 1816.[63] The Phœnix Works were carried on by Thomas Goodfellow till they were pulled down about 1860. Ware, besides being thrown, moulded or cast, and coated with the transparent glaze of salt or lead, requires decoration. This decoration could be given by coloured clay slips, after the manner of the old Toft dishes, or after the manner of Ralph Shaw’s “graffiato” ware, or as what is called “scratched blue.” But decoration could also be given by means of enamelling paints. Paints that is which are mixed with glass, and, on being heated, fuse into the glaze and become fast. This enamelling was in the early days a special trade and no part of the potter’s business. The shopkeeper might, if he liked, employ somebody called an enameller to enamel his particular cups and saucers. The enameller used a small “muffle” stove where the ware could be heated sufficiently to fuse the glaze and paint together, while at the same time it was kept away from direct contact with flames or smoke. [Illustration: Scratched blue salt glaze cup, dated 1750. From the Stoke-on-Trent Museums.]