GROUP OF SALT-GLAZED WARE. Jug enamelled in colours. Teapot blue enamel by Littler.
(_In the collection of Col. and Mrs. Dickson._)]
This chemical action taking place simultaneously with the final firing of the ware before its removal from the kiln incorporates the glaze with the body of the ware itself. It is this combination which causes the minute depressions or tiny pin-holes in all stoneware from Bellarmines down to the finely and nearly translucent salt-glazed Staffordshire ware which has a surface like that of leather. The same multitudinous pin-hole surface is characteristic of Oriental porcelain, which like stoneware is fired at a very high temperature, and the glaze and the body completed at one firing in the _grand feu_. Though, of course, this is not salt glaze, nor is the surface other than as smooth as glass to the touch, although under a strong glass or even to the naked eye these pin-holes are easily discernible.
At the present day salt glaze is mainly used for such ware as ink-pots, drain pipes, insulators for telegraphic instruments, and common ginger-beer bottles. The connection between John Dwight, of Christ Church, Oxford (Master of Arts), the creator of the magnificent bust of _Prince Rupert_, the glory of the ceramic collection at the British Museum, and between John Philip Elers, godson of Queen Christina, and this sad array of utilitarian nondescripts, is not a pleasing subject for reflection. It is sad to think that these triumphs have been won in vain by the genius of the old potters over the plastic clay. What an ignoble ending to the long chain of experiments! When Dwight destroyed his secret memoranda it is as though he foresaw the era of the drainpipe.
=Early Salt-glaze.=--The early stages of the manufacture of salt-glazed ware were crude and experimental. There is some connection between the finely potted lustrous stoneware of Nottingham and "Crouch ware," the undeveloped form of the later phase of finely-potted Staffordshire salt-glaze ware. This "Crouch" ware represents the transitional stage between the ordinary brown stoneware and the later drab or greyish white examples. Crouch ware at its earliest was not made in Staffordshire till 1690, and there is presumptive evidence to show that salt-glaze brown ware was made at some pot-works at Crich, near Matlock, Derbyshire; and that the same or similar clay was used by the Staffordshire potters who gave it that name, and there is proof that the Crich pottery existed as early as 1717, and Nottingham has dated pieces as early as 1700.