Contemporaneously with Palissy various potters in south Ger many were making polychrome earthenware of a similar type, but combining a white tin enamel with coloured lead glazes. This technique was employed specially in the production of stove tiles, which from about 155o onwards were commonly decorated with of biblical or allegorical reference, reflect ing the all-pervading religious pre-occupations of the time, ren dered in relief under a renaissance arched recess. Potters known as Hafner, who worked in this manner, were settled at Nuremberg (Paul Preuning and others) and also at Salzburg and elsewhere in Austria. Besides stoves they made jugs with applied reliefs (some times including figures in the round in a recessed niche) and bright-coloured glazes. An analogous ware, made from about 155o at Neisse in Silesia, is characterised by designs rendered by means of deeply-incised outlines separating the coloured glazes and enamels. In the 17th century the wares of the Hafner in Central Europe fell to the level of peasant pottery, which, how ever, has often great aesthetic value.
English Stoneware and Lead-glazed Earthenware.—The importation of German stoneware in the 17th century led to various attempts to imitate it in England. The most conspicuous was that of John Dwight, an Oxford scientist, who set up a pot tery at Fulham about 167o in which he made not only bottles and mugs in stoneware of various colours but also statuettes, modelled by an unknown artist (perhaps the sculptor, Grinling Gibbons), in white or dark brown clay with a thin coating of salt-glaze; these famous works, including busts of Prince Rupert and others and figures of classical deities, are amongst the most remarkable achievements in the history of plastic art. Stoneware of good
quality, with a lustrous brown glaze, decorated with stamped, in cised and moulded designs, often dated, was made at Nottingham from about 1695 onwards by John Morley and others of that family. Similar ware was made later at Chesterfield and Swinton. Another experimenter in stoneware was Francis Place, who worked about 1685 at York. Dwight had competitors also in the brothers Elers, two Dutch silversmiths who made teapots in a fine red bodied ware, imitating Chinese boccaro ware, at Bradwell Wood near Newcastle-under-Lyme; their work was of great importance in its revolutionary effect on the output of the North Stafford shire potteries.
Mediaeval traditions in the production of coarse red earthen ware with decoration in white "slip" (that is, clay diluted to a creamy consistency) were followed throughout the 17th and i8th centuries in many small potteries throughout England. Wrotham in Kent produced "tygs" (drinking-vessels with several handles) and posset-pots with neatly applied pads of clay stamped with initials or floral devices, animals and birds. At Bethersden near Ashford the inlay technique of the mediaeval tiles was adopted for pottery. By working with a comb the different coloured clays in a semi-liquid state on the surface of the wares, marbled and feather patterns of real distinction were often produced. No attempt at lightness and refinement of shape was made in the dis trict until the advent of the brothers Elers, which stimulated the local potters to improve their technique. Soon after 170o, in response to the demand newly created by the introduction of tea-drinking, John Astbury was making tea-services, with small stamped reliefs in white on a red ground, and similar wares in a harder fired drab stoneware, from which about 172o, by the in troduction of ground flints into the body, the Staffordshire white salt-glaze ware was evolved. A further advance came with the introduction of the process of casting the wares in plaster moulds with relief designs. About 175o "marbled" wares were made by mixing clays of different colours, also "tortoiseshell" ware with mottled glazes, and tea-services in the form of cauliflowers and pineapples coloured after nature ; such wares were produced especially by Thomas Whieldon, who in 1753 took into partner ship a young potter destined later to revolutionise the industry. This was Josiah Wedgwood (q.v.). His new productions were "black basaltes" ware, an improvement on the black un glazed stoneware of the district, and jasper ware, a fine stone ware stained with blue, green, lilac and other colours and gen erally decorated with applied cameo reliefs in white. For shapes and decoration he drew upon the recently-published repertories of Greek vases, conforming entirely to the neo-classical taste of the period. He engaged John Flaxman and other sculp tors to provide him with designs. An important part of his out put were small medallions with portraits or other reliefs, made for mounting in furniture or as jewellery. For decorating his Queen's ware he introduced transfer printing, sending it at first to Liverpool to be printed by Sadler and Green. Wedgwood had many competitors who produced imitations of most of his wares; in Staffordshire, Adams, Neale, Turner and Palmer were the most important. Cream-coloured ware of good quality was made from about 1770 onwards at Leeds and elsewhere in Yorkshire; pierced decoration is its most characteristic feature. Earthenware figures emulating those of the porcelain factories were made at Burslem from about 1765 onwards by Ralph Wood, his son Ralph, and his grandson Enoch, and by many other Staffordshire potters. The earliest, painted in coloured glazes in the manner of Palissy ware, are mostly from models by a French artist, John Voyez, who generally copied the figures of Cyffle of Niderviller ; they have considerable artistic merit Lead-glazed earthenware of good quality was also made in the late i8th century at Liverpool, Bris tol, Swansea, Newcastle-on-Tyne and Sunderland. A variety made in many places is the so-called silver lustre ware, coated with plati num, in imitation of silver plate. After 1800 the English earthen wares were rapidly degraded. (B. RA.)