North Midlands-Type Slipware a.k.a. Staffordshire Slipware (1660-1775) A clear lead glazed thin, buff-bodied earthenware decorated with white and dark slips that are trailed, combed, feathered, or marbled.

Material – Earthenware

Place of Origin – North Midlands region, England

 

slip – As a decoration, a slip is potters clay that is mixed with water and strained to form a smooth, runny liquid mixture that is applied to a vessels surface as a wash or as trailed lines and dots.

Multiple potteries throughout the North Midlands region of England produced slipwares. The Staffordshire potteries are the most well-known producers and the popularity of their ceramics allowed their businesses to grow and expand. The Staffordshire potters would ultimately dominate the ceramic market and their later refined ceramics resulted in them becoming one of the largest ceramic-producing areas in the world.[i] It is for this reason that the North Midlands slipwares are often referred to as Staffordshire slipwares, but we often cannot identify the exact pottery so it is safer to refer to them by their broad geographical region where these wares were produced.

Slipwares have a light buff-colored paste and vessels are either wheel-thrown or press molded. Most vessels were wheel-thrown.[ii] Flatwares could be press molded which helped reduce labor costs for potteries because the process didn’t require skilled wheel potters and it was easier to produce more vessels.[iii] Many of the molds had incised, or intaglio, designs. These created relief designs that were filled in and embellished with slip decorations.[iv]

Both white clay and dark colored, iron oxide or manganese clay slips are applied as decoration.[v] The clear lead glaze over a white slip wash produces a yellow-colored ware. The clear lead glaze over a red or dark slip wash produces a brown-colored ware. Potters would use a mixture of these two contrasting slip colors to create a variety of decorative patterns. Slips applied as a wash were applied by brushing or pouring or the entire vessel was dipped into a large container of slip. Smaller more fine sections of slip were added using a small pouring tube or hollow quill.[vi] It is more common that the white slip is applied as a wash that allows the darker slip to be applied as a decorative element in the foreground. Reverse decorated wares have a lighter colored slip decoration applied to a dark background slip wash.

The three main slip decoration techniques seen on North Midlands slipwares are described below:

• Trailed – dots or lines of slip. Dots are most common on hollow ware vessels, especially cups.
• Combed – created by dragging a pointed tool perpendicularly through bands of wet trailed slip creating smudged wavy lines.
• Feathered – a term used to distinguish finely and complicated combed slips.
• Marbled – A trailed slip is applied to a wet slip wash of contrasting color. While still wet, the vessel is tilted, jostled, or twisted causing the contrasting slips to swirl or marble together into intricate patterns.

Common utilitarian and ornamental vessel forms include cups, mugs, plates, bowls, drug jars, teapots, jugs, baking dishes, and candlesticks. Flatwares commonly have a crenelated impressed rim that looks similar to a crimped piecrust. The textured rim allowed for air flow between stacked vessels during firing.[vii] Crenelated rims also appear on earthenware vessels, referred to as Colonowares, that were produced locally by enslaved African potters, reflecting how the North Midlands-type slipwares influenced these potters and their perspective consumers – it is also possible that the textured rims served a similar functional role during production. Dotted trailed slips are most common on cups, mugs, and other hollow wares.

During the early eighteenth century the growing demand for refined tea and table wares for the middle class made the production of utilitarian wares less profitable. By 1720 the demand for slipwares began to wane and many of the larger Staffordshire factories began to specialize in more refined wares.[viii] With the onset of the American Revolutionary War, American consumers boycott and protest British interference and trade and slipwares fall out of favor with American consumers and they stop being imported into American markets.

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[i] David Barker, ‘“The Usual Classes of Useful Articles”: Staffordshire Ceramics Reconsidered’. In Ceramics in America, edited by Robert Hunter (Chipstone Foundation, Milwaukee, WI, 1991), 73-77; Ronald G. Cooper, English Slipware Dishes 1650-1850 (Transatlantic Arts Inc., New York, NY, 1968), 35,38.

[ii] David Barker and Steve Crompton, Slipware in the Collections of the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery (A&C Black Publishers Limited, London, UK 2007), 12.

[iii] Cooper, English Slipware Dishes, 99; Leslie B. Grigsby, English Slip Decorated Earthenware at Williamsburg (The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Williamsburg, VA, 1993), 10.

[iv] David Barker, Slipware (Shire Publications, Ltd., 2010), 3-6; Barker and Crompton, Slipware in the Collections, 13; Cooper, English Slipware Dishes, 99-100; Jo Draper, Post-Medieval Pottery 1650-1800 (Shire Publications Ltd, Buckinghamshire, UK, 2001), 20; Grigsby, English Slip-Decorated Earthenware, 39-46.

[v] Ivor Noel Hume, A Guide to Artifacts of Colonial America (Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1991), 134.

[vi] Cooper, English Slipware Dishes, 12; Grigsby, English Slip Decorated Earthenware, 16-17.

[vii] Barker and Crompton, Slipware in the Collection, 14; Grigsby, English Slip-Decorated Earthenware, 15.

[viii] Barker, Slipware, 18; Barker and Crompton, Slipware in the Collection, 14-15; Cooper, English Slipware Dishes, 21-22.