Book Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ...Potter, plate xxix. Tea-pots and other tea ware gave great scope for invention to the salt-glaze designers. Heart-shape or lovers' tea-pots, and house. tea-pots are not rare. Fig. 51 represents one of the latter in the Schreiber Collection. Some of the house tea-pots were of more complex design and with three stories on one side and two on the other; most present a curious and bizarre spout in which a mask, a bird's neck and bill, and an arm, are strangely associated. There is every probability that those fine and rare pieces of salt-glazed white ware, which are covered all over with a very deep cobalt-blue glaze, and enamelled with ornaments in black and opaque tin-white, were made about 1750 by William Littler of Longton. The decoration of these corresponds in many particulars with that of the Longton Hall porcelain, described by Mr. J. E. Nightingale as the work of W. Littler. Mr. Littler lived at Brownhills near Burslem; his father was a potter. He began business about the year 1745, and soon afterwards commenced his experiments on porcelain. We may assign his blue-glazed stoneware to a date between 1745 and 1750. The pieces enamelled on the top of the blue glaze, and by means of a second firing at a lower heat, are very rare; we doubt whether the recognised specimens could not be counted on the figures of one hand. When one admires an early sharply-cut piece of salt-glazed ware, one does not perhaps at once realise how many steps have been taken in order to secure the final result. Let us see what these steps in the process were. Firstly, a mould was carved, or cut in "intaglio," generally in some soft material such as native gypsum, that is, alabaster. This carved mould consisted of two or more pieces, flat or curved in...