Yet for the part he played in this business John Turner was afterwards made to suffer and in this manner. On Lord Gower’s estates he discovered a clay which made a singularly hard white body, but the agent for the Earl, remembering, it is said, the action Turner had taken against Champion, told him he might look for his clays elsewhere, and refused to let him work the clay. The use of china clay and china stone, and the new glaze called “Greatbach’s china glaze,” completed the perfection of the cream-coloured earthenware, and Wedgwood drifted more and more away from the agate and cauliflower ware of his youth to the new body—the Queen’s Ware.[106] Cream colour for the table—printed, enamelled or plain—became ever more important. In 1770 he received an order for an enormous dinner service from the Empress of Russia. Each piece was to have enamelled on it a different view of some English gentleman’s seat. To complete this extraordinary order artists and enamellers were collected from the whole country, and set to work at Chelsea under Bentley’s guidance. The results do not seem very attractive. A picture of a gentleman’s seat, generally in black or drab on a cream-coloured plate, is only interesting. A good border pattern is the most suitable decoration for a dinner plate. Having got his staff of enamellers together, Wedgwood decided to do his own enamelling in future instead of sending his ware to the Warburtons to be enamelled.[107] The sober border decorations of his tea and dinner ware, which is to some tastes the very best part of his work, were done at Chelsea by these artists. His most successful patterns are mere enamelled borders, perfectly enamelled on perfectly potted plates. But this was “useful” ware, and all the time he was aiming at the development of his ornamental ware along classical lines. The black basalt—plain; the black basalt—decorated with encaustic red paintings unglazed, after the manner of the Etruscans; the jasper vases and plaques; all are attempts to reproduce the survivals of Greece and Rome. This neo-classic style, if not original, was at least a change from the endless rococo of Dresden, and the shepherdesses of Chelsea and Sèvres; and, compared with the “art china” productions of the first half of the nineteenth century, the copies of even decadent Rome seem to be the acme of good taste. One is also tempted to regret that in them the whole art of the potter is devoted to the most exact reproduction of bronze, of Parian marble, of natural cameos, or even of the glassy Barberini Vase. The reproduction is splendid, and probably nothing would have shocked Wedgwood more than to think that posterity could prefer his lavender tea service, or the vine pattern on his Queen’s Ware. [Illustration: HACKWOOD, THE MODELLER]