1. Robin Reilly, Wedgwood (London: MacMillan London, 1989), 1: 201.

2. Katherine Eufemia, Lady Farrer, ed., Wedgwood’s Letters to Bentley 1762–1770 (London: Women’s Printing Society, Limited [for private circulation], 1903), p. 47.

3. J.V.G. Mallet, “Engine-turning on Chelsea Porcelain, with Considerations on Its Previous Use at Meissen and Vincennes/Sèvres,” English Ceramic Circle Transactions 17, pt. 3 (2001): 420–29. It is possible that those objects considered to have been engine-turned were pressed into a patterned mold. Segments of the block from which the plaster mold was cast conceivably were cut on a straight-line engine lathe commonly used in the metal-working trades. Salt-glazed stonewares of the same period appear to have been produced this way, as the process of engine-turning in the round could not have been used on the marley with raised rims.

4. Warren Greene Ogden Jr., “The Pedigree of Holtzapffel Lathes” (manuscript, North Andover, Mass., 1971).

5. Llewellynn Jewitt, The Ceramic Art of Great Britain from Pre-historic Times down to the Present Day . . . (London: Virtue and Company, 1878), 2: 401–2.

6. Ogden, “Pedigree of Holtzapffel Lathes.”

7. Allbut’s Directory, Containing an Alphabetical List of Manufacturers in the Staffordshire Potteries (Stoke-on-Trent, 1800).

8. Jewitt, Ceramic Art of Great Britain, pp. 401–2.

9. Sherds from an excavation at the Shelton Farm site headed by David Barker are in the archaeological stores of the Potteries Museum, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. See David Barker, “‘The Usual Classes of Useful Articles’: Staffordshire Ceramics Reconsidered,” Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Hanover, N.H.: University of New England Press for the Chipstone Foundation, 2001): 84.

10. Simeon Shaw, History of the Staffordshire Potteries (Hanley: Printed for the author by G. Jackson, 1829; reprint, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1970), p. 183.

11. Farrer, Wedgwood’s Letters, pp. 142–43, “London, May 23, 1767,” referring to Matthew Boulton: “He is I believe the first—or most complete manufacturer in England, in metal. He is very ingenious, Philosophical, & Agreeable. You must be acquainted with him, he has promised to come to Burslem, & wod. attend our congress (we are to have one immediately on my return remember on many accts.) but this year he is too much immers’d in business to indulge he says in anything else. There is a vast difference betwixt the spirit of this Man & the Great Taylor, though both of them have behaved exceeding liberally to me in offering me every improvement they could furnish me with.” Taylor is identified here as a Birmingham manufacturer of buttons, buckles, etc. Preceding this passage is a note referring to Wedgwood’s having seen an ingenious lathe at Boulton’s Soho factory.

12. Charles Plumier, L’art de tourner, ou de faire en perfection toutes sortes d’ouvrages au tour, 2d ed., expanded by Charles-Antoine Jombert (Lyons: J. Carte, 1701; Paris: C.-A. Jombert, 1749). See also Farrer, Wedgwood’s Letters, p. 113, February 1767: “We shall want the book on Engine turning with us . . .”; and R[ichard] B[entley], Thomas Bentley, 1730–1780, of Liverpool, Etruria, and London (Guildford: Billing and Sons, 1927; reprint, New York: Wedgwood Society of New York, 1975), p. 56.

13. Farrer, Wedgwood’s Letters, p. 177, between October 12 and 24, 1767: “Inclos’d are Engine Turning, Antiquitys, Plans &c, & first, Engine Turning. I think you will meet with nothing very curious ’till you come to part the third, but I suppose you will skim the other part over. I hope you will read with a pen in your hand, & some sheets of blotting paper before you to enter the memorandms, as they occur to you & let me have the Identical sheets on which such memorandms are made. You will readily conceive which of the Machines may, or may not be applicable to a Potter . . .”; p. 203, Burslem, February 22, 1768: “We have an ingenious & indefatigable smith amongst us, who has ever since Engine Lathes were first introduc’d here, been constantly employd in that business, & he promises me very faithfully that whatever improvements I may instruct him in, he will make them for no one else . . .”; p. 222, Burslem, July 14, 1768: “I have accidentally met with another Artist who is like enough to stick by me if you can send me a good sober honest account of him. He is a Mathematical instrument maker, a Wooden-leg maker, a Caster of Printers types, & in short a Jack of all trades. His name is Brown & he wears a wooden leg, at present he is making me some legs, [Wedgwood was an amputee] but as he can forge Iron and file extremely well, & cast in various metals, I shod. employ him in making & repairing Engine Lathes, punches, & tools of all sorts”; p. 266, by July 1769: “You both want Vases,—you both want flowerpots, and you both want Engin’d ware of various kinds, & we have but two turners & an half for both our works, & for all these things which would employ six or eight.”

14. One illustrated example (see fig. 52) indicates that some potteries manufactured items that appeared to be engine turned but were not. Instead, it appears that block-makers used an engine-turning lathe to create geometric patterns on the block from which molds were made and sold to factories that did not have an engine lathe.

15. See Donald Carpentier and Jonathan Rickard, “Slip Decoration in the Age of Industrialization,” in Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Hanover, N.H.: University of New England Press for the Chipstone Foundation, 2001): 115–34.