14 - MUG: David and John Phillip Elers, probably Bradwell Wood, Staffordshire, c. 1691–8

Summary

Red dry-bodied stoneware, with turned bands and mould-applied decoration of chrysanthemum sprays, three snails and a Merry Andrew. Height 10.1 cm. C.454–1928.

Red stoneware originated in China and by about 1670 it was being imported from Yixing by the Dutch. Teapots were especially prized because of their heat-retaining properties, and were imitated at Delft from the early 1670s. The first person to make red stoneware in England was probably John Dwight, whose patent of 1684 included ‘opacous- redd and darke coloured Porcellane or China’. Some fragments of redware were found during excavations at the Fulham pottery, but it is not certain that Dwight produced it on a commercial scale. Late seventeenth-century redware is generally attributed to David and John Phillip Elers, immigrants of German origin who had settled in London before 1686, when David was recorded as a shop owner near St Clement's church. They were silversmiths, but David claimed to have learned the art of stoneware manufacture at Cologne.

David Elers was probably making pottery in Staffordshire by 1691, and in 1693 the brothers were recorded as making red teapots there and at Vauxhall. This resulted in them being sued by John Dwight for infringement of his patent. After reaching an agreement with him, the Elers continued their business at Bradwell Wood, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, until 1698 when they moved back to Vauxhall. By 1700 they were bankrupt and both turned to china dealing, John Phillip in Dublin and David in London.

Apart from teapots, the Elers are credited with beakers, globular and straight-sided mugs, and tankards. Some of these were slip-cast and turned on a lathe to smooth their contours or to create raised bands on the exterior.