Review by Jean Wetherbee
Godden’s Guide to Ironstone, Stone, & Granite Wares

Geoffrey A. Godden, F.R.S.A. Godden’s Guide to Ironstone, Stone, & Granite Wares. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Antique Collector’s Club, 1999. 399 pp.; 285 bw and color illus., three appendices, bibliography, index. $89.95.

In his preface, Geoffrey Godden states that the nineteenth-century durable ironstone china, stone china, or granite wares “stimulated the industry and prolonged the British hold on all overseas markets.” Indeed, he demonstrates that English potteries produced ironstone dishes that helped feed the world for a hundred years.

The author describes how the bodies discussed in this book were originally produced to emulate the salable Chinese export-market porcelains so desirable in England during the late eighteenth century. He explains the role played by tariffs, the English East India Company’s discontinuance of importations, and the resulting “great void that occurred in the market for middle-range tablewares.” Thus, Godden explains how English innovators finally perfected hardy, inexpensive bodies that would attract customers in both home and world markets.

In the first half of this book, Godden discusses and illustrates the history of the discovery of the sturdy opaque bodies with colorful decorations reminiscent of the oriental wares. Excellent new photographs are used in this discourse. The content of the material is similar to his earlier text, Mason’s China and the Ironstone Wares, including both information on Mason’s work and his main Staffordshire rivals, the firms of Davenport, Hicks & Meigh, Ridgway, and Spode. American collectors of these colorful, now expensive and rare dishes will enjoy his presentation. Those more interested in mid-Victorian English china can trace some shapes, lines, finials, and jugs that would be echoed in the later transfer-decorated and all-white ironstone wares. 

During the twentieth century, Americans became fascinated with the strong, attractive, useful tablewares with English backstamps that had survived for one and a half centuries in attics, pantries, back-room cupboards, and cellars. As these old dishes were rediscovered, curious collectors began to ask English ceramic authorities for information. Certainly, many of those collectors referred often to such earlier landmark books by Godden as his Encyclopaedia of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks and his revision of Llewellynn Jewitt’s classic, The Ceramic Art of Great Britain, that provide important ceramic history for the present work.

Twentieth-century American collectors eager for information on the wares began to gather data on marks, shapes, and registrations, and to photograph and record sherds and whole vessels. Godden states, “It is perhaps a pity that the white ironstone-type wares were almost wholly made for the export market.” This was also true for the popular flow blue, mulberry, and copper-enhanced dishes that were shipped to North America. Most of these mid-century wares were neither appreciated nor sold in large numbers in the land where they were created. Therefore, few English records of these wares are known to exist. Godden provides some answers to the American collectors’ questions.

Many American readers will be interested in Chapter 5 on the later (post-1830) ironstone and granite wares. Godden’s discussion of hotel, steamship, and railroad china is especially educational. He notes that Staffordshire potteries produced and marketed thousands of tons of white ironstone, useful wares so highly popular in the United States. He refers to this white granite as the dominant type of pottery in use from the 1850s until the end of the nineteenth century. Yet he provides little information on the “gap” years from about 1830 to 1880. Serious Americans readers may feel disappointed by most of the quotes and other data, which are mostly derived from late-nineteenth-century records. Even pertinent records previously known and published in Jewitt’s ceramic history have been omitted. British authorities acknowledge that the patent registries from 1841 to 1883 are in fragile shape, rather difficult to access, and not yet duplicated for the Public Record House at Kew, Surry. 

Godden distinguishes between the post-1813 ironstone tablewares, which were made of a less expensive and less durable earthenware, and Mason’s earlier ironstone bodies. In doing this however, he also minimizes the importance of the transfer prints on the later ironstone-type bodies. He fails to make it clear that from about 1840 most flow blue and mulberry treatments, both brushstroke (painted) and transfer, were applied to ironstone-type bodies. This also is true for those ironstone bodies embellished with “tea leaf” or other copper luster decorations. Firms that produced the all-white ironstone also decorated the same pieces in flow blue, mulberry, and copper luster. The bodies are usually identical, although Godden fails to make this clear in his discussion.

Chapter 6 on identification is of particular use for American collectors hungry for information. Readers will need to study and restudy the clear, well-worded rules for dating on pages 174–176, which the author laughingly calls “helpful Godden guides.” These rules precede “An Alphabetical List of British Manufacturers of Ironstone-Type Wares,” which comprises the bulk of the book. With his knowledge of and access to English records, the author instructs on dates, locations, kinds of bodies, trade names, photographs, and pertinent details about labor relations and partnerships. He includes helpful accounts of more than three hundred nineteenth-century English pottery businesses. Many a “dish detective” will find clues and solve mysteries by studying the facts found in this second half of the volume. 

The final chapter briefly discusses the non-British manufacturers, with an emphasis on American potters. Much of Godden’s information is taken from the records of the United States Potters’ Association. The records from the 1870s and 1880s include reports on labor problems, measures, materials, wages, and tariffs. Although the association’s president claimed that American pottery’s “quality also has been improved until our stone china is fully equal to, if not superior to, any of the same grades made in England,” many collectors feel that the American potters rarely made ceramics that could compete with the English products.

This American reader senses that Mr. Godden does not understand the effect of the American Civil War on the country’s economy or on the emerging potteries. The quotes concerning Pennsylvania clay are confusing, and quotes concerning American potteries’ purchase of clays and materials from England are not placed into context. Sources of clay used in native potteries in New Jersey, Ohio, Vermont, and other sites are not mentioned. Mr. Godden does include a few valuable sources of additional information for those individuals interested in exploring the history of American pottery manufacturers.

In Appendix I, Godden includes two very helpful lists of makers’ marks: one contains potters’ initials arranged in alphabetical order and the other provides trade names and descriptions, usually relating to bodies. Potters’ initials and descriptive terms such as Berlin ironstone, granite opaque pearl, imperial granite, opaque stone china, and so on, are followed by the names of their manufacturers. Many collectors could initiate a search for the maker of a piece from these comprehensive pages.

“Registered Marks, Patterns or Forms: British Ironstone Manufacturers in 1885 and 1900,” the title of the handy Appendix II, is, perhaps, deceptive. The title cites the dates 1885 and 1900, but the text refers mostly to registrations from 1842 to 1883, the “gap” years. The author explains the deciphering of the registration numbers and includes the list of numbers used from 1884 to the present. Unfortunately, Godden’s list of registered designs or shapes relating to ironstone-type wares includes only those patterns or shapes already identified in the United States. The American researcher wanting to identify a ceramic piece with a registration mark would do better to consult the more complete listing in Cushion’s marks handbook.^[1]

However, the reader can only be delighted with the opening pages of this second appendix, especially the illustrations. The first page displays a photograph of a previously undiscovered (in America, that is) shape, a molded jug by E. Jones recorded just a few years before the diamond-shaped marks were used. The facing page illustrates two examples taken from English registry books—just the kinds of illustrations that ironstone researchers are hungry to see. The first is a typical drawing submitted to London’s Office of Registry of Designs on May 30, 1842, by James Edwards, a pioneer in the design and manufacture of white ironstone. Collectors have nicknamed that shape Fluted Double Swirl, and a number of these pieces are known. The second reveals the transfer-printed design for the Boston Mails view. 

Both of these illustrations suggest that there must be many drawings or pictures of mid-Victorian export wares in existence at the registry that would interest American collectors. Certainly, the potters’ shape names included among these records would add to the bank of ironstone knowledge in the United States. For researchers able to travel to England, the author succinctly tells the reader how to access the data housed at the Public Record Office at Kew. He includes the exact address, telephone number, and possible difficulties that an investigator might encounter. 

Serious students of mid-Victorian ironstone-type earthenware exports need to add this carefully researched reference text to their libraries. The continuing efforts of Geoffrey Godden and other English authorities to ferret out ceramic facts of interest during this time period are appreciated worldwide.

Jean Wetherbee
White Ironstone China Association