70 THE WEDGWOODS. 



forefathers, and they began to feel that their art, as yet in its 

 infancy among us, would grow strong and healthy, and 

 become one day what it soon proved to be, a successful rival 

 to foreign workers in the plastic art. 



At the time of which I write a hundred and fifty to two 

 hundred years ago Burslem was a small, unassuming, 

 straggling little place, with the houses and pot-works, few in 

 number, scattered about in its gardens and by its lane sides. 

 In its centre was a huge May-pole,* around which the "jolly 

 potters " danced and held their festivals, and in every direc- 

 tion were clay pitsf and " shard-rucks, "J where, from time 

 immemorial, their ancestors had dug the native clay, and 

 thrown by their " wastrels " till they had accumulated to a 

 considerable size. Pitfalls and hillocks, the results of the 

 hard labours of the early potters, were thus the principal 

 features of the place, where now the busy and thriving town, 

 raised by the increase of their trade, so flourishingly stands. 

 The wares then made in the district were the coarse brown 

 ware, the finer cane-coloured ware, also made from native 

 clay, Delft ware, crouch ware, a comparatively fine red ware, 

 and clouded, mottled, or marbled ware ; and some of the pro- 

 ductions, years before the birth of Josiah Wedgwood who 

 is by many people popularly believed to have been the founder 

 of the art in Staffordshire are of remarkably good form, of 

 excellent workmanship, and are indeed such as it would 

 almost puzzle even an experienced potter of the present day 

 to reproduce. I name this en passant, because I wish to 

 remove the impression which seems in some places to prevail, 

 that until Josiah Wedgwood's time the productions of the 

 neighbourhood were confined to the manufacture of coarse 

 brown butter-pots, porringers, and other clumsy vessels alone, 



* The May-pole stood where the Town Hall now stands. 



t Pits from which the native clay for the manufacture of earthenware 

 was dug by the potters. 



J Shards, broken pots ; rucks, heaps. Thus " shard-ruck " was a heap 

 of broken pots a rubbish heap, in fact, made up of the refuse from the 

 pot-works. 



Pots spoiled in their manufacture. 



