Agate

To simulate veined agate stone, vessels were made of wedged clay of contrasting colors. The color variations on the outside of the pot should be essentially the same on the inside.

Antimony

The mineral source of the bright yellow color used in the glaze on so-called "canary lustre" wares, more correctly called "yellow-glazed earthenware" in that there is no lustre involved.

Ash Glaze

Used on stonewares as a decorative glaze, derived from vegetable ashes and varying widely. Most contain potash, lime, silica, and alumina. These are also referred to as alkaline glazes, typical examples of which can be seen on the American face jugs of the Carolinas and Georgia.

Backstamp

The manufacturer's identification mark found on the bottom or underside of a pot. Eighteenth and early 19th century backstamps were usually impressed into the clay body. Later, marks were underglaze printed.

Banding

Decorative slip bands encircling a vessel. Archaeologists refer to these as "annular" wares.

Basalt Ware

Black vitreous earthenware, unglzed on the exterior, usually with molded or engine-turned relief decoration. Originating in the mid-18th century, potters of the period called it Egyption Black, while Josiah Wedgwood called his version Basaltes.

Bat Printing

A similar process to transfer printing where, instead of paper, a glue bat was used. This was a pliable wad of animal glue that, when pressed onto an etched and inked copper plate, picked up the inked image. In fitting the glue bat to the contours of the pot to be decorated, no creasing was necessary as with paper, since the bat could conform to any shape. Remember transferrring the comics with Silly Putty?

Bianco-Sopra-Bianco

Technically, it translates to white-on-white, but this refers to a decorative technique of white painted enamel on a pale grayish-blue ground on tin-glazed earthenware (or delft) produced in England, principally at Bristol, in the 18th century.

Biscuit/Bisque

Once-fired ware before glazing.

Bocage

The tree or shrub-like decorative devices ornamenting earthenware figures, providing structural support as well as visual interest.

Bone China

In effect, a type of porcelain--vitreous, hard, translucent--containing calcined animal bone (burned and ground to a fine powder). Britian's standard for bone china is a content of 45% to 50% calcined bones.

Can (Cann)

Cylindrically formed cup.

Cane Ware

Buff-colored unglazed stoneware.

Carpet Bowl

A 3" to 4" diameter glazed, decorated earthenware ball used in the Victorian game of carpet bowling. Well documented as having been made at the Sunderland Pottery, these can also be attributed to Staffordshire.

Caudle Cup

Also known as a posset pot, this low, bulbous, covered form with two handles has a spout-like tubular appendage emanating from one side near the base, sneaking up the body toward the rim. Caudle was a popular drink of the 17th centuy consisting of curdled milk, ale, and spices. The spout was used not for pouring, but for sucking.

Crabstock

The gnarled, tree branch shaped handles and spouts found on some 18th century Staffordshire tea and coffee wares.

Craquelleur

Generally refers to deliberate crazing of the glaze for decorative effect. Dedham pottery is an excellent example. The word has come to be used erroneously to describe crazing in general, whether intentional or not.

Crazing

Cracking in the glaze. In earthenware this can cause the body to become porous. This fault occurs when the glaze is in tension, when thermal changes create unequal expansion or contraction between the body and the glaze. It can also result from numerous technical inadequacies during manufacture.

Creamware

A refined white earthenware, opaque, lead-glazed with a noticeable yellow cast with concentrated yellow or yellow-green glaze puddling at foot rings or other places where the liquid glaze could collect before firing. Found plain, pierced, painted both over- and underglaze, and likewise printed. Developed in the mid 18th century, creamware was further refined and improved by Josiah Wedgwood, whose marketing sense did so much to establish creamware as the epitome of fashion.

Dinnerware

Tableware made specifically for a dinner service as opposed to tea wares.

Dipt Ware

A period term (late 18th century) for slip-decorated refined earthenwares, including mocha, exhibiting a wide variety of decorative techniques, including slip trailing, slip dipping, engine turning, and rouletting.

Dod Box

A container of soft, plastic clay featuring a cover with a hand screw and an opening in the bottom into which was fitted a dod--a precisely shaped hole through which the clay was pressed or extruded to form handles and other strips such as those found on openwork trays and baskets.

Earthenware

Clay-based ceramics fired at considerably lower kiln temperatures than porcelain. Essentially, earthenwares are porous and require glazing for most applications. Pottery is another term for earthenware, whereas porcelain is a different animal altogether.

Elers

Two Dutch brothers who emigrated to Staffordshire in the late 17th century, establishing a pottery best known for highly developed red-bodied stonewares in the Chinese tradition.

Engine Turning

On lathe-turned pottery, decorative geometric, diced, and fluted patterns reated by the use of an eccentric motion programmed in the cutting lathe. It is apparent that Josiah Wedgwood pioneered the use of engine turning lathes, beginning in the 1760's.

Faience Fine

French term for creamware, principally that were made by French potteries such as Creil, Montereau, Sarreguemines, and Choissy de Roi

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Farings

Inexpensive decorative ceramic objects, made for sale at country fairs, including cottages, money boxes (banks), pastille burners, and cow creamers. Inexpensive no more.

Feldspathic Stoneware

Best known to collectors and dealers generically as Castleford after the wares produced by David Dunderdale & Co. at the Castleford Pottery in south Yorkshire in the late 18th century. This is a vitreous stoneware with feldspar or Cornish stone making up a principal ingredient, the feldspar melting in the firing to form its own glaze.

Fuddling Cup

A drinking vessel made up of three separate bowls, connected in such a way that it is impossible to empty one without emptying the others--of 17th century origin.

Gaudy Dutch

Generic term for thin-bodied white earthenware decorated to resemble Imari porcelain. Usually printed in one color under the glaze. Other colors were then painted over-glaze. Made by Stafford-shire potters, including John and Richard Riley, during the first half of the 19th century (20th century term).

Gaudy Welsh

Of later manufacture than Gaudy Dutch, this white earthenware tends to be heavier-bodied and always includes elements of metallic lustre decoration (20th century term).

Glaze

The root of the word is the same for glass. Most glazes have a glassy surface, both in appearance and composition, protecting the underglaze decoration without obscuring it. Beyond aesthetics, however, the glaze is functional, allowing porous earthenware to function as vitreous and to provide easily-cleaned surfaces.

Glost

Glazed. The glost oven is the kiln in which the glazed ware is fired.

Greenware

Pottery before firing.

Grisaille

Actually a French word but used in English to describe paintin using only a white-t0-black color scale: grays. Not limited to ceramic usage.

Ground

The background color or field upon which other decorative elements are placed.

Hollowware

As opposed to flatware, vessels, such as jugs, mugs, and pitchers.

Hovel/Hoval

The outer brick enclosure of a Staffordshire bottle oven (so named for its shape resembling a soda bottle) that encloses the kiln.

Impressed

Embossed, as with a die or roulette wheel. A pattern is impressed into the clay while it is still in a somewhat plastic state.

Incised

Cut. In terms of pottery, incised generally refers to the removal of surface material, such as cutting through a layer of colored slip to reveal the body color beneath.

Intertwined/Entwined

In ceramics, this usually refers to two extruded strap handles wound in and out of each other to form a single functioning handle.

Iron Oxide

The naturally-occurring pigment giving a brick-red color. Also an impurity in the various earthen ingredients used in the making of ceramics.

Jackfield

18th century red earthenware with a very highly reflective black glossy surface. Probably initially made at Jackfield in Shropshire (Salop) but also made in Staffordshire. Some of this ware was decorated in color, while other examples can be found with cold-gilt decoration, though rarely intact.

Jasperware

Introduced in 1774 by Josiah Wedgwood and still in production today, this is a vitreous bolored stoneware. It forms the basis of a long tradition by the Wedgwood firm of classically ornamented ceramics with sprigged figures and draped garlands in white relief against the colored ground.

Jug

Think of a Liverpool jug. A vessel of baluster or other turned form with a strap handle opposite a V-notch cut-in pouring. American dealers and collectors refer to these shapes as pitchers.

Kiln

An oven for firing ceramic or glass material. Kilns have taken many forms over the centuries and have relied on many different fuels. Today's kilns are mostly electric, whereas kilns of the 18th and 19th century Staffordshire and Yorkshire were coal fired, relying on an abundant local natural resource.

Kiln Furniture

Refractory material in a variety of shapes designed to support ware in the kiln.

Knop

The handle or knob on the cover of a vessel. Sometimes referred to as a finial, a knop is often decoratively molded in floral, vegetable, animal, or human form.

Lead Glaze

The most commonly encountered English glaze from the 18th and 19th centuries. Pots were dipped into the clear liquid containing silica and lead oxides before firing. The firing process was such that leaching of the lead when in use, even with acidic foods, was not a problem. The potters working with this mixture, however, were in grave danger.

Leather Hard

A state in the drying process of pottery in progress. At this state any turning or shape refinement takes place, as the material is of a consistency of softwood or medium-hard cheese. Also called green hard.

Leeds

A city in Yorkshire, England. Hartley, Greens & Co. established a well-known pottery there in the latter 18th century, also known as Leeds Pottery. Many other potteries were situated nearby, often producing similar wares to those produced at the Leeds Pottery, sometimes even as subcontractors. The manufacture of creamware and pearlware utilitarian and decorative earthenwares there continued, in one way or another, into the 20th century. Reproductions of 18th century objects were made from the original block molds into the 1920's by the Senior family, marked with the original impressed backstamp. The work of the original company is highly regarded, particularly ornamental creamware.

Lid

Some rigidly literal English ceramic historians insist that a lid must be hinged, as opposed to a cover, which isn't.

Littler's Blue

A brillian cobalt-oxide derived royal blue slip coating or ground developed in Scotland by William Littler in the mid 18th century. Most often seen on salt-glazed stoneware, it was also used on the soft-paste porcelains of Longton Hall.

Lug Handle

Usually shaped much like a one-sixth section of a sphere, a curved semi-circular form used in pairs on shallow vessels or singly below the pouring lip on oversized jugs.

Lustre

A metallic surface coating. Dating as far back as the 10th century in Persia, lustres found new popularity in the 19th century as copper, silver, and pink lustres decorated everyday earthenwares. Later developments produced wondrous effects in the Arts and Crafts movement, in particular, the so-called Fairyland Lustre of Daisy Maikig-Jones for Wedgwood in the early 20th century.

Marbled

To achieve a visual effect much like agate, different colored slips were poured onto the greenware and manipulated to gain the desired effect. Occasionally the wet, marbled slip was further manipulated with a comb or feather, producing a visual effect like fine book endpapers. Found most often on creamware and pearlware, marbling can also be found on red bodies, all dating from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. 19th century French peasant ware using this technique is today called Jaspe ware. Archaeologists refer to these types as variegated wares.

Mask Jug

Either of two types: the first wherein the body of the jug is formed (usually press-molded) to form a face below the pouring lip. The other is conventionally shaped but with a face- or mask-molded pouring lip. These seem to have originated in the second half of the 18th century and continued into the 19th.

Mocha

Utilitarian earthenware vessels bearing tree- or moss-like decoration resembling mocha stone. The effect was created by dropping a prepared liquid mixture containing various ingredients, usually nicotine, stale urine, and metallic oxides, into the wet slip ground, whereby the mocha tea ramifies into the dendritic decoration. Produced from the late 18th to the mid 20th centuries. Today, the term mocha covers a braoder range of slip decorated refined earthenwares, not restricted to dendritic decoration.

Monteith

A large unusually-shaped bowl with a pronounced scalloped rim designed to receive the stems of wine glasses, holding the glasses with the feet outside and the glasses within, keeping them cool in iced water.

Parian

Introduced in the 19th century, a hard fired vitreous porcelaneous body. Bisque white, it was often used in imitation of classical ornamentation, resembling Roman marble. Later tablewares, such as those from the Irish Belleek factory, require a clear lead glaze.

Pastille Burner

A novelty shaped like a cottage, toll house, etc. intended for the household function of buring pastilles (small cones of incense).

Pearlware

Much the same as creamware but with a small amount of cobalt added to the glaze to act as a whitener. The glaze puddling has a decidedly blue cast. Blue-decorated wares were all the rage in the second half of the 18th century in England, with the most desirable wares coming from China. English potters painting their creamwares in blue met with little success, as aesthetically, the appearance fell short of the Chinese porcelain counterparts. Pearlware solved the problem.

Pierced Decoration

Often referred to as reticulated, which is technically inaccurate. Reticulated means net-like or having veins constructed in a net-like fashion as with leaves. Hartley, Greens, & Co.'s Leeds Pottery is best known for its highly decorative pierced creamware in such shapes as fruit baskets, tea wares, and tureens. Often, these were constructed as two bodies--one inner and solid, the outer pierced so as to fool the eye, giving the effect of a pierced vessel that magically held liquid.

Pitcher

Think of a pitcher and bowl set. A pitcher is formed in such a way that the pouring lip is integrally formed with the body. The word probably derives from the verb pitch, as the contents of the vessel are pitched from the lip. Often interchanged with ewer, though ewer tends to be restricted to more classical, Continental shapes. The bowl in a set should more properly be called a basin (early spelling, bason). Hand basins were made and sold independently.

Porcelain

Very hard, translucent, glassy ceramics composed primarily of kaolin and pegmatite, containing a high level of silica. Developed in China, eventually duplicated in the early 18th century at Meissen in Germany, followed by Sebres and other European sites, before successful manufacture took place in England. True porcelain is also known as hard paste. Early English attempts to manufacture porcelain led to alternatives known as soft paste. Hard paste porcelain is fired at considerably higher kiln temperatures than soft paste.

Porringer

A handled breakfast cup or bowl with one or two handles. Early 19th-century examples bear an unfortunate resemblance to small chamber pots.

Pot

Generic term for any item of pottery.

Potsherd

A broken piece of pottery. Here, we encounter a fascinating linguistic problem. Despite the spelling, the English pronounce the word shard, just as they do Darby for Derby and clark for clerk. American historical archaeologists now pronounce the word as it is spelled, while the English have begun to spell it with an a--a perfect example of two nations divided by a common language.

Puzzle Jug

An 18th century drinking vessel with multiple openings at or below the rim that would, in normal use, produce spillage. Generally, the handle and rim are hollow so that by blocking all but one opening with the fingers, one could suck the contents from that opening.

Red Stoneware

Developed in China and used primarily for tea wares, the Elers brothers began in Staffordshire to further develop the technique as did Botteger at Meissen shortly thereafter. The Chinese felt that tea taasted better in red stoneware and so, too, did the English. Many of the English makers copied Chinese styles and even went so far as to develop imitation Chinese backstamps.

Rockingham Glaze

A lead glaze containing manganese oxide and iron oxide giving a mottled purplis-brown surface effect. Developed at the Rockingham Pottery at Swinton, south Yorkshire, as early as 1770, probably by William Malpas. Thomas-Brameld later took over the pottery and helped to build a large following for this type of decoration to the point where the term Rockingham became generic for manganese/iron lead-glazed wares, even those produced in abundance in the late 19th century America, notably at Bennington, Vermont.

Rosso Antico

Wedgwood's name for his dry-bodied red stoneware, after the Elers's developments.

Rundlet

A small barrel or flask. The Bristol Pottery is recognized for its small barrel-shaped flasks underglaze painted by William Fifield in the first quarter of the 19th century.

Saggar

A large refractory (heat resistant ceramic material) cylindrical vessel into which were place finished pots for firing in huge kilns within towering brick bottle ovens. Hundreds of saggars were stacked for a single firing. By segregating a pottery's production this way, much of the output was protected from damage by blow-outs or other kiln occurances. Depending on the size and shape of the pots being fired, a saggar could hold several or hundreds of pots.

Salt Glaze

Pottery glazed by the salt vapor created by throwing crushed rock salt into the kiln during the firing process. American cobalt-decorated stoneware was salt-glazed and exhibits the characteristic "orange peel" texture of the surface. British potters used this process in the 18th century on highly-detailed, thin bodied white stoneware with a much more finely textured surface, found both plain and polychromed.

Scratch Blue

A decorative technique found on 18th century white salt glazed stoneware vessels whereby the surface of the pot was scratched or incised in a decorative, usually floral, pattern. Cobalt oxide was then rubbed into the incised lines with any excess wiped away. The result is a that of thinly drawn blue linear decoration on the surface. This is extraordinarily thin-bodied delicate ware.

Scroddled

An American 20th century term describing the visual effect of marbling or agate ware. Its indistinct meaning makes its use problematic.

Sgraffito

A decorative technique wherein slip coatings were incised to expose other slip colors or the body itself.

Slip

Liquified clay, worked through lawns (screens) of successive fineness to eliminate textural impurities. Used in molds to provide a release coating for ease in removing molded forms, its better knon use is as surface decoration. Colored with natural earth stains such as cobalt for blue, manganese for black, brown, and purple, and iron oxide for brick red, slip was either trailed onto the surface or the object was dipped into the slip.

Soft Paste

A variation of true hard-paste porcelain, fired at a lower temperature and with different ingredients but producing a superficially similar end product. This term has, for years, been misused by collectors and dealers to describe creamware and pearlware.

Spill Vase/Spill Holder

Spills were splinters of wood or thinly-rolled pieces of paper used in the manner of kitchen matches--set ablaze at one end to light candles, pipes, etc. Spill vases were generally sold in pairs and might have been found on a fireplace mantel.

Spout

The outlet through which a vessel's contents are poured. Technically, a spout is tubular. you'll see them on tea and coffeepots. Curved ones are often called gooseneck, while straight tapered ones are called canon spouts. The Leeds Pottery Pattern Book at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London shows line engravings of two coffeepots side by side. One has the expected curved spout and is labeled spout. The other has a V-form pouring lip and is labeled snip.

Sprigging

Relief ornamentation. Clay is pressed into molds, removed, and applied by hand either to the leather hard body or to bisque fired wares.

Stirrup Cup

A small drinking cup in the form of fox heads, hands, etc. shaped in such a way as to prevent its being set down until drained, as it has no foot. Supposedly used for departing drinks before setting off on the hunt.

Stone China

A further development upon Mason's ironstone, having desirable properties of durability, thermal efficiency, and workability, developed by the firm of Josiah Spode.

Stoneware

A vitreous high-fired pottery. The body can be found in white, gray, brown, red, and buff. Some 18th century stonewares exhibit exceedingly thin, lightweight bodies, while others are thick and rugged.

Tea Bowl

A handleless drinking cup, usually intended to be paired with a saucer. English tea bowls follow Chinese forms and can generally be considered of 18th century origin, predating teacups with handles, but there is absolutely nothing concrete about this assumption.

Tea Canister

At the very important 1986 colloquium on creamware and pearlware at the University of Keele in Staffordshire, a most learned, serious, and amusing debate took place on the subject of terminology regarding this type of vessel. Should a ceramic container of tea leaves be called a tea caddy or a tea canister? The result, though not unanimous, was that a tea caddy was a piece of furniture and therefore an inappropriate term for a ceramic object.

Terminals

The ends of handles, sometimes merely cut square, other times finely molded with brass dies into exquisite foliate sculptural forms.

Terra de Pipa

18th Century Spanish term for creamware.

The Potteries

The geographic region of England's Staffordshire now comprising the city of Stoke-on-Trent. Prior to 1910, this was made up of six towns, Hanley, Tunstall, Burslem, Fenton, Longton, and Stoke. This compact area was home to the largest concentration of potworks in England and remains so today.

Thermal Shock

The effect on early ceramics of sudden temperature change. Fill an 18th century teapot with boiling water without warming it, and it will crack. Generally, the various earthen components of a pot expanded or contracted at different rates of speed when subjected to sudden thermal change. The results can sometimes be seen on tavern mugs as well, owing to the popularity of hot mulled cider, made hot by the sudden submersion of a red-hot poker in the drink.

Tin Glaze

Found most commonly on early Italian Maiolica and so caled delft wares (a capital D would indicate an origin from the Dutch city of Delft). English delft was produced at Norwich, London (Lambeth and Southwark), Bristol, Liverpool, Brislington, and Wincanton. Tin glaze is opaque and white, obscuring the body bolor, usually gray. The glaze was brittle with the result that perfect pieces of delft are very rarely found. Also sometimes referred to as tin-enameled.

Tortoiseshell Ware

In imitation of true tortoiseshell, this is refined white bodied earthenware either dusted or splashed with metallic oxides onto the greenware before glazing or onto the wet glaze before firing. On firing, the oxides melt into the glaze and often flow in the largely unplanned and uncontrolled sequence. Nearly always attributed to Thomas Whieldon, these wares were commercially popular and fashionable and, consequently were made throughout Staffordshire, Yorkshire, east-coast Scotland, and other potting centers and can only rarely be attributed to specific makers, usually based on archaeological findings at the pottery sites. Also called clouded wares.

Transfer Printing

Realistic scenes--as on historical blue pottery--etched into a copper plate, inked, transferred onto delicate tissue paper, then likewise transferred onto the pot to be fired, in effect, a version of offset printing. Complex shapes like teapots will sometimes show fold lines where, in order to wrap the tissue transfer into contact with the contour of the object, creases in the tissue resulted.

Twiffler

A term used in the late 18th and early 19th centuries for a small plate, 6" to 8" in diameter.

Veilleuse

A cylindrical apparatus for keeeping food or drink warm. The base, open on one side, accepted the burner, much like present-day Sterno. Above it sat, alternately, whichever en suite vessel was required. many of these are highly decorative. The name deries from the French veiller--to keep a night vigil.

Vent

The small circular hole in the cover of a tea or coffeepot. Many believe the function of the vent is to release steam. In fact, it functions as an air inlet when liquid is being poured. Try pouring tea from a teapot with the vent blocked to see why it's necessary.

Vitreous

Having very low porosity, either due to body compostion or glaze.

Waster

Discarded ware at the pottery, either due to breakage, misshaphing, or other faults.

Wedgwood

Too often misspelled, the firm operating today as part of the Waterford group traces its direct heritage to Josiah Wedgwood, himself the son of a potter. He is generally regarded as the great innovator of British pottery production. The work of Josiah, the partnership of Wedgwood & Bentley, and the successor company is highly prized by collectors and covers a broad scope, well beyond the commonly thought of blue and white jasperware. Countless books on Wedgwood have been produced, largely owing to the extensive surviving correspondence and receipt books held in the Wedgwood Archives at the Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston and the University of Keele, both in Staffordshire.

Wedgwood & Co.

The mark of Ralph Wedgwood, Josiah's nephew, who worked in the late 18th century in Burslem and, briefly, at the Ferybridge Pottery in south Yorkshire.