English Creamware

 

Literature: 

"Between 1763 and 1767, Wedgwood made a great many changes not only in the body and glaze of the creamware but also in the methods of its manufacture...The most important change, however...was the incorporation of Cornish china-clay and china-stone from Cornwall into both body and glaze.  This not only produced a much paler creamware but also gave it a lightness and brilliance which was wholly new...By 1770 other Staffordshire potters were producing the light-coloured creamware to which Wedgwood had given the name, "Queen's ware"...A letter from Wedgwood...shows that the creamware potteries, at this time at any rate, made either the deeep or pale creamware, but were unable for practical reasons to make both simultaneously... 

By 1778 he transformed this ware into virtually a “new substance of great beauty, which combined lightness with strength and was capable of the greatest delicacy of workmanship...

The attribution of pieces of creamware to a particular factory has always been a difficulty, as virtually no creamware was marked prior to Josiah Wedwood's manufacture of it in Burslem.  In 1772, however, Wedgwood wrote to Thomas Bentley proposing that all his ware should be marked, but even after that date a considerable quantity of his ware seems to have missed being stamped.  Other factories were for the most part content to leave their wares unmarked, largely due, no doubt, to the practice of supplying each other with wares to supplement exhausted stocks.  The difficulty of attribution is further increased by the similarity of both body and glaze of the creamware made by a number of potteries as well as by the interchange and copying of ideas. 

Source:  "Pages 21 and 44, Creamware by Donald Towner"

For any collector just starting out, I would highly recommend this book as a great investment.

 

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