How claymaking took over a whole corner of England
Across the country, small factories and cottage industries were given over to the production of decorative and functional pottery using traditional methods. It is a tradition that continues today.
Fashioning implements from clay is a process almost as old as humanity, but it was in the 17th century that English pottery began to evolve a style of its own, having been influenced by artisans from other parts of Europe who had fled persecution at home.
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Hide AdThe Dutch town of Delft was a particular influence, and English “delftware” – blue-and-white tin-glazed earthenware – became a familiar sight in homes across the country.
But it was the potter Josiah Spode who revolutionised domestic production with his invention of bone china – a mix of china clay, stone and ground bone – that took fine china, or something like it, from the drawing rooms of the wealthy into the ordinary home.
The Industrial Revolution brought mass production to the kilns, and Josiah Wedgwood, a native of Stoke on Trent, was arguably the founding father of The Potteries. He helped pioneer a process of “transfer printing” which looked almost as good as hand-designed items but cost far less to produce, and invented money back guarantees, special offers and other techniques we now take for granted.
Production continues at a handful of potteries around Stoke but, like many other industries, it has fallen victim to cheaper foreign imports – and the production of clay objects, meanwhile, has returned to its roots as a craft open to anyone with a wheel and a kiln.
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