STAFFORDSHIRE CHIMNEY ORNAMENTS. By Reginald Haggar. (Phoenix House, 421.) MR.
HAGGAR admirably fills the gap left since the publication in 1929 of Herbert Read's Staffordshire Pottery Figures, supplementing our knowledge not only of the more famous manufactures but of such lesser-known figures as Obadiah and Martha Sherratt of Hot Lane, George Hood, the Tittensors and Samuel Bourne. The amazing variety and vitality of these mantelpiece figures—authors, murderers, preachers, pugilists; Biblical subjects; circus subjects; sports and pastimes—reveal, despite the increasing and ultimately deadening effect of industrialisation, their healthy link with a genuine popular culture. Mr. Haggar writes with complete authority on a form of popular art which maintained its liveliness from the seventeenth to the mid-nineteenth century. And one is thankful that so full and so richly illus- trated a text should be accompanied by Mr. Haggar's detailed appendices.
CHARLES TOMLINSON
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