13 - BOTTLE: John Dwight, Fulham, c. 1689–94

Summary

Salt-glazed stoneware with marbled bands, thrown, turned and decorated with applied reliefs: overlapping busts of William III and Mary II, a flying bird, two Merry Andrews (clowns), a winged cherub's head, a crane and a medallion with initial C amongst foliage. Height 17 cm. C.1194–1928.

Glass bottles made in England before about 1650 were not very strong and during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries hundreds of thousands of sturdy salt-glazed stoneware bottles were imported from the Rhineland to serve as containers for wine and other liquids, such as perfumed waters. Several attempts were made to produce them here, for example, at Woolwich about 1660, but these ventures were short lived. The first person to master the technique of salt-glazing and to continue successfully for a long period was John Dwight (c. 1633/6–1703). During the late 1660s Dwight, a lawyer by profession, was Registrar of the diocese of Chester and conducted experiments to produce stoneware at Wigan. In 1671/2 he moved to Fulham and in April 1672 was granted a patent for making ‘China and Persian ware’ and also ‘the Stone Ware vulgarly called Collogne Ware’. In 1684 a renewal of the patent included various other types, among them ‘marbled Porcellane Vessels’ but there is no evidence that the experimental porcelain made by Dwight in the 1670s was produced commercially.

The ‘sprigs’ on this bottle were made with brass stamps, some of which were found at the Fulham pottery in the 1860s and were later acquired by British Museum. The initials AR on one of them probably stand for the medallist Reinier or Regnier Arondeux (c. 1655–1727).