Mrs. IVaits' Terra-Cotta Industry 
Pots Designed and Made at the Compton Studios 
MRS. G. F. WATTS’ TERRA-COTTA INDUSTRY 
AT COMPTON, SURREY, ENGLAND 
By MRS. STEUART ERSKINE 
T HE origin of terra-cotta is lost in the 
mist of the ages, but it is generally sup¬ 
posed to yield only in point of antiquity to 
that oldest of all the arts, the fashioning of 
defensive weapons. Prehistoric man baked 
cups of clay in the sun before the use of fire 
had been discovered, 
and, in a recent exhi¬ 
bition in London, 
Professor Flinders 
Petrie dated some 
terra-cotta vases at 
circa 7,000 years be¬ 
fore Christ. Since 
that somewhat re¬ 
mote date, terra-cotta 
has flourished in all 
known countries. 
The Greeks followed 
the Egyptians and 
brought the art to 
the highest possible 
point of artistic per¬ 
fection; the Etruscans 
stamped it with the 
peculiar genius of 
their national per¬ 
sonality ; and the 
Romans, who ex¬ 
celled in adopting 
and adapting the arts 
of more creative 
peoples, were the first to use it for decorative 
architectural purposes. 
In these days, although the main idea is 
of course the same, the treatment has lost 
much of its simplicity and much of its con¬ 
nection with art. Machinery is freely used in 
the modern potteries, 
the vases once thrown 
on the potter’s wheel 
are shaped in moulds 
turned out by the 
dozen, without any 
regard for line or pro¬ 
portion, and glazes, 
coloring matter and 
other foreign ingre¬ 
dients are introduced 
into the body of the 
ware. 
I mention this 
because one of the 
most interesting fea¬ 
tures in the work¬ 
ing of Mrs. Watts’ 
potteries, lies in the 
fact that she has 
returned to the sim¬ 
plicity of the older 
potters and has reso¬ 
lutely turned her 
back on modern “im¬ 
provements.” She 
THE POTTER S WHEEL AT COMPTON 
232 
