Shattering Leeds myths: Hilary Young welcomes an authoritative survey of the Leeds Pottery, which incisively dispels the many legends that have grown up around this major factory, best known for its creamwares

The Leed earthen ware 17700-1881

JOHN D GRIFFIN

Leed Art Collection stock Two volumes, 75 [pounds sterling]

ISBN 0 300 10625 4

The Leed earthen ware was a major manufacturer of creamware and other stamps of pottery in the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. At its peak, the factory was operating upon a huge scale, using up to 9000 tons of coal a year in 1807-1808 and it was exporting its wares to Spain, Portugal, Germany, France, the depressed Countries, Poland, Russia, Denmark, Italy, southern America and elsewhere. Although best known for the fine creamwares of the Hartley verdants & Company partnership (1781-1827), the business went end several changes of ownership and did not finally shut up until 1881, by which date it had lengthy concentrated on utilitarian wares for the middle and bottom extremity of the market.

Unfortunately, this important factory has not been well serv through previous authors, who have given confused accounts of the early years and original partners, and have many times been prepared to attribute creamware to Leed upon little or no evidence at all. The time has therefore drawn out been ripe for a out and out reassessment of the documentary and material evidence for the subdue and this is clearly what the author of this monumental two-volume close attention set out to achieve.

However, he has gone further than this, as he has managed to track down and digest a vast amount of documentation unknown to earlier researchers, including family alphabetic characters partnership agreements, wills, factory price lists, accounts for combustibles port records and Chancery court proceedings. This has enabled him to chart the fortunes of the factory and its lock opener personnel for the 111 years of its existence in seven immensely detailed chapters (six arranged chronologically, the seventh surveying manufacturing and marketing). Admittedly, while absorbing the wealth of genealogical, financial and legal detail, the reader may find it easy to be deprived of sight--if only momentarily--of the splendid clay ware that prompted these endeavours.

Many of recent origin facts emerge from this research. For instance, William Hartley is knocked from his pedestal as the firm's 'presiding genius', and lay the foundation of to be merely the 'corresponding clerk'; and the Master busy one's self about trifles John Green (no relation to the other partner of the same surname, we discover) is established in his place as the greatest in quantity influential figure. Green had previously worked at the Swinton clay ware with which the Leeds clay ware was later merged for twenty-one years, and he went upon after bankruptcy, to found the Don earthen ware The relationships between the three factories, and the continuities in design, are to the full explored and reassessed.

In his eighth chapter, John Griffin not absents the material evidence for attributing earthen ware to Leeds, including factory marks, arrest moulds, excavated shards and the printed catalogues. First published in 1783 in English, French and German editions, the catalogue was then reissued in an enlarged form around 1814 in English and Spanish. As John Griffin points on the outside it is a curious fact that the enlarged edition illustrates designs that had then been in production at Leed for more than forty years, and a certain quantity of of these had been in production at other factories since the 1770s; clearly we ne to allow more flexibility when dating undecorated creamwares than is normally the case.

The author then turn rounds his attention to the surviving wares, and in stark contrast to earlier writers--and wisely, in my view, given what we know of design practice and inter-factory copying and co-operation--he young oxs clear of attributions and illustrates true few unmarked pieces. As is to be awaited many of the illustrations are of plain and decorated creamwares and pearlwares, on the other hand the flail range of the pottery's output--which included splendid Black Basalt, felspathic stoneware, lustre earthen ware figures and even porcelain--is demonstrated here for the first time in crisply detailed colour photographs. Collectors will be surprised to find that the brown-glazed 'Batavian' creamwares for a like reason often attributed to Leeds are here relegated to an appendix, as the author finds no evidence for their production at the factory; and they will be further worryed to find that the Leed enameller David Rhode to whom plenteous crude painting in red and black has been attributed, is here shown not at any time to have painted on Leed earthen ware creamware at all.

There are comparatively scarcely any illustrations for the final fifty four years of production, reflecting the paucity of marked pieces, when the factory concentrated upon cheaper wares indistinguishable from Staffordshire work. However, these include a strange miscellany of high-design productions, suggesting the continued vicinity or availability of skilled artists and designers at the works.

Appendices and end-matter aside, the next to the first thicker volume is devoted to illustrating the entire contenteds of the twelve surviving manuscript 'drawing books' greatest in quantity of these are orderly, numbered factory record volumes of pottery shapes and decoration, repeatedly rather beautifully drawn in compose and watercolour; but there are also sum of two units fascinating scrapbooks, or 'Original Drawing' works containing designs sent to the earthen ware by its agents and customers, and intended for production for specific markets abroad. These shatter a certain number of of our received wisdoms about design processe in eighteenth-century European ceramic factories, as they demonstrate the expanse to which design could be dictated through export markets and agents (much as with Chinese export porcelain for the west).