Red earthenware tyg with relief decoration in white slip covered wih a yellowish lead glaze. English (Wrotham), dated 1703.

Tyg of red lead glazed earthenware with slip decoration. Globular body with a cylindrical neck, wide mouth and two loop handles placed closed together. The surface is divided by rows of dots into panels, in three of which are foliated devices, and another contains the date. Initials 'I.E.' are between the two handles. Round the bottom is the word 'WROTHAM'. The rim has a striped border.

Transferred from the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street

Formerly in the Marryat Collection. Transferred from the Museum of Practical Geology, Jermyn Street.

18th Centry Slipware
Made in North Staffordshire; about 1700-1800
Lead-glazed earthenware with impressed, applied or trailed white slip decoration
From about 1650 attempts had been made by Staffordshire potters to mass-produce their slipware dished using convex fired-clay moulds cut with simple patterns. The technique of picking out moulded relief designs in contrasting slip was further developed by potters in the early 18th century, notably Samuel Malkin. Other methods, such as freehand trailing of slip designs and inscriptions, were applied particularly to cups and multi-handled posset pots intended for communal drinking. The 'combing' of slip lines into feathered designs soon became standard decoration for baking dishes.
Slipware continued to be made in North Staffordshire long after the development of refined late=turned wares, such as white salt-glazed stoneware and red lead-glazed earthenware. Some Staffordshire vessels of the mid 18th century combine the qualities of these finer wares with the red and white clay decoration of slipware, using carved or incised 'sgraffuto' techniques. But by the end of the 18th cetnury, slipware production had moved from the industrialised Staffordshire potteries to rural potting centres such as Derbyshire and Shropshire.
Country Pottery & Slipware
Made in the West Country, the Midlands and the North East; about 1750-1900
The contrasting colours of common red clay and the much rarer white pipe clay were used by potters in a number of inventive ways. In the West Country, notably Somerset, Dorset and DEvon, the local coarse clay was dipped in white slip and carved or scratched with designs and inscriptions. At pottery centres such as Sunderland, and Buckley in North Wales, sturdy functional slipwares continued long after the advent of cheap Staffordshire pottery, while at Verwood in Dorset, archaic forms continued to be made as late at the 1950s.
Made in Sussex, Lancashire & Yorkshire
Country potters of deffernet areas devised distinctive regional forms and individual types of decoration. In Sussex, simple patterns were stamped into the iron-rich clay and inlaid with white slip, inscriptions being made printers' type. Slip-trailing and the use od simple red and white 'agate' clays continued in use until well into the 20th century in parts of Yorkshire, Lancashire and elsewhere. As a result of the Arts & Crafts Movement, country pottery gradually became more self-conscious - 'artitic' rather than vernacular.

3722-1901