Note 82 — Chapter VI · WEDGWOOD AND THE CREAM COLOUR.
Reading edition
Professor Church quotes the following memorandum, done in red enamel on the back of a large dish of Wedgwood’s Queen’s Ware in the possession of Mr Sidney Locock:—“This dish was made at Etruria by Messrs Wedgwood & Bentley, the first year after Messrs Wedgwood & Bentley removed from Burslem to Etruria. Ric. Lawton served his apprenticeship at turning with them, and has had it in his house more than fifty years. It is my brother William’s modelling. It was turned on a hand lathe, as plates were at that date. I preserve this to show the quality of common cream ware before the introduction of growan or Cornwall stone. This body is formed of flint and clay only, the same as used for salt-glazed ware at that time, and flint and lead only instead of salt glaze, and it is fired in the usual and accustomed way and manner, as usual for glazed tea-pots, tortoiseshell, mottled, and agate, and cauliflower, &c. Also sand from the Mole Cop and Baddley Edge was used either in the body or glaze. N.B. Before flint was used they used a certain proportion of slip for the body in the glaze to prevent crazing, and to make it bear a stronger fire in the glaze oven. I was the first person that made use of bone in earthenware when in my apprenticeship at Mr Palmers at Hanley Green.
Burslem, Sept. 26th, 1826.
Enoch Wood.”
Church, “English Earthenware,” pp. 81-82.