Drawing of Cookworthy’s kiln by Champion, 1770
The sodden timber is dried – how do you dry timber in a warehouse by the sea in Plymouth? They decide to use it in the autumn firing.
The kiln before this last one of the sample pieces which was taken out was a most beautiful piece of China Ware, it possessed every character of the Asiatic, viz. colour Body Glaze & Blue in the utmost perfection, every Body was in rapture & I believe there were not a man who was that would not have taken £1,000 for their shares, when (to our infinite mortification) the Kiln Out of several hundred pieces there was not a single one free from smoak.
The wood, impregnated with seawater, has salted several hundred pieces of porcelain which is yet another disaster.
I look carefully at this porcelain touched by the salt fumes in the kiln and think they are beautiful, a slight autumnal haze touching the manes of the lions, couchant.
ii
William has to really think this through.
I have the least dislike to making the Experiments … I have many years since read Du Halde’s Description of the Furnace used by the Chinese … it hath always appear’d and Appears to me an Unintelligible piece of Nonsense and could never be given by anyone who hath any knowledge of Pottery Maters. And I have often regretted that so good an Act of the Materials for China Ware and the Chinese ways of Managing them should be closed with such a wretched an Act of their burning the Ware.
Poor old Père d’Entrecolles, blamed for not paying attention to the firings in Jingdezhen, not writing up his notes in appropriate Jesuit thoroughness.
For the first time, William also blames his ‘Treacherous Memory’. He is now sixty-five and, by my calculation, cannot have slept for several years.
He has been talking through the future with Pitt and Dr Mudge and Champion and a decision has been reached. Plymouth was never going to be the perfect place to make or sell their wares, the garrison and the gentry now well stocked with sweetmeat dishes and cows, the transport to London expensive and tricky. More capital shrewdly applied would transform matters. The Plymouth New Invented Patent Porcelain Manufactory has reached a place where fresh management might be able to take it further.
Bristol, suggests Champion, would work well.
iii
There is a deep breath and then the running down, the settlements, the sales of equipment from the factory. Some material goes to Bristol, to its next incarnation – the firebricks from the kilns, shelving, the old cordwood, the safeguards. And the barrels of kaolin and moorstone, the paste, the beautiful black cobalt.
The last firings of teapots and sauce boats have Plymouth 1770 written on the bases, souvenirs of this first enterprise. The tin cipher is to be changed to something less peculiar, less alchemical, when it restarts.
‘Mr Cookworthy’s Mills are occupied by a Mr Robinson’, the venal Mr Veal having found a new tenant. People disperse. Many are to go with Champion to Bristol, some off to London and some to other manufactories.
Within weeks new hands are sought. ‘China painters wanted for the Plymouth new invented patent porcelain manufactory. A number of sober, ingenious artists capable of painting in enamel or blue may hear of constant employment by sending their proposals to Thomas Frank in Castle Street, Bristol.’
The new dispensation settles itself. The recapitalisation is considerable, nearly £10,000 invested by new Friends.
iv
William decides to assign the patent to Champion for a fee and a percentage, and walk away.
It is 1772, forty years since he married, almost thirty since he found kaolin and petunse on Tregonning Hill, twenty since he started his experiments, four since C.F. rang true on his porcelain tankard in the china manufactory on the wharf.
He walks down Cornhill with his son-in-law, to the printer and bookseller’s James Phillips in George Yard in the City, to collect his first copy of his translation of Swedenborg’s Heaven and Hell and he is in very good spirits.
Of the making of books there is no end, says the Prophet. But in this case there is an end. ‘Mr Cookworthy was at the whole expense of the publication’, says one record. It has cost him £100 and some years. He ‘could not forbear being diverted with the translation of such a work having been made and published by a Public Friend. He joked about his being taken to task for it, and being asked what he really was.’ The day before they had been to see a beached whale in the Thames and he assays a joke, the joke, ‘Some say he’s a grampus, and some say a porpoise, but for my part I don’t know what he is.’
His Quaker friends are appalled by William’s version of Swedenborg. John Wesley has been reading this ‘brainsick man’. The sobriety of Quakers is imperilled by such metaphysical nonsenses.
If you make God in your own image, then William’s God is an interested God. Not kind, perhaps, too many bereavements have knocked away that pietism, but good on detail, and definitely good on surprise.
This is why a potter would write.
William sets off home to Plymouth and the weather he knows. It is three days on a terrible road. He has had an idea for distilling seawater on long voyages and is working on a proposal to cure scurvy for sailors with barrels of sauerkraut.
Chapter fifty
a cunning specification
i
Richard Champion is now proprietor of his very own porcelain manufactory. He has strong views on what to do.
It is clear, for instance, that Plymouth has been laggardly in matters of style, with its clutching at this muse and that tankard. A good hard look at fashion tells him that tea wares are steady, but that colour is an issue of some moment. A waspish critic tires ‘with looking daily upon the chaste black, blue, and quaker-coloured grounds, and seek to revive my ideas by a little variety. The glossy, creamy surface of the Sèvres, Dresden, Vienna, and other porcelain … refresh my imagination.’
In Etruria, Staffordshire, Wedgwood’s analysis that month is that:
The Agate, the Green & other colour’d Glazes have had their day & done pretty well & are certain of a resurrection soon, for they are, and ever will be a numerous class of People, to purchase shewy & cheap things. The Creamcolour is of a superior Class, & I trust has not yet run its race by many degrees. The Black is sterling, & will last forever.
He is able to distribute different kinds of ware, different colours, to different markets, of course, with his pattern boxes and catalogues and now his travelling salesmen.
Champion doesn’t have these resources, but is focussed on developing patronage. He hits on the idea of the factory making oval porcelain plaques, with armorial bearings of the well connected, framed in baroque cartouches of ribbons and flowers.
Wedgwood, of course, has been there before him. ‘Crests are very bad things for us (Potters) to meddle with’, pointing out that you can’t get rid of a crested piece as a second. Who wants someone else’s coat of arms? It is like a misspelt gravestone. Champion’s are unglazed which at least gives them one less opportunity to crack, warp, blemish, though they do all these things. They are soon in circulation; ‘Lady Rockingham as well as myself are exceedingly obliged to you for the very elegant China flowers.’
Then there is the issue of the patent, whose terms he wants to extend. Another fourteen years should see clear the competition and see Bristol flourish.
Champion is a busy man in a very busy city. Due in great part to his efforts, Edmund Burke is returned as Member of Parliament for Bristol in 1774, and Mrs Burke is grateful for the celebratory porcelain tea set. Liberty is on the left wearing a Phrygian cap and holding a spear with a shield bearing the Gorgon’s head, with a voluptuous Plenty on the right clutching a louche cornucopia. A pedestal stands between on which are inscribed the Burkes’ coats of arms and a token of friendship to J. Burke the best of British wives in Latin. The scales of justice and a flaming torch appear where there is room and then, because this is an English Revolution, there is a nice flower border to round things off.
Like all
good English Revolutionaries, Champion is also presented to Queen Charlotte. She expresses her interest in the manufactory and its progress, and is given a porcelain floral plaque. Perhaps, thinks Champion, she is getting slightly bored with the ubiquity of Wedgwood’s Queen’s Ware.
ii
In February 1775, Champion presents a petition to Parliament for extension of patent for fourteen years beyond the original term. It comfortably passes in the House of Commons, guided by Burke. In the House of Lords he is well supported by the duke of Portland and friends; the duchess of Portland is grateful for the ‘very beautiful pieces of porcelain’. Burke tells Champion to prepare for this grilling as he heard ‘the Wedgwood people think of giving you opposition’.
This is an understatement.
Wedgwood has also been spying on Champion to find out what materials he is using. The whole matter is referred to a Committee of the Lords. Burke is concerned and stresses that the examples Champion brings to the committee are good enough. They are. Champion has it all covered and ‘there are two sets of Beautiful tea China; one from Ovid’s metamorphosis, different subjects to each piece, an exact copy of a Dresden set’.
Mr John Britton, Champion’s foreman, is also examined by the committee. He is bold and shows that Bristol is the peer of Dresden in hardness, that Bristol can be made in any Degree of Thickness, that The Bristol China will stand hot water, that the Gold will not come off. The committee are very well briefed on what to ask and under pressure he admits that they can make Plates, but have had great Difficulties. He produces shards and examples of Bristol porcelain and one of the peers ‘involuntarily provides the Committee with more fragments of Champion’s china’ by dropping a beautiful cup. These shards too are examined and are found to be nearly transparent.
There is discussion. And then ‘Ordered, That Leave be given to bring in a Bill for enlarging the Letters patent.’ It looks like Champion has won.
iii
This is where, in the language of the Midlands, it all kicks off.
Wedgwood, on behalf of himself and the Manufacturers of Earthenware in Staffordshire, begs leave to represent: ‘That the further Improvement of the Manufactury must depend upon the Application and free Use of the various Raw Materials that are the Natural Products of this Country.’
And then, he adds, coolly, that Mr Champion is not ‘the original Discoverer but the purchaser only of the unexpired Term of a Patent granted to another Man, who, for want, perhaps of Skill and Experience in this particular Business, has not been able during the Space of Seven Years, already elapsed, to bring to any Degree of Perfection’.
It is ‘a cunning specification’, says Wedgwood.
Champion replies that he, like everyone else, greatly respects JW and that JW deserves his great fortune, but why has he gone around Staffordshire stirring up the potters? Can’t he leave others to their little bit of the fruit of their labours? Don’t underestimate the work of moving from a ‘very imperfect to an almost perfect manufacture’. Undoubtedly there was lack of skill, but think of the skills of Mr Cookworthy, the manager, the workmen.
Seven years is cruel: think of how long it took Dresden!
On 10 May 1775, Wedgwood counters with a really substantive Petition from Manufacturers of Earthen Ware. On the 16th, there is a petition from the Merchants in the Port of Liverpool who object to any restriction on free trade. ‘Free trade’ is clever, I think. Lambent words.
Wedgwood keeps up the pressure.
He publishes his Remarks upon Mr Champion’s Reply to Mr Wedgwood’s Memorial on behalf of himself and the Potters in Staffordshire. He says that he employs ten times more people than all the china works in the kingdom put together to make his Queen’s Ware and he didn’t need a patent.
Wedgwood sends them a lengthy case. It is a brilliant bit of footwork.
He writes that William Cookworthy ‘entirely failed in fulfilling the obligation’ to describe the principal operations of his making porcelain, the proportions in which the materials were to be mixed to produce the body or the glaze, nor the art of burning the ware, which he knew to be the most difficult and important part of the discovery. It is a pretended discovery. It has not been shared.
Champion wants a monopoly of stones and earth. He wants to interrupt the progress of other men’s improvements, asserts Wedgwood.
A hundred years ago, he continues, Burslem and other villages in Staffordshire were making milk pans and butter pots, but gradually through a succession of improvements in quantity and quality they are now making £200,000 worth of useful and ornamental wares. There were innumerable experiments for Queen’s Ware: the public required them and expected them. There are ‘immense quantities of materials in the kingdom that would answer this end; but they are locked up by a monopoly in the bowels of the earth, useless to landowners, useless to the manufacturers, useless to the public’.
Crack, crack, crack, go the arguments. ‘This won’t do for Josiah Wedgwood,’ he would say in the throwing room and break the offending vessel with his long and accurate stick.
Champion suggests a meeting. It lasts six hours. Wedgwood is tricky and his lawyer is trickier. An amendment is made. Champion can have exclusive use of Cornish materials for porcelain, but not pottery, if he publishes the exact specification of the body and glazes.
Which he does.
Chapter fifty-one
Gray’s Elegy
Five days after the new patent is crushed, Wedgwood gets in a carriage.
I thought it would be proper to take a journey into Cornwall, the only part of the kingdom in which they are at present to be found, and examine upon the spot into the circumstances attending them – whether they were to be had in sufficient quantities – what hands they were in, at what prices they might be raised, &c.&c.
He takes with him the potter Mr Turner of Lane End, and his formidable agent Thomas Griffiths. Three days later they are near the seat of Thomas Pitt and as he is ‘a friend of mine as well as Mr Champion, I wished to wait upon him to let him know what had been done respecting Mr Champion’s patent’.
The visit is charming. Their host lives up to his reputation as a man of taste. Wedgwood writes in his journal:
we found him at home, & he took us a walk before dinner, down a sweet valley with hanging woods on each side, & a clear purling stream … when we came to a fine old beech tree in the bottom, by the side of the brook, the roots of which were visible in various folds above the surface, Mr Pitt laid himself easily down, and repeated those fine lines in Gray’s Elegy, in a country church yard.
Once Wedgwood’s carriage has disappeared, Pitt writes directly to Champion:
I know nothing concerning the Act of Parlt. more than what you had written to me, till Wedgwood call’d here … Wedgwood says your specification is a light-house, teaching the trade precisely what they are to avoid, which will only serve to bring them safely into Port. The two grand Pillars of our Porcelain are the Clay and the Stone, and the rest is mere corrective or manufacture, of which depend upon it, Wedgwood … knows more than all of us put together.
If Wedgwood knows the ingredients for their porcelain body then all those hours at Notte Street, the letters and samples and shards, the procuring of moulds, hiring of attorneys, anxieties and aspirations, the dreams of the Dresden of the West Country, are in ruins.
Pitt thinks of Gray’s ‘Elegy’ and its penumbrous mood steals over him.
‘There at the foot of yonder nodding beech / That wreathes its old fantastic roots so high, / His listless length at noontide would he stretch, / And pore upon the brook that babbles by.’
Wedgwood, Pitt adds, ‘is now gone into Cornwall to visit and procure samples’.
Chapter fifty-two
a journey into Cornwall
i
I read Wedgwood’s Journey into Cornwall and think what a good travelling companion he must have been.
I’ve spent so long with William that I realise that my pace has come to match his, and th
at I am developing the slightly ambling gait of a benevolent Quaker, stopping to look at this, intrigued by that, perpetually waylaid.
And Wedgwood’s pace is tremendous. He has a peg leg, and his passage through life has a fast and rhythmic stamp to it. He casts an appraising eye over the landscape as speculator, property developer, geologist, mineralogist, potter, sorting information for use. He listens to the price of labour, asking how much the day rate for labourers is now, how much it was then, checking whose land he is passing through. He is noting and collecting as he goes, carrying away ‘specimens of every kind’ for his Cornish catalogue.
You sense him as a compass trembling the whole time, reading the distances to the sea and the passage to port, port to Etruria. You see him standing at the carriage tapping his cane for Mr Griffiths and his friends Mr Turner, another potter from Staffordshire, and a local apothecary Mr Tulloch to get a move on. It is not that he isn’t enjoying himself – ‘we had a small turbot and another dish of fried fish for supper, with another dish or two, and all for about 9d a piece’ – it is just that he is here to find growan and is impatient.
He clambers out of his carriage on the fourth day: ‘We were now in the midst of the mines, & hillocks thrown up from them, being within 2 miles of St Austle we were extremely eager to examine their contents. The first we saw where the men were actually at work, was a shaft from which a great quantity of indurated clay, as we should have thought it, was thrown up. It was of a whitish colour, felt rather smooth to the touch.’ This is not it, but they are close.
The White Road Page 24