The Sun.
London, England, 1853-01-22 00:00:00

THE EARL 0.

W POTTERY.

The annual festival of the Potters' School of Design,
which usually excites considerable interest in pot-
ery district of Staffordshire, was held at Burslem. The
ordinary attractions of the meeting were greatly en-
hanced by the announcement that the Rarl of Carlisle
would take the chair ; and it was not therefore surpris-
ing that the spacious room in which the inhabitants as-
sembled should very quickly, after the doors were
thrown open on Wednesday night, be filled to over-
flowing.
The Earl of CARLISLE, who was received with much
cheering, opened the business of the evening by saying
—Ladies and gentlemen, I appear before you on the
present occasion, in compliance with the invitation
which I was honoured by receiving in the course of
last autumn, to attend and take the chair at the annual
meeting of the Schools of Design in the Potteries' Dis-
trict—(cheers)—and although I hope, therefore, that I
shall not be arraigned for presumption in doing so by
the present company, yet I certainly feel that I cannot
so easily acquit myself on that account. Neither
my education nor my habits of life, nor my acquisitions
by reading, have qualified me to hold discourse upon
this subject ; and I am clearly sinning against the old
rule laid down long ago by the poet Horace, which may
be thus rendered—

" Of pottery, let potters speak !"

(Great cheering and laughter.) While there are such
distinguished manufacturers as Mr. Ridgway, Mr. Min-
ton, and others around me, I find myself not listening
to them, but occupying the chair in their place, and I
really feel that I can scarcely hazard an observation in
their presence without the danger of making some awful
blunder. (Cheers and laughter.) I know there are so
many essential, though by me ill-understood, differences
between pottery and crockery, and hardware and stone-
ware, and finestoneware and ironstoneware, and earthen-
ware and firedware, and japan and china, and porce-
lain hard and porcelain soft, and delf and eggshell, and
enamel and tiles, and terracotta and bisque and
Parian, and all sorts of crockery and pottery, without
going into such geographical distinctions as Sevres and
Dresden, and Chelsea and Staffordshire: (Loud cheers
and laughter.) All I feel certain of is, that, if Igo into
particulars, shall make a tremendous smash—(cheers
and laughter)—and effectually produce you that which
can be represented by nothing better than the familiar
figure, which I hope may never be realised by any here,
a bull in one of your own china-shops. (Great cheer-
ing.) We are met, however, to promote the effi-
ciency of what may be called the ceramic department.
I know not how far the niceties of scholarship have tra-
velled amongst you, or that I am not already blamed for
net calling it " keramic ; " but I only hope that with
the name will be imparted the grace of classic antiquity.
(Cheers.) There are, however, considerations which
might well warrant any one, however unskilled and
unversed in this particular craft, but yet who might
feel an interest in the welfare and prosperity of the
country generally, to express his sympathy with the
objects which have called together the present as-
sembly. lam informed that there are 200 factories
in England now engaged in pottery, with an
annual amount of production of the value of
2,000,000/. sterling. in the year before last, as much
as 84,000,000 of pieces of pottery were exported from
this kingdom ; and, in the vast network of industry
which covers all this neighbourhood about us, there
must be fully 60,000 people employed in this species of
manufacture. (Hear, hear.) I conceive that to men-
tion these bare statistical facts is a more real and im-
posing tribute to the importance of the pottery manufac-
ture than it would be to dwell upon the venerable an-
tiquity of its origin, or on the repute and dignity with
which it appears to have been invested in all ages of
mankind. (Cheers.) You must all of you be familiar
with the frequent metaphors derived from the potter and
his art in the Bible itself. The limits of Grecian con-
quest and of Roman empire are still defined by the ves-
tiges found, from time to time, of their pottery ; and in
many instances the names of successful artificers in clay
have been "married to immortal song." (Loud cheers.)
But, however grand may have been the uses to which
this ingenious and delicate handicraft has been put
in successive generations of the world—whether to bold
the ashes, or to record the achievements, of the illus-
trious dead, or to reward the victors in the public games,
or in the musical or poetical contests of the classic ages ;
or—more ignoble appropriation—to adorn the cabinets
and the toilets of the voluptuous favourites of monarchs •
or to attest the better-earned gratitude due to such 2be-
nefactors of the human race as our peerless Wellington
—(cheers)--I feel that you will agree with me that this
art finds its highest and most appropriate vocation when
it is made to subserve to the daily service, and minister
to the convenience of, millions, while it excites and de-
velopes a taste for refinement and beauty among the thick
masses of mankind. (Loud cheers.) This brings me
more directly to the special object of our meeting to-
gether here to-night. I have just intimated that the
peculiar aim of your art ought to be to make the
highest amount of beauty minister to and subserve
the greatest extent of use.. Now, with respect to use,
think we may safely trust the practical, straightforward,
not over-romantic genius of our countrymen with find.
ing out what would be most wanted, what the most
welcome, what would suit the greatest number of con-
sumers ; but I am not sure that we can as implicitly
rely on their unaided and uninstructed aptitude to evince
the best artistic discrimination, to employ the most
happy combination of colours, or to select the most fault-
less shapes and proportions in the form of their ware. I
think, however, it would be both unjust and illiberal not
to admit in these respects, as in others more essential,
that a great advance has been recently made. (Cheers.)
It is not here, in the heart of the district which gave
birth to Wedgewood—(cheers)--and to others, subse-
quently, of almost equal renown, several of whoni I am
happy now to see around me—it is not in the neighbour-
hood of the British Etruria, for which Flaxman modelled,
and in which Wedgewood wrought, that I should think of
using the language of disparagement or of discourage-
ment. (Cheers.) May I not, too, in our own day,
refer to the beautiful new manufacture called Parian,
which combines so much beauty of material with so much
capacity for exquisite outline and form (which I believe
we may call exclusively our own), and evidenced by the
Niobe, the Andromeda, the Dorothea, and the Vintage.
(Cheers.) But let me remind you—and you may recur
to it with just pride—of the distinguished position
which Staffordshire occupied in the great Exhibition
of 1851. (Cheers.) Where was it in the thick crowd of
all the races of the world, and in the rich array of all the
productions of mankind—where was it that, day after
day, and week after week, from the first opening of the
doors at morning to the last crash of the gong at even—
where was the densest mass, and where the most difficult
means of passage ? If you ask me, I should point to that
portion of the gallery which overhung the angle of the
northwest transept—(loud cheers)—and from the con-
stant gathering and the untiring interest thereby ex-
pressed, it is right to infer that Staffordshire occupied no
mean position in that central mart of the productions of
the world. (Cheers.) • But it is one thing to droop and
despond, it is another thing to presume and stagnate—
(loud cheers)—and though I learn that from the manu-
factory at Sevres, now again an imperial establishment,
and from France there are now exported wares of this
kind to the valve of 800,0001. a-year—we may take
courage from the circumstance that we have all the ele-
ments of success before us. We have a great choice of
material, a great command of fuels, a great supply of in-
telligent workmen, an increased appreciation of the true
principles and laws of art, and a larger share of atten-
tion bestowed on such objects, both byindividual patrons
and by the public generally ; only, I must respectfully
remind you that, in the face of the competition of the
world, there is still an ample call for exertion, and if
there be not progress, there is likely to be falling off and
decay. (Cheers.) It is here that I think the establishment
and encouragement of schools of design come to be of such
first-rate importance—(cheers)--and if ever there were a
district, and if ever there were a species of manufacture,
for which they seem pro-eminently adapted and required, I
should say it was the district in which we are now met, and
are aware that the art of design comprehends both the
proper composition of the pattern and the proper admix-
ture of the clay. Well, so far it may be said to be appli-
cable also to textile fabrics, in which excellence in colour
and pattern, too, is indispensable ; but excellence with
regard to shape cannot be said to be so indispensable as
respects dress, or we should not hear so much of long
waists and short waists, or speak of ampler or more con-
tracted circumferences. (Great laughter.) But, in the
pottery manufacture there is no portion of the composition
of a piece—whether that of the preparer, the modeller,.
or the gilder—in which the art of design has not its ap
propriate place. (Cheers.) Nor is it an untried or an uncer

tain experiment that we are met to recommend to-night.
' The Pottery Schools of Design have already obtained a
recognised and highly creditable footing. (Cheers.) I feel,
as I said before, that I am not a person qualified to
give an opinion on such a point ; or, even if I were, I
might almost suspect in myself, or, at least give grounds
for others to suspect, a tendency not uncommon amongst
Persons in the habit of addressing meetings—a tendency
to say things to conciliate the favour, and to smooth
the complacency, of those gathered before them—but '
happily, with reference to your schools of design, I am
able to refer to more authentic sources for the due dis-
tribution of praise. (Cheers.) There has been, as I
o the understand,specimens
i mi neformer
of drawing
years,
an uniform commendation
sent up by the Potteries
Schools of Design for inspection to Somerset House by the
council there ; and the still more signal success which at-
tended their production this last year is best attested by
the fact, that the awards assigned to it by the Department
of Practical Art exceed the proportion obtained by any
other provincial schools in the country. Most happy
am I to find on this platform both the gentlemen who
superintend the department of practical art—Mr. Cole
and Mr. Redgrave. (Cheers.) They have both contri-
buted in various ways to the success and development of
practical art in this country—(cheers)— and they are of
all men most competent to lay down proper principles
for your guidance. I learn, likewise, that two of the
most
year,meri torous pupils from these schools have, in the
last
been elected to Government scholarships,
(Loud trust this precedent may be the mean;
(Loud cheers.)
of district, and espe-
cially concernedug
nin men in this
the pottery manufacture, to
avail themselves o
inducing
those
yo
of the advantages here offered to them
other
more extensively even than they have hitherto done. And
a.
I would most earnestly counsel you not to be deterred