Arts and Crafts

‘Once upon a time interesting pots were made until somebody in the 19th century turned out the lights.’ This notion too often sours appreciation of late 19th century factory-made wares. And when the lights came back on it was suddenly today filled with wild, creative work.

Industrialization is generally blamed for this ‘lights out’ period. The factory system certainly suppressed individual potters’ markets. And what began as a ‘wild west’ explosion of techniques and styles certainly devolved into rote mass-production by century’s end.

So what happened? Did ‘industrialization’ just stop?

Toward the late 19th century the Arts and Crafts Movement tried to instill a more humane sensibility back into an ossified industrial design process (and into the industrial system as a whole) while reinvigorating studio arts.

Around this time manufacturers hired Taxile Doat, Thomas Allen, and others to experiment with glazes and forming techniques. These folks took full advantage of all the resources that a large, well-stocked industry could provide. A curious thing about their resume’s was how often they floated between firms. The Minton/Sèvres revolving door was particularly active, with Wedgwood head-hunters lurking in the wings. These individuals considered themselves as free agents first and foremost – potters in their own right.

And here we come to the crux of the matter. Factory-sponsored explorations energized artisan potters more than any other effort of the time. All that complex new glaze chemistry! All those new commercially available materials! All that new equipment! Add to this all those new studio art education programs, and the enduring legacy of the movement’s English Studio Pottery aesthetic. All this was now (more or less) available to artisan potters – just as an organized labor and Model T infused middle class became voraciously interested in regional artistic heritage.

Potters such as Mary Louise McLaughlin, Maria Longworth Nichols, and Adelaide Alsop Robineau took the baton and ran with it. What became known as Art Pottery culminated the Arts and Crafts era. The lights were on. Modern ceramic arts were born.

The moral of this highly condensed pottery history tale is this: don’t let aesthetic bias blind you to what’s going on under the surface. Fussy, frivolous late 19th century factory-made pottery heralded the infrastructure underpinning practically everything made by ceramic artists since then. Scanning the ceramic spectrum today, it is astonishing the extent to which the grandiose Arts and Crafts project, begun with such fevered idealism, actually succeeded.

When Pottery Meant Something

First this happened, then that happened, then the other thing happened.  Then all that ended and something else happened…  Not very meaningful, of course – unless you’re an outline junkie.

But in the mid 1700’s something actually did happen.  In England anyway.  Super organized pottery factories burst on the scene.  Spode.  Minton.  Wedgwood.  Such names as these made the six towns collectively known as Stoke-on-Trent synonymous with exacting precision, a dizzying stylistic range and ruthless marketing – and large numbers of unskilled and child laborers.  Staffordshire’s pottery firms radically changed the face of pottery.  Within decades, they would practically dominate the world.  The one run by Western Europe, at least.

The days of small, family run country potteries were numbered.  An entire way of life would soon disappear.  You’d think these potters would riot.  They didn’t.  The new stuff rolling off the assembly lines hardly impacted  (just yet) the need for “coarseware.”  Staffordshire’s initial target was more up-scale.  Like pewter.

Pewterers and other high-end craftspeople had enjoyed a monopoly on most upper class tables for generations.  To them, the rise of Staffordshire meant disaster.  An Exeter newspaper article of April 4, 1776 says it all:

“Last week the tinners in Cornwall rose in consequence of the introduction into that country of such large quantities of Staffordshire and other earthenware.  About a hundred in a body went to Redruth, on the market day, and broke all the wares they could meet with, the sale of which was intended in that town.  From thence they went to Falmouth for the same purpose, and because they could not force their way into the Town Hall, where a large parcel of Staffordshire and other wares were lodged, they were about to set fire to it, had not Mr. Allison, the printer and alderman of that town, with another gentleman, pacified them, by promising to discourage the sale and use of these wares by every means in their power, and by going to a pewterer’s and bespeaking a quantity of pewter dishes and plates to evince their readiness to serve them.”

A picture paints a thousand words.  Sometimes newspaper articles do too.

Readings:
The English Country Pottery, Its History and Techniques. Peter Brears.  Charles Tuttle Co./Rutland, VT.  1971.

The Story of Craft.  The Craftsman’s Role in Society. Edward Lucie-Smith.  Phaidon/Oxford.  1981.

The Rise of the Staffordshire Potteries. John Thomas.  Augustus Kelly Publishers/New York.  1971.

Technorati Tags: Staffordshire,Pewter,Coarseware