THE CERAMIC ART OF GREAT BRITAIN.*
THERE are some books, not necessarily worthless or hurtfud ones, which are the despair of the conscientious reviewer, whiclt lie by from day to day, and week to week, and month to month, dumbly inviting, or rather dumbly repelling, perusal, till at last, when the journalist has lost all hope of ever being in a fit frame of mind to read them, he seizes the paper-knife, and forces himself neck-and-crop into the midst of their page. Such, we earnestly confess, has been our feeling with regard to this work of Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt's. We looked at the outside; and suspected ; we opened the first of the two bulky volumes, and gazed suspiciously at the irreproachable face and bust of the author, as portrayed on the frontispiece ; we turned to the title-page, and found that he had dozens of titles, among them that of "Honorary and Actual Member of the Russian Im- perial Archmological Commission and Statistical Committee; Pskov," "thundering after his name," as Mask Twain says ; we noted that the mere title of the book occupied nine lines of print, and asserted that the book contained a history of the porcelain and pottery works of Great Britain, from prehistoric times to the present day, and of every class of production then manufactured. Lastly, we turned our eye, lack-lustre in the ex- treme, upon the preface, in a faint hope that we should, after all, meet with a few brief, incisive words which would show lLY The Crratnic Art of Great Britain. By L. Jewitt. LoLdon: Virtue and Son.
the book was neither long-winded, trivial, nor common-place, and that the somewhat arrogant title-page was simply an error of judgment. Alas ! the Member of the Statistical Committee of Pskov wrote much as might have been expected from a man burdened with such an unusual dignity, as, for instance,—
" I can honestly say I have left nothing undone, no source untried, and no trouble untaken, to secure perfect accuracy in all I have written, and yet I am painfully aware that shortcomings may, and doubtless will, be laid to my charge ; for these, whenever they occur, I ask, and indeed claim, indulgence. I believe in work, in hard, unceasing labour, in patient and painstaking research, in untiring saarchings, and in diligent collection and arrangement of facts, to make time and labour and money subservient to the end in view, rather than that the end in view, and the time and labour and money expended, should bend and bow, and ultimately break, before time."
" Oh ! my human boy !" said Mr. Chadband; and "Anybody can ask, mu4body can interrogate, anybody can give his re- marks an interrogative turn," said Mr. Sapsea, the auctioneer ; and we confess that Mr. Llewellynn Jewitt reminded us irre- sistibly of both characters. Such were the reasons which have caused this work to lie for a year or so upon our library-table ; will any honest reader say we are without excuse ?
The fact is, as we might have said at first, that the book is unreadable, despite its industry and the amount of information it contains. Its contents make upon the intellectual palate much the same impression as a large handful of flour would upon the physical one,—a sense, namely, of good stuff which wants working up, to be palatable.
When this is said, the great fault of the book is noted, and there must come praise for the great industry with which it has been compiled. Taken as a dictionary of the various pottery and porcelain manufacturers, little else can be given than praise ; the only mistake has been the putting it into the form of a history, and not calling it simply a dictionary of the pottery and porcelain manufactories of Great Britain. The materials for a history are all here, but they are not assimilated, and lie in detached chapters, strung together only by the thinnest threads of common-place. It must be confessed that whenever Mr. Jewitt leaves fact for comment., he becomes simply an intoler- able bore. A few points may be noted connected with the production of the book which would render it of greater utility to the collector, and also as a book of reference. Of these, the chief is the addition of a topical index to the chief manufactories, arranged in chronological order, and containing the dates within which that special manufactory mainly flourished, the establishment of the works, and their extinction.
Thus, taking Chelsea porcelain, for instance, the index would stand thus :—" Chelsea Porcelain Works. Date of foundation, about 1G80. Finest period, 1740-1775. Closed, 1784." Such a table as this, which could be easily compiled by Mr. Jewitt, and perhaps, with regard to many of the small manufactories, by him alone, would add enormously to the value of this work as a book of reference. For at present, every date has to be sought for in the midst of a mass of comparatively irrelevant information, such as weekly bills of the workmen, letters on various subjects, anecdotes, itc.
The illustrations, too, would gain by being reduced in number and improved in quality. There is a peculiarly disagreeable quality about most of these wood engravings, and they are un- worthy of a book of so much importance. Another point which would greatly aid the collector and the student would be some systematic arrangement of the " marks " distinctive of each manufactory and its various periods. If these were placed at the end of each chapter, or even all together in the chronological order of the manufactories at time end of the book, much time would be gained. And gain of time in a book of reference means enhancement of its value.
Undoubtedly, the great feature of this book is the research which has made Mr. Jewitt acquainted with facts about the numberless small potteries in existence between 1750 and 1850.
Of dozens, if not scores of these; of the very existence of which we must confess ourselves to have been wholly ignorant, Mr. Jewitt has discussed the special manufactures and their characteristics, frequently giving illustrations in his work.
Such places as Brislington, Cadborough, Easton, and Years- ley are, we imagine, quite unknown to the ordinary china amateur ; and of such minor potteries as these, if Mr. Jewitt gives one account, he must give at least a hundred.
The Yearsley works have a special interest attaching to them as having been originally carried on by a branch of the Wedg- wood family, who settled there at some (unknown) early date, and continued the manufactory for many generations ; the exact date of the dosing of the works is not given, but Mr. Jewitt remarks that he has "succeeded in tracing out with tolerable accuracy a pedigree of the Yorkshire Wedgwoods (Yearsley in the Yorkshire Wolds) for seveu or eight generations, rang- ing from the middle of the eighteenth century down to the present time." So well known were the Wedgwoods of this dis- trict, that one member of the family has been immortalised in song, thus :—
At Yearsley there are pancheons mado By Willie Wedgwood, that young blade."
" Puncheons " are thick, coarse, earthenware pans, made of various sizes, and used for setting away milk in, and for washing purposes. They are made in various localities, and besides being sold by earthenware-dealers, are hawked about the country by men who make their living in no other way." So far Mr. Jewitt on Yearsley ; he gives also au interesting illus- tration of a " puzzle " jug, made at that place, with the inscrip- tion, "John Wedgwood, 1691," cut into it, in ordinary writing letters.
In the second volume, the accounts of "Derby," Wedgwood, and Minton manufactures are very full, and though, as through- out the book, there is a good deal of somewhat cumbersome and irrelevant detail, on the whole these are the best notices of these potteries we have yet seen. It remains only to speak of the value of Mr. Jewitt's artistic opinions, wherever such ale expressed ; and we say with the less reluctance that but little weight can be attached to them, as it is evident the author does not look at either pottery or porcelain from an artistic so munch as from a manufacturing, and especially an archmeological,point of view. In conclusion, we can only say of this work that it contains a great deal of very valuable material, and a good deal of worthless detail. If it were sifted thoroughly, the information boiled, down to half the present compass and then rearranged, the result would be very valuable as a dictionary of reference to English Ceramic Art.
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