Figure 22 Sherds from a mocha-decorated creamware bowl, Lewis Pottery, 1829–1837. Projected D. 6 1/4". This particular bowl had a cream-colored body with a cream-colored glaze and narrow 1/8" lines of white and dark brown slip. On a white band, 5/8" wide, were olive-green dendritic designs. A hasty judgment might have relegated this bowl to the category of “used household detritus” because the brown edge of the rim is almost completely abraded and chipped. But a closer look reveals that the glaze just below the rim is thicker and glossier than elsewhere. It had been dried upside down after being dipped in the glaze, or was fired upside down, causing the melting glaze to pool over the edge and fuse to whatever it was fired in, and it had to be pried loose. Hence, the appearance of wear and tear. In fact, the glaze has an oddly gritty surface, perhaps a symptom of the trouble with glazing which Anne Royall hinted at after her visit in 1830. When consulted, Dr. Licio Pennisi, of Alfred University’s Center for Advanced Ceramic Technology, suggested this might be due to unmelted pulverized fret, glass, or sand in the glaze. A native of Staffordshire, Pat Halfpenny (former curator of the City Museum at Stoke, now director of museum collections at the Winterthur Museum) commented: “We [in Staffordshire] would say the glaze was too thin.” These were the very words used by Jabez Vodrey himself when, having moved across the street to the pottery abandoned by Isaac Dover, he log000ged several experiments into his diary in February and March 1838. Using pipes for his trials, he first tested a frit that “would not fuse at a good glost heat.” He tried a variety of fluxes—borax, egg[shell] lime, calcined bone. Then, on April 2: “Result of the last trials. the pipes dipt in equal parts of Cumberland [clay] and white lead was hardly smooth enough being dipt too thin and I think 6 Parts of lead to 5 parts of Cumberland clay would be good.”