English Delftware - Early Wares

Early Wares

An English delftware jug has been found in East Malling, Kent, with a silver mount hallmarked 1550, which is presumed to be the earliest date of manufacture. (Malling jugs may be seen in the London Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.)

John Stow's Survey of London (1598) records the arrival in 1567 of two Antwerp potters, Jasper Andries and Jacob Jansen, in Norwich, where they made "Gally Paving Tiles, and vessels for Apothecaries and others, very artificially". In 1570 Jansen applied to Queen Elizabeth I for the sole right to practice "galleypotting" in London and soon set up a workshop at Aldgate to the east of the city. There were already other Flemish potters in London, two of them in Southwark recorded in 1571 as "painters of pottes".

English delftware pottery and its painted decoration is similar in many respects to that from Holland, but its peculiarly English quality has been commented upon: ". . . there is a relaxed tone and a sprightliness which is preserved throughout the history of English delftware; the overriding mood is provincial and naïve rather than urbane and sophisticated." Caiger-Smith describes its mood as "ingenuous, direct, sometimes eccentric"; and Garner talks of its "quite distinctive character". Its methods and techniques were simpler than those of its continental counterparts. English tin-glaze potters rarely used the transparent overglaze applied by the more sophisticated Dutch and Italian potters. The enamels so popular on the continent in the 18th century were used only for a short time at Liverpool, where the so-called Fazackerly wares were made.

Many everyday wares were made: paving tiles, mugs, drug jars, dishes, wine bottles, posset pots, salt pots, candlesticks, fuddling cups (that is, ale mugs joined in groups of three, four or five with connecting holes to confuse the drinker), puzzle jugs (similar to fuddling cups), barber's bowls, pill slabs, bleeding bowls, porringers, and flower bricks.

Large decorative dishes were popular. The earliest known piece with an English inscription is a dish dated 1600 in the London Museum. It is painted in blue, purple, green, orange and yellow and depicts the Tower of London and Old London Bridge, surrounded by the words, "THE ROSE IS RED THE LEAVES ARE GRENE GOD SAVE ELIZABETH OUR QUEENE" and an Italianate border of masks and leaves. The rim is decorated with dashes of blue and can be considered the first in series of large decorated dishes so painted and called blue-dash chargers.