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Pottery in Bradwell:
After the death of Ralph Sneyd his widow Francis
leased Bradwell Hall to John Philip Elers.
John Philip Elers and his brother David Elers came
to England from Holland in the train of William of Orange in 1688
and settled at Fulham in London where they made brown stoneware,
mugs and red tea pots. They may have been attracted to Bradwell by
the quality of the red clay in the vicinity of the house.
Robert Plot in The Natural History of
Staffordshire (1686) refers to the peculiar quality of local clays
and stone "call'd Glum-metall, about Bradwall in the Morelands,
which as I was told by the ingenious Ralph Sneyd Esq; though as hard
to digg as any rock; yet the Air, rains, and frosts, will mollify it
so; that it will run as it were a natural Lime, and no question
would they use it, must be good for land."
According to Simeon Shaw's History of the
Staffordshire Potteries (1829), the brothers made red porcelain
unglazed tea pots at Bradwell and also black porcelain, or Egyptian
ware, by adding manganese which was sold at a price of twelve to
twenty four shillings.
"The Eler brothers:
In 1688 two brothers, named Eler or Elers, potters by trade,
followed the Prince of Orange from their native home in Holland to
England; and two years later seem to have settled at Bradwell and
Dimsdale, two very secluded situations, far from the turnpike road,
and scarcely discernible from Burslem or Red Hill.
Here the two
Dutchmen erected kilns, and commenced the manufacture of fine red
ware, in imitation of oriental red porcelain, from a vein of clay,
which, by some means not stated, they had discovered existed at this
spot. They were evidently men of much skill and taste, and produced
much beautiful work.
It seems that the brothers Elers took
remarkable precautions to prevent their secret being discovered.
They employed an idiot to turn the thrower's wheel, and only the
most ignorant of workmen. By means of a complicated system of
signals, they were enabled to receive warning of the approach of any
intruder to their mysterious factory. Yet all the precautions of the
secreted Dutchmen did not prevent their process from being
discovered, and their secret methods soon came into general use in
the district, and much improved the productions of the
neighbourhood. In disgust the Elers departed to London, where they
set up a factory at Chelsea."
1893 Potteries advertising and
trade journal
the first use of salt glaze:
"....that the process of glazing
with salt first was practised by two ingenious foreigners, of the
name of Elers, who set up a small Potwork at Bradwell, within two
miles of Burslem; from whence the people flocked in astonishment to
see the immense volumes of smoke which rose from the Dutchmen's
ovens*.
* Aikin's
Manchester, p.526.
The same
individuals also introduced and improved kind of unglazed red ware,
of a delicate sort, resembling that called Samian, for which
some of the clays in the vicinity were suitable; but they did not
long continue their operations in Staffordshire; being eyed with the
utmost jealousy and inquisitiveness, by the native Potters; and they
removed the seat of their manufacture to the neighbourhood of
London.
The
story of the Red China Teapot
With
the first shipment of tea to be imported by the East India Company
in 1669 came £10 worth of a hard red teaware then unknown in
England, the vitrified red stoneware of Yixing which had excellent
heat-preserving properties and which the Chinese themselves
preferred for tea making.
Imports rapidly
increased, to the point where John Dwight of Fulham sought out
suitable iron-rich Staffordshire clays and included 'opacous redd
and darke coloured Porcellane' in his second stoneware patent of
1684. Excavations at the Fulham Pottery, however, have proved that
manufacture never progressed much beyond the experimental stage.
1688 -
Two brothers named Eler (or Elers),
potters by trade, followed the Prince of Orange from Holland to
England; two years later they had settled at Bradwell and Dimsdale.
Here the two Dutchmen erected kilns and commenced production of fine
red ware. At
this point the brothers John Philip and David Elers came to London
from Holland, where successful copies of Yixing teapots were already
being made at Delft. Ignoring Dwight's patent, in 1690 they isolated
an excellent seam of red-firing stoneware clay with good casting
properties at Bradwell Wood in Staffordshire, and immediately set
about adapting their silversmithing skills to making slip-cast
lathe-turned red stoneware.
Since sales of
these extremely expensive pots were handled in London, it was not
long before Dwight found out and forced them to come to an agreement
with him. But despite a market hungry for red stoneware teapots, the
Elers' terror of employing local potters and their consequent highly
inefficient methods of manufacture (which did not include the
potter's wheel) ensured that the business would founder. Leaving
Staffordshire in 1698, they were declared bankrupt in 1700.
Samuel Hollins:
a maker of fine red-ware tea- pots,
etc.[1784-1873] (from the clay at Bradwell previously worked by the
brothers Elers) at Shelton, was the son of Mr. Hollins of the Upper
Green, Hanley. He was an excellent practical potter who made many
improvements in his art.
He was afterwards one of the partners of the New Hall China Works.
His successors in the Hollins manufactory were his sons, trading as
Messrs. T. & J. Hollins during the 1795 – 1820 period.
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