Review by Pat Halfpenny
The Leeds Pottery, 1770–1881

John Griffin, The Leeds Pottery, 1770–1881. Leeds, Eng.: Leeds Art Collection Fund, 2005. 2 vols., 639 pp.; 1,134 color plates and 186 other color illus. £70 (hardcover).

This landmark publication incorporates newly discovered sources, original factory design books, and the expertise of a dedicated collector. In two volumes, John Griffin revises and expands our knowledge of one of England’s foremost earthenware factories. Volume 1 is mainly devoted to company history and a survey of production, predominantly creamware and pearlware. Volume 2 concentrates on analyzing and reproducing twelve surviving design, drawing, and pattern books from the late-eighteenth- and early-nineteenth-century Leeds Pottery. He concludes with details of a revival of factory products in the period 1880 to 1950.

Volume 1 begins with chapters devoted to a critical history of the factory. We read in great depth about the founding partners, their personal investment, and share ownership. The partnership articles of agreement are quoted in part, analyzed, and a complete transcript is appended. Details of retirement, death, and inheritance are given in full. One might wonder why all of this needs to be said. On reflection, I deduced that the author was cognizant of the need not only to explain why past discussions about the Leeds Pottery were inaccurate but also to prove his position beyond reasonable doubt. He does this convincingly by providing primary sources to ensure that there could be no further excuse for not knowing when the factory started, who founded it, and when and why it had financial successes and difficulties.

The inclusion of Court of Chancery proceedings, annual coal consumption, and insurance policies might be considered unnecessarily pedantic. Books on pottery are often written exclusively from the collectors’ point of view, but Griffin’s book offers so much more. It is essential reading for everyone interested in material culture. He discusses partners’ salaries and workers’ wages and also quotes the factory’s changing value and prices realized when partners’ shares were sold by their heirs. Often we wonder what the present-day equivalents of these amounts would be. When citing a newly discovered Hartley, Greens and Co. Leeds Pottery price list of 1796, the author indicates that £71.52 is the 2003 equivalent of £1 in 1796.^[1] In his discussion of the price list he notes that the left side of the list features “A Scale of Twelve Inches English Measure,” an important guide as every nation had its own measuring standard. An English foot at twelve inches was apparently different from the measurements of a foot in Denmark, France, Germany, and Russia. This is just one of the pitfalls identified in surviving letters and documents quoted by Griffin to illustrate the problems associated with foreign trade, particularly with Russia, in the earliest years of the nineteenth century.

Before surveying the factory’s products, the author reviews factory marks, thirty-one of which illustrate an incredibly useful bookmark that accompanies the volumes. Discussion of the wares opens with a reproduction of a copy of the 1794 design book, annotated with the range of sizes and prices—usually per dozen—and generally known as the agents’ book. In an invaluable exercise, using the published design books of five other factories for reference, the author’s captions for the agents’ book pages indicate which Leeds pieces are identical or similar to the products of their contemporaries. For those of us interested in identifying makers of creamware, Griffin generously shares with us this result of his extensive research.

The author illustrates a range of extant Leeds Pottery pieces with excellent photographs (most by John R. Griffin of London). He concentrates on marked examples, including creamware, pearlware, feldspathic stoneware, black basalt, and porcelain. Griffin spends little time discussing the specific types of ceramic produced at the Leeds Pottery, only giving a brief description before each set of illustrations. He seems to feel that his expertise lies in Yorkshire ceramic history, not in the history of the wares. This may be the only place where I take exception to the author’s work, where I feel he does not hold to the same burden of proof he demands for an understanding of the Leeds Pottery. He provides no primary source for his emphatic assertion that “[p]earlware was introduced by Josiah Wedgwood in 1779” (p. 191; Wedgwood’s name for the ware was “Pearl White”). Noting that “it has also been claimed that other Staffordshire potters had introduced what they called ‘China Glaze’ as early as 1775” (p. 191) hardly compensates for perpetuating the myth that Wedgwood introduced pearlware.

The first volume concludes with a chapter on the factory from 1827 to 1881. The author expresses his frustration at the lack of sources, reflecting that they do not allow him to discuss this period of the Leeds Pottery in the same detail as the 1770–1826 period. In fewer than ten pages he surveys this later history and the known products, concluding that the wares, no longer fashionable, were confined to the home market and were indistinguishable from the general run of Staffordshire products.

Volume 2 is primarily devoted to the surviving factory design, drawing, and pattern books. These are not the published books that have been made widely available through reprinting but are factory documents, sometimes a chronological illustration of painted patterns, sometimes a collation of shapes, sometimes a chronology interspersed with pasted “scraps.” Many of the sketches have comments written on them by customers submitting orders, some of which include suggestions for improvements to the shape. These comments shed light on the way in which the English pottery trade was conducted in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The fascinating terminology, the requests that Leeds Pottery make wares formerly obtained from Dutch manufacturers, and correspondence commissioning special designs all tell of a factory ready to respond to consumer needs. Understanding these books, synthesizing the story they are trying to tell us, as well as appreciating the artistry—all these complex issues are tackled by the author. It will take a truly dedicated reader to thoroughly understand his analysis, though. This reviewer needed to read and reread the associated text a number of times to assimilate Griffin’s efforts to communicate both his insights and his reservations about what can be deduced from the design books. This is less a reflection on the author’s writing than an observation on the complexity of these kinds of sources.

In closing, Griffin reviews the work of potters in the Leeds area who revived Leeds Pottery creamware. He illustrates the well-known 1913 catalog of the dealer W. W. Slee, in which we see pieces that were made by the Senior family of potters. These creamwares fueled the American market for colonial revival ceramics and can be found in many collections where they are said to be eighteenth-century examples.

Griffin is a meticulous researcher, determined to offer a convincing retelling of the Leeds Pottery story. He painstakingly cites every source, and his use of marked examples offers a real basis for understanding the wares of this prominent factory. The support of many Yorkshire-based charitable organizations made this publication possible. We owe a debt of gratitude to them and to John Griffin for producing what will surely be a standard work of reference for the foreseeable future.

Pat Halfpenny, Director of Museum Collections, Winterthur Museum, Garden, and Library