The ceramic art of Great Britain from pre-historic times down to the present day, Volume 1 (of 2) : $b being a history of the ancient and modern pottery and porcelain works of the kingdom and of their productions of every classJewitt, Llewellynn Frederick William
History
The ceramic art of Great Britain from pre-historic times down to the present day, Volume 1 (of 2) : $b being a history of the ancient and modern pottery and porcelain works of the kingdom and of their productions of every class
Jewitt, Llewellynn Frederick William
Pottery, British -- History
In 1820 there “were six or seven potters in Lambeth,” says Mr. Goddard,
“working some sixteen small kilns, of seven or eight feet in diameter,
the produce of each kiln being under £20 worth of ware, the principal
articles made being blacking bottles, ginger-beer bottles (very
extensively made still), porter and cider bottles (not so largely made
now), spruce-beer bottles (gone, with the beer, quite out of fashion),
ink bottles (more used now than ever), oil bottles, pickle jars,
hunting jugs, &c. A few chemical vessels were also turned out well from
one kiln belonging to an eccentric individual, whose chief boast was to
drink a gallon of beer a day, and do without rest on Sundays.” In 1860:
“In place of some sixteen kilns, turning out each under £20 per kiln,
we have now about seventy, turning out each, perhaps, on an average
£50. They consume upwards of 20,000 tons of coal, paying a corporation
tax of say £2,100 per annum. The law requires this quantity to be burnt
without smoke, and, after immense cost and labour, this difficulty may
be called surmounted. Twenty-three thousand tons of clay are annually
changed into useful articles, giving employment to more than eight
hundred persons. The returns of the Lambeth potters cannot be estimated
at less than £140,000.”
_High Street._--From about 1750 to 1770 the Delft ware works were
carried on by a Mr. Griffiths, who had, for those days, a large
establishment. A curious reference to this manufactory occurs in the
following extract from the _Monthly Magazine_ for 1797. A man, at that
time unknown, but who turned out to be James Doe, a potter, committed
suicide by drowning, on the 14th of September in that year, at Sea Mill
Docks, two and a half miles from Bristol, having remained “fasting and
praying,” without food or bedding in the ruined building there from the
11th, waiting opportunity and determination to commit the rash act; and
having, during the whole of that time, written a kind of diary of his
feelings and intentions, his hopes and fears, on the walls of the old
room he remained in. Mr. Joseph James interested himself much in the
matter, and wrote an account for the _Monthly Magazine_; and this, and
the inquest, and other means he took, resulted in the discovery of
the name and some particulars of the life of the suicide. Two of the
letters forwarded in October, 1797, are highly interesting as showing
at what works he had been employed. The first letter is from London,
from “a respectable proprietor of a pottery there,” and thus runs:--
“_To the Editor of the_ MONTHLY MAGAZINE.
“SIR,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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