Leslie B. Grigsby, with contributions by Michael Archer, Margaret MacFarlane, and Jonathan Horne. The Longridge Collection of English Slipware and Delftware. London: Jonathan Horne, 2000. Vol. 1 (slipware), approx. 180 pp.; vol. 2 (delftware), approx. 500 pp.; approx. 1,000 color illus., charts of dish and plate profiles, glossary, bibliography and short title list, index. $395.00.

When I saw the Longridge collection several years ago, my reaction was, how could such an important group of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century objects have been assembled in the last decades of the twentieth century? I had this reaction again when I first thumbed through the newly published catalog, The Longridge Collection of English Slipware and Delftware. This American collection was formed during the period when everyone, myself included, was saying, “Nothing good comes on the market anymore. Everything has been bought up.” Ms. Grigsby’s catalog proves how wrong we were. Not only does the collection include some of the rarest and most important objects in these wares, it does so in quantity. This quantity is not for the sake of quantity alone, but to make the collection as complete as possible. I feel I can safely say there is not a more important collection of either delft (132 dated pieces) or slipware (55 dated pieces) in private hands today. And only one or two museum collections could possibly compete with this collection.

If one word could describe the publications by Leslie Grigsby, the author of these spectacular two volumes as well as other important catalogs, it would be “thorough.” In addition to the basic catalog, in its simplest form a listing of objects along with their important facts, Ms. Grigsby also presents background material complete enough to consider this publication two monographs: one on slipware and the other on delft. She includes a discussion of the forms, materials, and technology—including the firing process—and who used them and how. Also included is a timeline incorporating relevant royal and other important personages who lived during the wares’ period of production (ca. 1628–1770). The timeline also features illustrations of the personages’ likenesses or monograms taken from the pieces in the collection. If a beginning student of delftware or slipware were to ask me, “What single book has answers to my many questions?” I would say, “If it is slipware you want, see volume one of the Longridge collection, and if it is delft that interests you, see volume two.”

The catalog layout of each object is clearly delineated. Using different but complementary typefaces and well-designed spacing, Ms. Grigsby has put together an easy-to-use format. Vital statistics are on the left, with each entry clearly separated. The listings include form, provenance, date, and dimensions, followed by the important categories of body clay, glaze, shape, and decoration. A discussion of the piece is found on the right. This arrangement permits the reader to skim the pages to find specific information quickly. Cleverly, in order to discuss so many objects and avoid repetition, Ms. Grigsby has also combined two or three very similar objects into a single grouping whenever possible.

As further illustration of my statement about Ms. Grigsby’s thoroughness, one need only look at the end of the book, which begins with charts of dish and plate profiles. Following is an extremely important and complete “Bibliography and Short Title List,” with more than 350 titles listed. A glossary precedes the most comprehensive index I have ever seen.

The objects in this collection are rare and important, and they are visually pleasing to most people, both in and out of the ceramic field. It would therefore be a shame not to show each piece to its fullest grandeur. Wisely, Gavin Ashworth was chosen to photograph the collection. Ashworth is, rightly, considered the top photographer of ceramics today. He has the ability to present the shininess of the glaze without bothersome reflections and, at the same time, to show the object’s true three-dimensionality. And as someone who has looked at thousands of pieces of slipware and delftware, I can say that the colors—the blues, the manganese, and the ground colors in their various shades of white—are quite true.

It would be impossible to pick out the most important pieces in the catalog. So many are significant for so many different reasons. I mention only a few that strike my fancy and that say something to me. First, among the slipwares, I would choose two sgraffito dishes: (1) the dish with the royal arms, because this type of decoration is normally found only on globular jugs and not as decoration on a flat, dish surface, and (2) the dish with the depiction of the two cockerels, because it surprisingly reminds me of American folk art. The rarity of these two pieces is amplified in view of the fact that only a very small handful of English sgraffito dishes have survived above ground.

From the hundreds of examples of delft, I would choose the four-part punch or wassail bowl, for three reasons. First, it is complete. Why wasn’t at least one part smashed and thrown away, back when it was just an old pot? Second, with its monumental form, it bears a crown like a king. Third, its decoration is extraordinary. Decorations so completely cover the piece that the only place the decorator could find to record the owner’s initials and date was inside the second section hidden beneath the top cover. The beautifully painted scene of a stag hunt covering the bowl’s entire exterior has great charm, while Bacchus astride a barrel on the bowl’s interior imparts a touch of humor.

An encyclopedic collection like the Longridge collection gives one the opportunity to make detailed comparisons. For instance, the large number of blue dash, ornate-rimmed, and simple-rimmed chargers incorporating categories of central designs including Adam and Eve, tulip, oakleaf, and royal, facilitates comparisons, determination of dates, and places of production—an effect Ms. Grigsby wisely uses to best advantage. The abundance of animals and human figures in the Longridge collection (more than I realized have survived since the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries) provides an important source of comparisons as well as a chance to enjoy objects of naive charm.

Jonathan Horne’s preface, which puts the collection into perspective, talks about collecting, collectors, and collections, starting in the eighteenth century with the famous connoisseur Horace Walpole. He mentions many twentieth-century collectors, some of whom were gone before I came into the ceramics world. Others such as the Tilleys, Louis Lipski, and Tom Burnes I had the privilege to know and learn from. It is indeed exciting to me to see many of the pieces they owned or handled in the Longridge collection and presented with all their importance in these volumes. The Longridge collection is one of the very few really great collections of the twentieth century. It is fortunate for the world to be able to learn of it in such a brilliant and scholarly way as presented by Leslie Grigsby.

John C. Austin
Consulting Curator of Ceramics and Glass
Colonial Williamsburg Foundation



Chris Green. John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery, Excavations 1971–79. London: English Heritage, Archaeological Report 6, 1999. xvi + 380 pp.; 259 bw and 8 color illus., 16 tables, 18 appendices, bibliography, index. $45.00.

The archaeological excavation of kiln sites is often the only way to obtain information about kiln size and design. The recovery of associated ceramic products can also pinpoint pottery types to a specific potter, locale, or both. Archaeological context very often dates pottery and waster assemblages as well.

Pottery manufacturing sites are important sources of information about the industrial and economic past. Such is the case with the Fulham pottery site near the City of London, where archaeological research has revealed new information about master potter John Dwight. When I visited Fulham in the 1970s, I was very impressed by the importance and complexity of the Fulham site, and overwhelmed by the amount of waste pottery that had been excavated—an estimated seventeen tons. I wondered how the archaeologists ever would find the time and dedication to study the massive amount of pottery recovered from the site. Obviously they did, as Chris Green’s long-awaited book attests.

The book focuses on the life and pottery of John Dwight, one of England’s premier potters, who not only experimented with the manufacture of porcelain but also was the first English potter to make stoneware successfully. Dwight, born sometime between 1633 and 1636, worked at his factory in Fulham from ca. 1672 to the time of his death in 1703. Historical documentation on Dwight was assembled by Haselgrove and Murray;1 the majority of evidence on Dwight’s work, however, comes from nearly a decade of archaeological rescue between 1971–1979. Most of the fieldwork and laboratory work was carried out by an amateur group, the Archaeological Section of the Fulham and Hammersmith Historical Society, continuing a laudatory English tradition of weekend volunteerism.

The book is divided into three parts, the site (59 pages), the pottery products (116 pages), and the appendices (192 pages). The site report consists of six chapters: a historical outline; an interesting discussion of the topographical setting of the site before Dwight established the pottery in ca. 1672; a detailed description of Dwight and post-Dwight structural developments at Fulham, from ca. 1672 to the later nineteenth century; the evidence for Dwight’s early experiments at the site, ca. 1672–1674; Dwight’s stoneware production, 1675–1703; and pottery production in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries by Dwight’s descendants and others.

Although the structural finds of the Dwight period survive in poor condition due to later disturbances, Green discusses Dwight’s stoneware kilns and their possible derivation. Because many of the original publications and reports are difficult to obtain, it is quite useful to have various other kiln sites with accompanying kiln plans described in one place. Rectangular kilns were used at Fulham until ca. 1780 when circular, bottle-type kilns appeared. Figure 22 shows a reconstruction of a rectangular stoneware kiln and part of its load, ca.1685; these kilns were vertical updraft kilns with the load chamber above the firebox. Figure 23 shows the plans of Fulham kilns compared with four other kiln sites. As Green discusses, there is a definite similarity in plans. Notably, it appears that Dwight’s kilns were in the London delft industry tradition, not in the Rhenish tradition as represented by an early kiln at Woolwich. The English kilns at Fulham, Vauxhall, and Southwark show striking similarities to the kilns excavated in Yorktown, Virginia.2

A common ancestor to the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English chimneyless delftware kilns appears to be the Italian tradition represented by the 1548 tin-glazing kiln of Piccolpasso. Green points out that the tin glaze kiln seems to have been the standard for stoneware production throughout the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He makes an interesting observation, that “by Dwight’s time kiln styles were technically interchangeable, and it was simply custom or tradition which led them to be so rigidly maintained and regionalised.” In other words, as has been shown in Yorktown, the rectangular kilns could be used for both tin and lead glaze manufacture as well as for salt-glazed stoneware.

The second part of the book deals exclusively with the products manufactured at Fulham, from Dwight’s time to the twentieth century. Until 1675, Dwight experimented with an impressive array of finewares based upon Rhenish, Chinese, Dutch, and English products. Site evidence, consisting of fragments of mostly Chinese-inspired miniature vases, thrown and lathe turned, indicate that Dwight’s early period was spent experimenting with porcelain manufacture. But sherds found at the site show his efforts to have been unsuccessful. Other porcelain experiments or trials involved engobes, vapor, or dipped glazes. Numerous drawings of these test vessels, test chips, and fragments of nicely sculpted white statuary attest to Dwight’s advanced outlook and abilities. As early as ca. 1675, Dwight also copied Chinese red and bronze-colored unglazed stonewares such as Yixing teapots. He manufactured chemical wares and crucibles, and experimented with the manufacture of porringers painted to look like delftwares. He imitated a variety of Raeren-Westerwald-type vessels with applied strip and other kinds of decoration. Common stonewares, mostly tankards, gorges, and bottles, formed the majority of Fulham’s seventeenth-century production. Bellarmine masks and medallions were applied to bottles at certain periods. The author gives pointers on how to distinguish between the products of Fulham and contemporary German products before 1685, and how to date Fulham stonewares in two-year intervals beginning in ca. 1673–1674. In the 1680s Dwight made and sold a variety of finewares such as white china, marbled ware, and red stoneware.

Green also describes a large variety of finewares and common stonewares produced by Fulham potters in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. This summary of later Fulham wares will be extremely useful to archaeologists working in England and America.

The third part of Green’s book consists of eighteen appendices that account for nearly one-half of the book’s content. Examples of the subject matter include the following: kiln debris and kiln furniture; applied decoration on seventeenth-century stonewares; ale-measure marks (excise stamps) on eighteenth-century drinking vessels; index of excavated features; and Doulton and Watts’s price list of 1873. These detailed studies will be of great use to students of ceramics.

Chris Green’s book represents the most thorough publication to date on the archaeology of a specific pottery site. Although his work, in the best of British tradition, is largely descriptive, the author does discuss such other issues as landscape, geographic distribution of Dwight’s pottery, quantification, terminology, and so forth. The maps, drawings and photographs are excellent. A Harris Matrix drawing of the stratigraphy and features may have simplified the evolution of structural evidence at the site.

Prior to reading this book, John Dwight was an oft-mentioned but “fuzzy” figure. Now, thanks to the archaeology and the book, archaeologists and students of ceramics will have a much better understanding of Dwight, a remarkable and prolific potter, and the role he played in the English ceramic industry.

Norman F. Barka
College of William and Mary

1. Dennis Haselgrove and J. Murray, eds., “John Dwight’s Fulham Pottery, 1672–1978: A Collection of Documentary Sources,” Journal of Ceramic History 11 (1979).
2. Norman F. Barka, “The Kiln and Ceramics of the ‘Poor Potter’ of Yorktown: A Preliminary Report,” Ceramics in America, edited by Ian M. G. Quimby (Winterthur, Del.: Winterthur Museum, 1972), pp. 291–318.



Jill Beute Koverman, editor. “I made this jar . . .” The Life and Works of the Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave. Columbia, S.C.: McKissick Museum, University of South Carolina, 1998. 101 pp.; 18 color and 36 bw illus., bibliography. $25.00.

The recent exhibition “I made this jar...” The Life and Works of the Enslaved African-American Potter, Dave at the Winterthur Museum and the accompanying catalog can serve to introduce the works of this talented nineteenth-century potter to students of decorative arts, ceramic historians, archaeologists, and anyone interested in the work of traditional craftsmen, specifically African-American craftsmen. David Drake was a master potter who made, in addition to the familiar range of jars, jugs, pitchers, and so on, very large storage jars whose construction took not only considerable skill but also considerable strength. However, it is the poems that he inscribed on his pots rather than his potting skills that have brought him out of the obscurity that is commonly the lot of traditional craftsmen.

Dave was born into slavery in Edgefield, South Carolina, about 1800. He apparently learned the art of throwing pots during his teens, possibly from Harvey Drake, whose surname Dave took after emancipation. During his enslavement, he was owned by various members of the interrelated (through both marriage and business) Drake, Landrum, and Miles families. The research of Jill Beute Koverman, also curator of the exhibit, has brought to light records of these families that indicate Dave was a valuable craftsman whose skills were recognized by his owners, all of whom were either potters themselves or involved in the mercantile aspects of the potter’s trade. Dave’s skill as a potter and poet was first recognized in the twentieth century by collectors and museum curators in the South who were intrigued by the inscriptions on some very large (over twenty-five gallons) jars. Dave signed and dated a number of his pots, as did other potters, but the verses on the jars are unique for his time and place. The exhibit and catalog present his pots to the public as works of art and as records of Dave’s commentaries on his world.

The exhibit at Winterthur was visually impressive but, in some ways, scholastically frustrating for a person interested in the history of pottery making in North America. The dramatic presentation of Dave’s large jars created, for at least some viewers, a feeling of awe. The jars are immense and, under museum lighting, exhibit particularly lustrous glazes. This inevitably led to questions. How did he make these vessels? What glaze techniques did he use? How did his work differ from that of his contemporaries? These technological questions were not addressed adequately in the text that accompanied the exhibit.

Other aspects of the pots and the life of their maker were probably more immediately intriguing to most visitors. As a result, two subjects in particular were emphasized in the exhibit: Dave’s poetry and his life as an enslaved craftsman. The short poems that Dave inscribed on many of his large jars have attracted popular and scholarly attention. Of the hundreds of surviving vessels that have been attributed to Dave, twenty-seven are known to have inscriptions, generally two short lines of rhyming verse. The verses discuss the functions of his pots (“A very large jar which has four handles / pack it full of fresh meat—then light candles”), religious issues (“I saw a leppard & a lion’s face / then I felt the need of grace”), daily events (“the fourth of july is surely come / to blow the fife—and beat the drum”), and his life (“Dave belongs to Mr. Miles / Wher the oven bakes & the pots bile” and “I wonder where is all my relations / Friendship to all—and every nation”).

The exhibit was sponsored by and first shown at the McKissick Museum of the University of South Carolina, where a superlative collection of southern decorative arts is housed. The catalog is much more than a simple description of the works on display. Its six essays are intended to place Dave’s work in the context of his specific time and place. The first, by Koverman, is a synopsis of previous and current research about South Carolina pottery in general and Dave in particular. The goals of her research are those of an art historian: analyze the style of Dave’s work; map the development of his craft over the course of a lifetime; and reveal Dave’s own life history, or at least as much of it as can be revealed by documentary research. Koverman also asks the question of who Dave’s audience might have been. Were the verses possibly intended for his fellow enslaved workers and is their meaning overt, covert, or both?

The second essay, by historian Orville Vernon Burton, is concerned with the Edgefield district of South Carolina as it was in the nineteenth century. This gracefully written piece discusses the political and economic history of the area and includes information about the daily lives of the enslaved people who lived and worked there, especially the strictures and restrictions under which they existed. Dave as an individual is not emphasized but Burton does note that Dave’s versification fits into the story-telling tradition of the district. Folktales told by enslaved people usually contained moral messages, often cryptic, with religious allusions, as do Dave’s poems.

James A. Miller’s short essay places Dave’s verses in the context of African-American poetry in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, in the “evolving tradition of African-American literary practices.” Dave, Miller states, was part of the second generation of African-American poets—people born into slavery at a time when they were generally forbidden to read and write. Miller analyzes Dave’s verses as literature and as clues to his thoughts and feelings as a creative and sensible man working under limitations that ranged from the social conventions of his time to the difficulties of revising verses incised into clay.

The subject of poetry on pots is continued in the next essay by John A. Burrison, a folklorist. Burrison begins by discussing the English and German traditions of writing on clay. Most of the potters in the eastern part of the United States worked in one or a combination of these traditions, but the only American potters who consistently wrote on their wares were the Pennsylvania German craftsmen. Burrison comes to the conclusion that Dave “was working independently of any tradition of pot-poetry, and that he chose this means of expression to declare his status as a literate slave.”

The following essay, by Joe L. and Fred E. Holcombe, was especially interesting to this reviewer. The Holcombes have been engaged in archaeological investigations of pottery sites in the Edgefield district since the 1970s. The sites they have excavated include four where Dave most probably worked. From these sites they have amassed a large collection of wasters with unique characteristics that most credibly identify them as Dave’s work. The Holcombes’ well-illustrated account of their excavations and analyses should be of value to students of material culture, particularly historical archaeologists, when trying to identify sherds or whole vessels as Dave’s workmanship.

The closing piece, also by Koverman, delves into the possible sources—from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius to the apocalypse—that inspired Dave’s poems. She ends by listing all of Dave’s known verses in chronological order. The catalog concludes with an inventory of the vessels that were on exhibit.

The subjects covered by the catalog’s essays are commendable pieces of research, coherently and interestingly presented. The faults of the catalog are few; the most notable, the omission (except for the Holcombes’ essay) of figure or photographic plate numbers. And it is sometimes unclear which illustration is referenced in the text. The catalog also would have benefited by the inclusion of more essays: one on the technology of producing alkaline-glazed stonewares and the skills necessary to produce these literary pots; another comparing Dave’s works to those of his contemporaries, both enslaved and free; and, perhaps, another on the role of these vessels, especially the very large jars, in the daily lives of the people who used them.

Meta F. Janowitz
URS Corp., and The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art




Robert Copeland. Spode’s Willow Pattern and Other Designs After the Chinese. London: Studio Vista, 1999. 3rd edition. 214 pages with nine appendices, glossary, terminology, references, and index. 400 bw illustrations, 50 color plates. $60.00.

In the seventeenth century, a fascination with things Chinese swept through Europe and North America as trade with the East introduced the West to tea, spices, fine silks, lacquered items—and porcelain. For much of the eighteenth century, consumers unable to afford expensive Chinese porcelains contented themselves with painted renditions of Chinese-style designs on less costly ceramics like delft and the later refined earthenwares. With the late-eighteenth-century advent of printed underglaze designs in blue on white-bodied ceramics, production of the complex landscapes and geometric borders typical of Chinese porcelains became more cost efficient for the potteries and, thus, more affordable for consumers. This new technology revolutionized the Staffordshire ceramic industry and paved the way for the production of a number of decorative patterns copied directly from or inspired by Chinese porcelain.

Robert Copeland’s volume, Spode’s Willow Pattern and Other Designs After the Chinese, examines the influence of Chinese porcelain on the English printed earthenware, porcelain, and bone china industries of the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Copeland, whose great-great-grandfather William Copeland III was Josiah Spode’s original business partner, made his career at the Spode factory. While Spode and its products are the primary focus of the book, the author does not restrict his discussion of Chinese-influenced ceramics to that particular manufacturer. Although many of the illustrated vessels are either marked as or attributed to Spode, Copeland also features the works of a number of English factories, including Caughley, Herculaneum, New Hall, and Joshua Heath. A variety of sources are used in this study, including Spode factory correspondence, engraved copper plates, pattern books, test prints on paper and fabric, ceramic vessels, and archaeological material excavated from both Spode factory waster pits and North American sites.

The volume’s early chapters focus on providing the reader with a historical context for the development of Chinese-influenced ceramics, as well as details of the manufacturing process. Copeland treats the reader to a concise yet clear overview of the diverse factors that affected the Staffordshire industry during the eighteenth century, including consumer desire for Chinese motifs, the development of refined white-bodied earthenwares and colorless lead glazes, and economic and political factors affecting overseas trade with China. These early chapters also provide detailed step-by-step descriptions with accompanying illustrations of two distinctive printing processes used to decorate ceramics—underglaze printing with tissue paper and the lesser-known overglaze process of bat printing. In the latter procedure, a skilled craftsperson used thin sheets, or bats, of glue to transfer the engraved design to the glazed ceramic vessel.

Later chapters examine over seventy individual Chinese-influenced patterns on English wares, with an emphasis on landscape designs. Some of the more commonly produced patterns, such as Willow, Mandarin, Rock, Two Temples (also called Broseley), Buffalo, Long Bridge, Trophies, and Fitzhugh, are the subjects of individual chapters. Less common patterns form segments within chapters organized around design-related themes. One chapter, for example, deals with patterns for which there are no known Chinese prototypes. Basic defining characteristics are provided for each pattern, as well as discussions on design variations, alternate pattern names, and production dates. For three patterns (Two Temples, Long Bridge, and Buffalo), Copeland provides illustrated, analytical charts comparing how different manufacturers depicted specific design elements in these patterns. He cautions, however, that it is virtually impossible to attribute unmarked ceramics to specific manufacturers based solely on the pattern because potters both lent and sold used, engraved copper plates.

Copeland does an excellent job of documenting the various landscape patterns (many of which, to the untrained eye, are remarkably similar), assembling and illustrating the original Chinese porcelains and their English counterparts in bone china, earthenware, porcelain, and stone china. General dating considerations based on print color and engraving style are provided, but Copeland cautions that precise dating of early pieces is difficult. Some of the earliest printed patterns, such as Mandarin, Buffalo, and Two Temples, were copied directly from Chinese porcelain motifs. Other designs, including Bungalow, Buddleia, and Forest Landscape, were European interpretations of Chinese-style landscapes for which no known Chinese prototypes exist.

The most enduring and best known of the Chinese-influenced patterns is, of course, Willow. Believed to have been based on the Chinese Mandarin pattern, Willow was first introduced around 1795 by Josiah Spode and was produced by numerous other potters in the intervening centuries. Copeland traces the different versions of Willow produced by Spode and provides a newly added appendix that reproduces, in facsimile, the 1849 publication of the Willow pattern’s origin.

Originally published in 1980, this expanded third edition of Copeland’s volume has undergone significant revisions from its first edition. Four new chapters and an equal number of appendices have been added. Copeland has also included new information from both earlier and later periods, extending the temporal range of the original work.

One new chapter focuses on Spode’s late-eighteenth-century Chinese-influenced wares. Another chapter, organized in table format, provides information on landscape patterns reproduced by Spode during the late-nineteenth-century revival of interest in Chinese designs. Arranged by pattern, the table provides data on Spode’s factory pattern number, vessel shapes, body fabric, print color, and decorative detailing. Although the chapter title informs the reader that the recorded ceramics date to the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, no dating information is provided for the specific patterns.

Another new chapter provides updated information on specific patterns discussed earlier in the volume, while the final chapter also expands on earlier information about the Spode factory practice of creating special orders to match customers’ Chinese porcelain. These two chapters read as addenda to the earlier editions. It is regrettable that the decision was made not to integrate the research into the original text.

The volume’s appendices provide a variety of information, including figures on tea importation, recipes for cobalt, date ranges for printed and impressed Spode marks, and typical Chinese-influenced border designs. New appendices include a brief discussion of the American colonial revolts against taxation on tea imports and a list of relevant articles on chinoiserie published since 1980.

The volume includes four hundred black-and-white illustrations and photographs and fifty color plates, forty-six of which were added for the third edition. Photographs are clear and reproduced at a scale that provides the reader with substantial detail for each vessel. The figure captioning is largely outstanding—information on vessel dimensions and color is provided, as well as drawings of manufacturers’ marks. Serious readers will appreciate Copeland’s system of documenting and standardizing vessel print colors. He provides color samples depicting the various shades of cobalt used in Chinese-style patterns; each color is provided with a name, using British Standards Institution numbers and British Colour Council names, as well as Munsell color references.

Copeland provides a number of useful identification aids for collectors and scholars alike. One table cross-references the Spode names for various patterns with other ceramic researchers’ (Coysh,1 des Fontaines,2 and Whiter3) designations for the same pattern. A glossary of terms describes individual design elements in Chinese-influenced patterns and a list of ceramic manufacturing terminology. Lengthy notes accompany each chapter.

Minor format and editorial choices make the book somewhat difficult to use as a ready reference. Many of the pattern names are not included in the photograph captions, making it necessary to search for the figure reference within the book text. General date ranges for vessel production also would have been very useful in the captions. At least one of the photographs seems to be missing a caption altogether. Perhaps due to the large number of new photographs included in this edition, photograph placement is sometimes arbitrary. For example, figure 20 in chapter 8 seems out of place between figures 15 and 16. I was also left wishing for a final chapter that summarized the research and placed it within the larger context of the Staffordshire ceramic industry. All in all, however, these problems are minor and do little to detract from the overall value of this volume.

Copeland has assembled a vast amount of information on a previously little understood component of the English ceramic industry. Serious collectors and scholars will want to make this much-updated, informative reference part of their libraries. Given the vast influence of the Chinese trade on England and the American colonies, this volume is an invaluable resource.

Patricia M. Samford
Tryon Palace Historic Sites & Gardens, New Bern, North Carolina

1. A. W. Coysh, Blue and White Transfer Ware, 1780–1840 (Newton Abbott, Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eng.: David and Charles, 1970). A. W. Coysh, Blue Printed Earthenware, 1800–1850 (Newton Abbott, Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eng.: David and Charles, 1972).
2. J. K. des Fontaines, “Underglaze Blue-Printed Earthenware with Particular Reference to Spode,” English Ceramic Circle Transactions 7, pt. 2 (1969).
3. Leonard Whiter, Spode: A History of the Family, Factory and Wares from 1733 to 1933 (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1970).




Maurice Hillis and Roderick Jellicoe. The Liverpool Porcelain of William Reid: A Catalogue of Porcelain and Excavated Shards. London: Roderick Jellicoe, 2000. 48 pp.; 64 color illus., bibliography. £35 (hardcover); £15 (softcover).

Curators and collectors of American furniture have an axiom: “If it’s odd and it’s made of cherry, then it’s from Connecticut.” The corollary for devotees of ceramics might well be, “If it’s odd and it’s English porcelain, it must be from Liverpool.” Such a sentiment hints at the confusion surrounding the study of Liverpool porcelain but does a disservice to the rich complexity of items hailing from this important center of ceramics production. The March 15 to April 1, 2000, exhibition on the porcelain of William Reid, and accompanying brief catalog by Maurice Hillis and Roderick Jellicoe, are among the most recent efforts to sort out the attribution and chronology of these wares. The catalog has a modest cost and, although text is minimal, it contains numerous color photographs of good quality. The publication is a useful reference in the rapidly evolving study of William Reid and Liverpool porcelain.

This latest exploration focuses on archaeological sherds recovered from a site located on the south side of Brownlow Hill Road. The factory was purpose-built by William Reid for the production of soft-paste porcelain and was offering wares for sale by November 12, 1756. Reid occupied the site for only five years, for in 1761 he and his three business partners were bankrupt. According to Hillis and Jellicoe, “the factory was kept in operation under the temporary control of the mysterious Wm. Ball before passing, in 1763, into the control of the potter James Pennington who manufactured porcelain there until about 1767.” Thus, in the short span of eleven years, three different proprietors operated from this one location.

In 1997 and again in 1998 the site was excavated under the direction of the Field Archaeology Unit of the National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside (NMGM). These explorations were undertaken prior to redevelopment of the property and were, by necessity, brief. A synopsis of the 1997 excavation was published by Myra Brown, Curator of Ceramics at NMGM, and Rob Philpot, Curator of Roman and Later Archaeology at NMGM.1 Recognizing that the site could yield more archaeological information than the construction timetable would permit, a Liverpool porcelain enthusiast persuaded the contractor to allow five individuals (including Hillis and Jellicoe) to act as a “rescue group,” observing the 1999 construction and recovering a considerable number of sherds as they were exposed. By Hillis and Jellicoe’s own assertion, their catalog is not meant to be the definitive publication on the excavations and rescue actions; more is forthcoming, although it is not clear to this reviewer if further publications will be produced by the NMGM Field Archaeology Unit, the rescue group, or both.

After providing a short overview of the factory’s site and history and the excavations of the late 1990s, Hillis and Jellicoe summarize the salient features of the porcelain of William Reid & Co. This is followed by a fully illustrated survey of the accompanying exhibition in which fifty-six objects from both public and private collections are presented and compared to pictured sherds recovered principally through the rescue group’s activities. Hillis and Jellicoe’s characterization of William Reid’s production is daunting, although for students of Liverpool porcelain it is not without precedent. They explain, for instance:

Given such diverse features, how does one recognize the porcelain of William Reid? For Hillis and Jellicoe, the answer seems to lie entirely in the sherds from the site. This is troubling for several reasons. First, the authors state that they have focused on the wares of Reid with only minor attributions to James Pennington, the last porcelain producer on the site. The “mysterious Wm. Ball” is only fleetingly mentioned in connection with one of the extant objects, and an explanation of how the sherds can be related specifically to either Reid or Pennington is never offered. The site was continuously used as a porcelain manufactory for eleven years; given such a narrow time frame, how were the deposits stratified to distinguish the production of one maker from another? Indeed, given the narrow time span under consideration, was this possible? This topic is not addressed, and so the reader is left to wonder—or simply to accept that Hillis and Jellicoe had some means of distinguishing one manufacturer from another.

Of second and greater concern is the seeming total reliance on archaeology as the definitive means of attributing extant wares to William Reid exclusively. The individual object entries compare the form and/or decoration of each piece to sherds illustrated at the end of the catalog. A careful reading of the object entries reveals that the majority of objects presented have been reattributed (often several times during the 1990s alone) to various potteries, most especially to those of Samuel Gilbody the younger and Richard Chaffers. These two potters were producing soft-paste porcelain in Liverpool at adjacent sites at approximately the same time as William Reid; their factories were located less than one-half mile away from the Brownlow Hill site.

Research on the manufacturers of English salt-glazed stoneware and creamware indicates that specialist modelers may have sold molds to many different potteries. Ceramic molds also sometimes changed hands as partial payments of debts.2 In light of such practices, isn’t it safe to assume that the presence of a given molded form or attribute at an archaeological site confirms that such wares were made at that location without necessarily conferring exclusivity to that manufacturer in the absence of additional compelling information?

Analysis and attribution of the sherds recovered from the Brownlow Hill site are further complicated by the presence of a large number of fragments with overglaze decoration, including polychrome enameling, gilding, and on-glaze transfer printing. Hillis and Jellicoe note that this is a very unusual feature since, typically, few technical problems arise during the final stages of overglaze decoration that would result in pieces being discarded as wasters unfit for sale. They relate that the “hundreds” of porcelain sherds with this embellishment constitute “a unique ceramic survival.” And such fragments “are not wasters but are closely related to the wasted material and the circumstances that lead to their being dumped are at present obscure.”

The difficulties caused by these non-waster porcelain sherds on the site are especially evident in the entry for catalog item number 31, a milk jug attributed by Hillis and Jellicoe to William Reid. They state: