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Josiah Spode






A Plated Article
by
CHARLES DICKENS
With an Introductory Account of the Historical
Spode-Copeland China Works to which it refers
W.T. COPELAND & SONS (late Spode & Copelandy
STOKE-UPON-TRENT








Spode
T      HE  home   beautiful began    with  pottery.
Natural beauty always existed, but it was
the potter who first expressed     man's appreciation of it by trying to give grace of form and
charm of colour to the rude vessels used in the home
life of primitive days. The jars in which primeval
man stored his grain for the winter months were
moulded by his bare hands on a boulder, rudely
decorated, and dried in the sun. It was not long,
however, before man discovered the magic power
that fire has of transforming the soft clay into a hard
substance; the potter's wheel was also the chief outcome of his experiments. Thus the kiln and the
wheel were both known to all ancient civilizations,
and were the essential factors in the making of pottery from the earliest times to the present day.
Although English pottery did not achieve any importance until the eighteenth century, this country
can congratulate itself on possessing a race of potters
unsurpassed in the world. This is largely due to the
craft having its chief centre in one district-the
Staffordshire Potteries - where generations have
learnt the art from father to son, and thus carried
on the traditions of their founders: Elers, Wheildon,
Wedgwood, and Spode.
Josiah Spode's name springs into fame in the year
1770, when, having successfully mastered the art of
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pottery making, Spode founded the factory which
still bears his name coupled to that of Copeland.
The fine quality of his productions made people
quickly realize that the talents of Elers and Wheildon
had found an exponent in Spode, and specimens of
his work were immediately in great demand. Spode's
fame was enhanced by his perfecting the process of
transfer printing. This method of printing from
copper engravings had already been in use for some
fifteen or twenty years, but designs were confined to
small plates, usually of pastoral scenes. Spode's
creative mind saw wider possibilities, and by a clever
adaptation of this process the world is indebted to
him for those exquisite blue printed designs which
are to-day an adornment to every home. John Ward
records in his History of Stoke, published in 1843:
"The juncture at which he [Josiah Spode] entered
cc.. was of all others the most favourable for suc"cessful enterprise in a particular branch of trade:
"c that of Blue Printed ware, which proved a mine of
"wealth to many potters of the last age, though dis"regarded by the great Josiah Wedgwood. In this
"line of business the Spodes attained acknowledged
"cc pre-eminence in the London market."
Josiah  Spode's eldest son, also called Josiah,
entered the business and became as famous as his
father. To him must be given the credit of turning
the manufacture of porcelain into a commercial success. Porcelain had been made at Chelsea, Bow, and.4




ITALIAN
Blue Printed Ware produced by Spode in
1775, illustrating Roman ruins, and executed
by celebrated engravers.








Worcester as early as 1750, but the paste thus manufactured was of a soft nature, which, when fired, was
very liable to become distorted. By his introduction
of a mixture of felspar and bone ash into the porcelain Spode made the latter a practical success,
and the Stoke potteries thus became the centre of
this branch of manufacture, a position which they
still maintain.
The porcelain made by Spode's method was of a
hard and more durable nature, and its pure whiteness so enhanced the beauty of any decoration that
flowers painted on it equalled in appearance the
famous work of Billingsley.
Spode, however, did not limit himself to the making
of porcelain: in the year I805 he perfected his Stone
China, or Ironstone China. Whilst being of a charming greyish tint resembling Chinese porcelain, this
Stone China was also of a harder nature. With polychrome decoration in the Chinese style, and enriched
with gold, it became most popular both at home and
on the Continent, being especially prized on account
of its durability. We hear that in 1817 Queen
Charlotte went specially to Stoke to see this new
invention.
It is not perhaps generally known that Spode was
equally clever in the designing of pottery in the Japan
style, though credit for this is more often given to the
factory at Derby. William Burton, however, writes
that " as much of this decoration [Japan style] was
"produced at Stoke as at Derby," and that c"Spode's
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productions were superior to those of Bloor's Derby'
factory in their solid gilding and workmanship."
Of Spode the second, John Ward also records that
" few men possessed a greater share of mwhat is
usually called public spirit." He actively promoted
the formation of a troop of volunteer cavalry in the
Potteries in 1798, of which he took the command as
captain.
In the year 1777 Spode had taken into partnership
Mr. William Copeland, himself a native of Stoke,
who was engaged in business in London trading in
tea with the East. It was mutually agreed that the
making of teapots and cups' and saucers should be
associated with tea, for it is a well-known fact that
only a China teapot can bring out the true flavouring
of tea. The name of the firm became later Spode and
Copeland. This partnership. proved so successful
that William Copeland- put his only son., also called
William, into the business. The factory increased
and became the largest and most affluent one in the
Potteries. It is recorded by Ward that they employed even in those days more than 8oo people.
and that the buildings covered over eight acres of
ground, the factory of to-day still existing on its
original site.
In 1838 (the second Josiah Spode having died six
years previously) William Taylor Copeland, afterwards Lord Mayor of London and M.P. for Stoke,
purchased the entire interest from the trustees of
Spode. To this second William Copeland we owe,6




one of the most important advances in porcelainmaking during the nineteenth century, i.e. the production of Parian. Parian is a biscuit porcelain
somewhat resembling the material which the Derby
factory had used for their famous Biscuit figures, the
recipe at that time having been lost. The "new"
recipe, while not so waxy-looking as the old, resembled a fine statuary marble. It became the rage,
and enormous quantities of statuettes, busts, and
ornamental pieces were produced, many from models
designed by John Gibson, R.A., and J. H. Foley, R.A.
William Taylor Copeland was followed by his son,
Richard Pirrie Copeland, who carried on the sole
management of the firm until 1913, when he was in
turn succeeded by his two sons, Ronald and Gresham
Copeland. The present owners firmly believe in the
good taste of the public, and aim at producing nothing but the very best in quality, design, and colour.
Beautiful and artistic objects are being made, with a
richness of design and colouring which should please
the most fastidious. Those who care for antiquity
will delight in the old-world patterns reproduced, for
the firm still have the original designs and moulds
made by Spode himself. Those who seek something
more in harmony with modern conditions will also
find a never-ending stock of original designs and new
shapes.
The call to-day is for "progress ": it is with the
desire that noble inspirations and beauty may combine with utility that W. T. Copeland & Sons send


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their Spode ware out into the world. Many looking
on the beautiful articles manufactured will marvel at
the skill, patience, and enterprise that have made it
possible for human hands to produce such things.
The answer is that tradition still remains. Pride of
workmanship, and the desire to make-for the
benefit of mankind-beautiful specimens of the
potter's art, inspire the workpeople to-day as they
did in the days of the Spodes.
The present King and Queen of England visited
the Spode-Copeland works in 1913, and many
illustrious persons have been there before them. The
great Charles Dickens himself passed that way, and
records his impressions in the following quaint story.


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A Plated A rticle*
By CHARLES DICKENS
PUTTING up for the night in one of the
chiefest towns of Staffordshire, I find it to be
by no means a lively town.
I have paced the streets and stared at the houses,
and am come back to the blank bow Window of the
Dodo; and the town clocks strike seven. I have
my dinner and the waiter clears the table, leaves me
by the fire with my pint decanter., and a little thin
funnel-shaped wine-glass and a plate of pale biscuits
-in themselves engendering desperation.
No book, no newspaper!
What am I to do? To burn the biscuits will be
but a fleeting joy; still, it is a temporary relief, and
here they go on the fire! Shall I break the plate?
First, let me look at the back and see who made it:
COP ELAND.
Copeland! Stop a moment. Was it yesterday I
visited Copeland's works and saw them making
plates? In the confusion of travelling about it might
*Published in " Household Words " in 18527.
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be yesterday or it might be yesterday month; but I
think -it was yesterday. I. appeal to t-he plate. The
plate says, decidedly, yesterday.
Don't you remember (says the plate) how you
steamed away yesterday morning, in the bright sun
and the east wind, along the valley of the sparkling
Trent?
And don't you remember (says the plate) how you
alighted at Stoke-a picturesque heap of houses,
kilns, smoke, wharves, canals, and river lying (as
was most appropriate) in a basin-and how, after
climbing up the sides of the basin to look at the
prospect, you trundled down again at a walking-.
match pace, and straight proceeded to my father'sCOP ELAN D ' s-where the whole of my family, high
and low, rich and poor, are turned out upon the
world from our nursery and seminary, covering some
fourteen acres of ground? And don't you remember
what we spring from-heaps of lumps of clay,
partially -prepared and cleaned in Devonshire and
Dorsetshire, whence said clay principally comesand hls of flint, without which we should want our
ringing sound and should never be musical? And
as to the flint, don't you recollect that it is first burnt
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in kilns, and is then laid under the four iron feet of a
demon slave, subject to violent stamping fits, who,
when they come on, stamps away insanely with his
four iron legs, and would crush all the flint in the
Isle of Thanet to powder without leaving off? And
as to the clay, don't you recollect how it is put into
mills, or teazers, and is sliced, and dug, and cut
at, by endless knives, clogged and sticky, but
persistent-and is pressed    out of that machine
through a square trough, whose form      it takesand is cut off in square lumps and thrown into
a vat, and there mixed with water and beaten to
a pulp by paddle-wheels-and is then run into a
rough house, all rugged beams and ladders splashed
with white-where it passes through no end of
machinery-moved sieves all splashed with white,
arranged in an ascending scale of fineness (some so
fine that three hundred silk threads cross each other
in a single square inch of their surface), and all in a
violent state of ague, with their teeth for ever chattering and their bodies for ever shivering? And as to the
flint again, isn't it mashed and mollified and troubled
and soothed, exactly as rags are in a paper-mill, until
it is reduced to a pap so fine that it contains no atom
of" grit " perceptible to the nicest taste? And as to
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the flint and the clay together, are they not, after all
this, mixed in the proportion of five of clay to one of
flint; and isn't the compound-known as " slip "run into oblong troughs, where its superfluous
moisture may evaporate;* and, finally, isn't it slapped
and banged and beaten and patted and kneaded and
wedged and knocked about like butter, until it be-.
comes a beautiful grey dough ready for the potter's
use?
In regard to the potter, popularly so called (says
the plate), you don't mean to say you have forgotten
that a workman called a Thrower is the man under
whose hand this grey dough takes the shape of the
simpler household vessels as quickly as the eye can
follow? You don't mean to say you cannot call him
up before you, sitting, with his attendant woman,
at his- potter's wheel-a disc about the size of a dinner
plate, revolving on two drums slowly or quickly, as he
wills-who made you a complete breakfast set for a
bachelor, as a good-humoured little off-hand joke?
You remember how he took up as much dough as he
wanted, and, throwing it on his wheel, in a moment
* Superseded by the hydraulic press invented by Messrs.
Needham & Kite, and first used and perfected by the late
Alderman Copeland in 1856; again superseded in 1922 by latest
electrical generator and installation.
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fashioned it into a teacup-caught up more clay and
made a saucer-a larger dab and whirled it into a teapot-winked at a smaller dab and converted it into
the lid of the teapot, accurately fitting by the measurement of his eye alone-coaxed a middle-sized dab
for two seconds, broke it, turned it over at the rim,
and made a milk-pot-laughed, and turned out a
slop-basin-coughed, and provided for the sugar?
Neither, I think, are you oblivious of the newer mode
of making various articles, but especially basins, according to which improvement a mould revolves instead of a disc? For you must remember (says the
plate) how you saw the mould of a little basin spinnmg round and round, and how the workman
smoothed and pressed a handful of dough upon it,
and how with an- instrument called a profile (a piece
of wood representing the profile of a basin's foot) he
cleverly scraped and carved the ring which makes.the
base of any such basin, and then took the basin off
the lathe like a doughey skull-cap to be dried, and
afterwards (in what is called a "green" state) to be put
into a second lathe, there to be finished and burnished
with a steel burnisher? And as to moulding in
general (says the plate), it can't be necessary for me
to remind you that all ornamental articles, and indeed
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all articles not quite circular, are made in moulds?
For you must remember how you saw the vegetable
dishes, for example, being made in moulds; and how
the handles of teacups, and the spouts of teapots, and
the feet of tureens, and so forth, are all made in little
separate moulds, and are each stuck on to the body
corporate of which it is destined to form a part, with
a stuff called " slip," as quickly as you can recollect
it?
Further, you learnt-you know you did-in the
same visit, how the beautiful sculptures in the delicate new material called Parian are all constructed
in moulds; how into that material animal bones
are ground up, because the phosphate of lime contained in bones makes it translucent; how everything is moulded, before going into the fire, onefourth larger than it is intended to come out of the
fire, because it shrinks in that proportion in the intense heat; how, when a figure shrinks unequally, it
is spoiled-emerging from the furnace a mis-shaped
birth: a big head and a little body, or a little head
and a big body, or a Quasimodo with long arms and
short legs, or a Miss Biffin with neither legs nor arms
worth mentioning!
And as to the Kilns, in which the firing takes place,
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and in which some of the more precious articles are
burnt repeatedly, in various stages of their process
towards completion-as to the Kilns (says the plate,
warming with the recollection), if you don't remember THEM with a horrible interest, what did you ever
go to Copeland's for? When you stood inside of one
of those inverted bowls of a Pre-Adamite tobacco
pipe, looking up at the blue sky through the open top
far off, as you might have looked up from a well sunk
under the centre of the pavement of the Pantheon at
Rome, had you the least idea where you were? No
(says the plate), of course not! And when you found
that each of those pillars was a pile of ingeniously
made vessels of coarse clay-called Saggars-looking,
when separate, like raised-pies for the table of the
mighty Giant Blunderbore and now all full of various
articles of pottery ranged in them in baking order,
the bottom of each vessel serving for the cover of the
one below, and the whole Kiln rapidly filling with
these, tier upon tier, until the last workman should
have barely room to crawl out before the closing of
the jagged aperture in the wall, and the kindling of
the gradual fire; did you not stand amazed to think
that all the year round these dread chambers are
heating, white hot-and cooling-and filling-and


i5


(c




emptying-and being bricked up-and broken open
-humanly speaking, for ever and ever? To be sure
you did!1 And standing in one of those Kilns nearly
fulfl, and seeing a free crow shoot across the aperture
a-top, and learning how the fire would wax hotter and
hotter, by slow degrees, and would cool similarly,
through a space of from forty to sixty hours, did no
remembrance of the days when human clay was
burnt oppress you? Yes, I think so! I suspect that
some fancy of a fiery haze and a shortening breath,
and a growing heat, and a gasping prayer; and a
figure in black interposing between you and the sky
(as figures in black are very apt to do), and looking
down, before it grew too hot to look and live, upon
the Heretic in his edifying agonyý-I say I suspect
(says the plate) that some such fancy was pretty
strong upon you When you went out into the air,
and blessed God for the bright spring day and the
degenerate times!
After that I needn't remind you what a relief it was
to see the simplest process of ornamenting this
" biscuit " (as it is called when baked) with brown
circles and blue trees-converting it into the common crockery-ware that is exported to Africa, and
used in cottages at home. For (says the plate) I -am
16




well persuaded that you bear in mind how those
particular jugs and mugs were once more set upon a
lathe and put in motion; and how a man blew the
brown colour (having a strong natural affinity with
the material in that condition) on them from a blowpipe as they twirled; and how his daughter, with a
common brush, dropped blotches of blue upon them
in the right places; and how, tilting the blotches upside down, she made them run into rude images of
trees, and there an end.
And didn't you see (says the plate) planted upon
my own brother that astounding blue willow, with
knobbed and gnarled trunk and foliage of blue
ostrich feathers, which gives our family the title of
"willow pattern"? And didn't you observe, transferred upon him at the same time, that blue bridge
which spans nothing, growing out from the roots of
the willow; and the three blue Chinese going over it
into a blue temple, together with the rest of that
amusing blue landscape which has, in deference to
our revered ancestors of the Cerulean Empire, and in
defiance of every known law of perspective, adorned
millions of our family ever since the days of platters?
Didn't you inspect the copper-plate on which my
pattern was deeply engraved? Didn't you perceive
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an impression of it taken in cobalt colour at a cylindrical press, upon a leaf of thin paper, streaming from
a plunge-bath of soap and water? Wasn't the paper
impression daintily spread by a light-fingered damsel
(you know you admired her!) over the surface of
the plate, and the back of the paper rubbed prodigiously hard-with a long tight roll of flannel, tied up
like a round of hung beef-without so much as ruffling
the paper, wet as it was? Then (says the plate), was
not the Paper washed away with a sponge, and didn't
there appear, set off upon the plate, this identical
piece of Pre-Raphaelite blue distemper which you
now behold? Not to be denied! I had seen all thisand more.. I had been shown, at Copeland's, patterns
of beautiful design, in faultless perspective, which are
causing the ugly old willow to wither out of public
favour; and which, being quite as cheap., insinuate
good wholesome natural art into the humblest households. When Mr. and Mrs. Sprat have " licked the
platter clean " they can-thanks to modern artists,
and clay-feast their intellectual tastes upon excellent delineations of natural objects.
This reflection prompts me to transfer my attention from the blue plate to the forlorn but cheerfully
painted vase on the sideboard. And surely (says the
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MECKLENBURG
Reproduction in China of original "Chelsea" design.
Complete Service of this was given, in Copeland China,
by the late King Edward VII. to the King of Spain on
his marriage.








plate) you have not forgotten how the outlines of such
groups of flowers as you see there are printed, just
as I was printed, and are afterwards shaded and filled
in with metallic colours by women and girls? As to
the aristocracy of our order, made of the finer clayporcelain peers and peeresses; the slabs, and panels,
and table tops, and tazze; the endless nobility and
gentry of dessert, breakfast, and tea services; the
gemmed perfume bottles and scarlet-and-gold salvers
-you saw that they were painted by artists, with
metallic colours laid on with camel-hair pencils, and
afterwards burnt in.
And talking of burning in (says the plate), didn't
you find that every subject, from the willow pattern
to the landscape after Turner-having been framed
upon clay or porcelain biscuit-has to be glazed?
Of course, you saw the glaze-composed of various
vitreous materials-laid over every article. We had
in my time-and I suppose it is the same nowfourteen hours' firing to fix the glaze and make it
"run" all over us equally, so as to put a good shiny
and unscratchable surface upon us; and upon this
you saw some of the finest steel engravings transferred, to be fixed by a subsequent firing in the
"hard "kiln-didn't you? Why, of course you did!
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Of course I did. So, listening to the plate's reminders, and musing upon them, I got through the
evening after all, and went to bed. I made but one
sleep of it-for which I have no doubt I am also indebted to the plate-and left the lonely Dodo in the
morning, quite at peace with it.


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Printed in England at the Cloister Press
Heaton Mersey    *   near Manchester