Creamware

Creamware is a cream-coloured, refined earthenware with a lead glaze over a pale body. It was created around 1740 by the potters of Staffordshire, England, and became a popular domestic ware until the 1840s.

Creamware is the name given to a type of earthenware pottery which is made from white clays from Dorset and Devonshire combined with an amount of calcined flint. This body is the same as that used for salt-glazed stoneware, but it is fired to a lower temperature (around 800 °C as opposed to 1,100 to 1,200 °C) and glazed with lead to form a cream-coloured earthenware. The white clays ensured a fine body and the addition of flint improved its resistance to thermal shock during firing, whilst flint added to the glaze helped prevent crazing.

Creamware was first produced some time before 1740. Originally lead powder or galena, mixed with a certain amount of ground calcined flint, was dusted on the ware, which was then given its one and only firing. This early method was unsatisfactory because lead powder produced poisoning among the potters and the grinding of flint stones caused a disease known as potter's rot.

Around 1740 a fluid glaze in which the ingredients were mixed and ground in water was invented, possibly by Enoch Booth of Tunstall, Staffordshire, according to one early historian, although this is disputed. The method involved first firing the ware to a biscuit state, and then glazing and re-firing it.

Foremost of the pioneers of creamware in the Staffordshire Potteries was Thomas Whieldon. Although he has become popularly associated almost exclusively with tortoiseshell creamware, in fact he produced a wide variety of creamware. He first mentions ‘Cream Colour’ in 1749.

The young Josiah Wedgwood was in partnership with Thomas Whieldon from 1754 to 1759 and after Wedgwood had left to set up independently at Ivy House, he immediately directed his efforts to the development of creamware.

Wedgwood rebelled against the use of coloured glazes, declaring as early as 1766 that he was clearing his warehouse of coloured ware as he was ‘heartily sick of the commodity’.

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