Staffordshire Potteries

Staffordshire Potteries, area around Stoke-on-Trent, in north Staffordshire, England, in which ceramics have been produced since the 17th century. The five towns of the Staffordshire Potteries (Stoke-on-Trent, Hanley, Burslem, Tunstall, and Longton), where some of the earliest developments of the Industrial Revolution took place, still comprise one of the worlds great centres of ceramics production.

The regions abundance of clays for pottery and coal for the kilns in which it was fired provided the foundations for the pottery industry, which began with the making of slipwares (earthenwares glazed with liquid clay) in the 17th century. The best examples, red-bodied and lead-glazed, have trailed decoration in white and shades of brown slip (liquid clay); the most vigorous are associated with Thomas Toft, but other potters in the second half of the 17th century produced simpler pieces, with combed or marbled slip patterns.

Towards the end of the 17th century, David and John Elers, silversmiths-turned potters who had worked with John Dwight, of Fulham, the first English stoneware potter, set up a pottery at Bradwell Wood producing unglazed fine red stoneware. These pieces, mostly teawares, were often ornamented with applied sprigs in the Chinese manner, and were soon being imitated. Such wares continued to be produced in Staffordshire for most of the 18th century, those from the 1760s onwards having engine-turned (mechanically applied) decoration.

Both lead-glazed earthenware and salt-glazed stoneware were made throughout the first half of the 18th century. Some of the best lead-glazed earthenwares, both for use and decoration, were the work of John Astbury, of Shelton. Decorative effects were achieved not only with coloured glazes but also by the technique of sgraffiato (scratching the slip on the surface to reveal the body colour beneath) or by applying reliefs in a contrasting colour. Agate ware was produced by fusing different-coloured clays in such a way as to produce an irregular swirling pattern in the ceramic body. A shining black ware (later known as Jackfield) was produced, and moulded wares were not uncommon.

From the 1740s onwards, salt-glazed stonewares were sometimes decorated with enamelling and, from the 1760s, with transfer-printed designs. Salt-glazed stoneware figures, some known as pew groups, are associated with Aaron Wood, whose brother Ralph was a modeller of lead-glazed earthenware figures. Their sons, Ralph II and Enoch, were also outstanding modellers. Enoch Wood's factory produced the whole range of Staffordshire wares, including basalt and jasperware (finely potted earthenwares, the one a matt black, the other in a range of delicate hues), and blue-printed earthenwares. Under his sons, it continued into the 1840s.

A key figure in the development of the Staffordshire pottery industry during the 1750s was Thomas Whieldon, whose works at Fenton produced pottery in a wide range of bodies and decorative techniques; he employed and trained many of the leading Staffordshire potters of the next generation, including Daniel and William Greatbatch, Aaron Wood, Josiah Spode, and Josiah Wedgwood. The latter was Whieldon's partner for five years before he set up his own factory in 1759 and developed the creamware body that became famous all over the world.

Cream-coloured earthenware was first made by Enoch Booth of Tunstall in the 1740s. After Josiah Wedgwood had perfected it in the 1760s, it overtook Continental faience in popularity and eclipsed salt-glazed stoneware as the dominant body for utilitarian pottery. Creamware in the white (undecorated), transfer-printed, or with enamelled decoration was soon being manufactured at other factories besides Wedgwood's, and his development of the bluish-glazed pearlware gave the impetus for the blue-printed wares that were supplied to a voracious market during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

The first porcelain factory in Staffordshire was that of William Littler at Longton Hall (1749-1760). He made moulded and enamelled tablewares and figures in soft-paste porcelain, and was associated with a strong royal blue known as Littler's blue. The failure of Champion's Bristol porcelain factory resulted in its sale to a group of Staffordshire potters who opened a factory at New Hall in 1782. Attractive sprigged tea services and tablewares were made there until 1835. Josiah Spode's development of bone china (porcelain containing bone ash) around 1800 was of momentous significance for the ceramics industry and ensured the domination of Staffordshire in subsequent porcelain production.

As well as major concerns such as Wedgwood, Spode, Minton, and Doulton, the area supported hundreds of smaller pottery and porcelain factories and their auxiliary industries during the 19th century. The majority of them supplied a growing mass market with inexpensive, useful earthenwares decorated with transfer-prints or unsophisticated enamel painting, or with inexpensive and simply modelled flat-backed figures of people and animals.

While the number of factories in the area has diminished during the 20th century, Staffordshire continues to play a leading part in the ceramics industry worldwide.