The Tin-Glazed Earthenware

English potters were able to make a greatnow in the London Museum is a dish painted in
advance in the seventeenth century. They alsocolors with what appears to be the Tower of
imitate the art of pottery from other countriesLondon, the date 1600, and an inscription reading
like Italy, France, Holland and Germany. And many'The Rose is Red The Leaves are Grene God
Dutch emigrants who came to England broughtSave Elizabeth Our Queene'. It seems probable
the art and then it became popular in England.that this is of London manufacture but the colors
Tin-glazed Earthenwareused and style of painting are very like those on
Sometime before 1600, with help fromware made on the Continent at the time.
Continental potters and in imitation of ContinentalA further surviving group of wares is dated about
wares, English potters were able to make a great1630, and consists of a number of mugs bearing
advance. It was by using an opaque white glazeEnglish names and of shapes unlike current foreign
on which colored designs could be painted; atypes. Whereas these and earlier wares show, if
method originating in Italy.anything, an Italian influence in the style and
This type of pottery, glazed with a compositioncoloring of their decoration, the productions that
based on oxide of tin, which was available readilyfollowed were copied as closely as possible from
in England, is known as delftware from the similarChinese porcelain; which by 1640-50 was coming
ware made at Delft in Holland; although the latterto England in sufficient quantity to be a serious
town did not become connected withrival. Not only was Oriental porcelain being brought
pottery-making until some time after Englishto England, but the other countries of Europe also
manufacture had started. The beginner has toimported it and their potteries in turn set out to
beware of confusing English delftware with Dutchimitate the newcomer.
Delftware; a confusion that is not restricted toIt is clear that with pottery being made in England
the verbal sense. For, it was emigrant Dutchby Dutch potters copying Chinese originals and the
potters who came to England and started makingsame subjects being copied by the Dutch in their
tin-glazed earthenware in the second half of theown country, it cannot be an easy matter to
sixteenth century.distinguish between the two wares. No English
The first Dutch potters settled at Norwich, butwares are marked, and it is agreed that only
nothing of their work has been identified positively.those of the seventeenth century of certain
The earliest ware of the type is a series oftypes and bearing English names or inscriptions
brightly colored jugs, named after the village incan be accepted reasonably as originating in
Kent where one was once kept in the church,London.
West Mailing, near Maid stone. One of theseSome rulers like Queen Elizabeth I petitioned two
'Malling' jugs has a silver mount dated 1550, andDutch potters and allowed them to settle and
others bear later dates between then and 1600.work in England. There were a lot of imitations of
Queen Elizabeth I was petitioned by two Dutchthe arts of pottery making in the different parts
potters, named Jaspar Andries and Jacob Janson,of England. And it is not easy to distinguish the
to allow them to settle and work in England, and itoriginal and the imitated wares. And some of the
is believed that Janson set up a pottery in Londonwares were not marked.
in 1571. An early English dated piece of pottery