Saving Wedgwood 5. The Useful and the Ornamental

"Usefulness is no more than a condition to be fulfilled.  Grace in fulfilment is an extra, properly called art."     Style in Pottery  Arthur Lane (of the Victoria and Albert Museum)

Wedgwood divided his production into Useful and Ornamental Wares.  The Useful Wares, such as the creamware table services, funded his research and the design outlay on the costly Ornamental Wares.

19th century Portrait medallions of Thomas Bentley (L) and Josiah Wedgwood (R),  from eighteenth century models.
© Victoria & Albert Museum


Josiah met Thomas Bentley, a Liverpool merchant, on a visit to his suppliers in 1762.  Bentley became first Wedgwood's mentor, then his business partner ( in 1768) and lifelong friend.

Through Bentley, he widened his education in the arts and literature, and also gained introduction to the wealthy members of Society, who became his patrons and clients for Wedgwood's finest artistic wares  - the Ornamental goods, especially the classical-styled vases, which made the firm's reputation. Bentley oversaw the Ornamental wares, the jasper plaques, portrait medallions and statues and vases.

The fifty-four years of detailed correspondence between the two partners is a precious key part of the Wedgwood Museum archive.  (see www.savewedgwood.org)

Ghosts at Ham

"I went yesterday to see my niece in her new principality of Ham.  It delighted me and made me peevish.  Close to the Thames in the centre of all rich and verdant beauty, it is so blocked up, barricaded with walls, vast trees, and gates, that you think yourself a hundred miles off and a hundred years back.  The old furniture is so magnificently ancient, dreary, and decayed, that at every step one's spirits sink, and all my passion for antiquity could not keep them up.  Every minute I expected to see ghosts sweeping by -- ghosts that I would not give sixpence to see, Lauderdales, Tollemaches, and Maitlands.  There is one old brown gallery full of Vandycks and Lelys, charming miniatures , delightful Wouvermans and Poelemburghs, china, japan, bronzes, ivory cabinets, and silver dogs, pokers, bellows, &c., without end.  One pair of bellows is of filagree.  In this state of pomp and tatters my nephew intends it shall remain, and is so religious an observer of the venerable rites of his house, that because they were never opened by his father but once, for the late Lord Granville, you are locked out and locked in, and after journeying all around the house, as you do round an old French fortified town, you are at last admitted through the stable-yard, to creep along a dark passage by the housekeeper's room, and so by a back door into the great hall. "

Correspondence of Horace Walpole
Letter to Lord Montagu, June 11, 1770

"The Way We Live Now"

"It was an unusually respectable bookshop for this area of Soho, quite unlike the bookshop which faced it across the street and bore the simple sign 'Books' in scarlet letters.  The window below the scarlet sign displayed girlie magazines which nobody was ever seen to buy -- they were like a signal in an easy code long broken; they indicated the nature of private wares and interests inside.  But the shop of Halliday & Son confronted the scarlet 'Books' with a window full of Penguins and Everyman and second-hand copies of World's Classics.  The son was never seen there, only old Mr Halliday himself, bent and white-haired, wearing an air of courtesy like an old suit in which he would probably like to be buried.  He wrote all his business letters in long-hand: he was busy on one of them now.

'A fine autumn morning, Mr Castle,' Mr Halliday remarked, as he traced with great care the phrase 'Your obedient servant'.  …
'I wonder if you've got a copy of War and Peace?  I've never read it.  It seems about time for me to begin. … I need a change.'

'The Macmillan edition is out of print, but I think I think I have a clean second-hand copy in the World's Classics in one volume.  The Aylmer Maude translation.  You can't beat Aylmer Maude for Tolstoy.   He wasn't a mere translator, he knew the author as a friend.'  He put down his pen and looked regretfully at 'Your obedient servant'.  The penmanship was obviously not up to the mark.

'That's the translation I want.  Two copies of course.'  "

[Postscript:]  "Mr Halliday said, 'I have a little present.  A copy of that Trollope you asked for.  You won't need a second copy now.  It's a long book, but there'll be a lot of waiting.  There always is in war. It's called The Way We Live Now. ' "

The Human Factor   Graham Greene

"Lacon, or Many Things in few Words.."

"Mr Redding draws the following picture of Mr. Colton's lodgings in [Princes Street], London.

'His sitting-room was carpetless; a common deal table stood in the centre, and a broken phial placed in a tea-saucer served for an inkstand, surrounded with letter covers and paper scraps.  Four common chairs, one or two rickety, a side table holding a few books, half a quire of foolscap paper, and some discarded pens, on one side of the room, composed nearly all the furniture, fishing-rods and gun excepted.  Here he indited Lacon.  His copy was written on scraps of paper, blank sides of letters, and but rarely on bran-new paper.  It is untrue that his rooms were as bad as some penny-a-line scribbler made out in a newspaper sketch of him.  They were always clean …'  "

Village London. part 4,  Edward Walford,  quoting Cyrus Redding's Recollections on C.C. Colton, Vicar of Kew and Petersham

A reader at the Lisbon Liceu

"He had slim hands with long, finely shaped fingers, as if they had been created to turn the pages of precious old books.  With these fingers, he now leafed through Prado's book.  But he didn't read it; moving the pages was like a ritual to bring back the distant past.

'All the things he [Amadeu de Prado] had read when he entered crossed the threshold of the Liceu at the age of ten in his small, tailor-made frock coat!  Many of us caught ourselves secretly calculating whether we could keep up with him.  And then, after class, he sat in the library soaking up all the thick books, page after page,  line after line.  He had an incredible memory and an incredibly concentrated, rapt look on his face when reading.  "When Amadeu finishes reading a book," said another teacher, "it has no more letters.  He devours not only the meaning, but also the printer's ink."

'That's how it was: the books seemed to disappear inside him, leaving empty husks on the shelf afterwards'. "

Night Train to Lisbon   Pascal Mercier, trans. B. Harshaw

Posted to France

"Half past five.  And still Commandant has not sorted the letters.
.    .   .    .    .
At six o'clock the room is practically empty.  Those who are hungry for letters have given up in despair and gone to lie down.  The ten o'clock convoy may turn out a certainty, although the eight o'clock one is off.  Five new drivers arrive straight out from England.  They look half-dead.  They have had a drive of about seventy miles in the snow in an ambulance on top of a filthy crossing to Boulogne.  They are completely exhausted.  The tea is finished, too.  I am about to enquire of cook when Commandant comes in.  She eyes the newcomers severely and, without any greeting, turns to me.
'Smith, show these drivers to the vacant beds and see they report to me in five minutes.'
What a welcome! No wonder the poor things look depressed.  She leaves her door open.  I simply dare not ask about the tea.
'I'm dying for a cup of tea,' says one, 'and then I'm going to have a sleep.'

Poor deluded fool.  She has no idea she will be sent straight out to learn the various localities of the different hospitals, to take over her own ambulance at midnight.  She is lucky if she gets a cup of hot tea first.  It all depends whether Commandant has closed her door and I can bully cook.

'Smith.  Take one of these new drivers. Preston, go with Smith.'

The snow is thick now.  I am so cold my fingers refuse to grip the wheel. ... How am I going to point out the landmarks when they are all snow-obscured?  The black tree-stump on the left that leads to Number Eight, the shell-hole that indicates the turning to Number Five, and so on.  Familiar as the landscape is to me, it takes me all my time to keep my bearings.  We go on and on in silence till the station is reached.  We couldn't converse, even if we felt chatty.  The snow gets in our mouths every time we open them.
....
This girl has been twice round the camp...I am only supposed to take her once.  But so worried am I at the possibility of the wounded men being ditched in the snow ... or worse... I have exceeded my duty.  The result is she has not located one hospital correctly.

It is after ten when we get back.  I am so numb I cannot feel my feet.  All I want is a hot drink, a fag, a hot-water bottle, and an hour's stew in my fleabag.

There are four letters on my camp-bed ...one from my sister Trix, one from mother, one in a handwriting I do not recognise, and one from Aunt Helen.  They can wait until I am warm and cosy under my blankets."

Not So Quiet ... Stepdaughters of War  Helen Zenna Smith (pseudonym of Evadne Price)  based on the war diaries of Winifred C. Young.
[This is one of the less searing passages to read of those young ambulance drivers' experiences on the night convoys of wounded men.]

The University Carrier

"On the University Carrier who
sickn'd in the time of his vacancy, being
forbid to go to London, by reason of
                   the Plague


'Here lies old Hobson, Death hath broke his girt,
And here alas, hath laid him in the dirt,
Or els the ways being foul, twenty to one,
He's here stuck in a slough, and overthrown.
'Twas such a shifter, that if truth were known,
Death was half glad when he had got him down;
For he had any time this ten yeers full,
Dodg'd with him, betwixt Cambridge and the Bull.
And surely, Death could never have prevail'd,
Had not his weekly cours of carriage fail'd;
But lately finding him so long at home,
And thinking now his journeys end was come,
And that he had tane up his latest Inne,
In the kind office of a Chamberlin
Shew'd him his room where he must lodge that night,
Pull'd off his Boots, and took away the light:
If any ask for him, it shall be sed,
Hobson has supt, and's newly gon to bed.' "


"Another on the Same
'..........
His Letters are deliver'd all and gon,
Onely remains this superscription.'  "


Poems  John Milton

September shelter

"I sit with all the windows and the door [of the greenhouse] wide open, and am regaled with the scent of every flower in a garden as full of flowers as I have known how to make it.  We keep no bees, but if I lived in a hive I should hardly hear more of their music.  All the bees in the neighbourhood resort to a bed of mignonette, opposite to the window; and pay me for the honey they get out of it by a hum, which though rather monotonous, is as agreeable to my ear as the whistling of my linnets."
September 18, 1784,  Buckinghamshire

Correspondence  William Cowper (quoted Geoffrey Grigson, as before)

August 27th

"It is so cold this 27th. of August that I shake in the green-house where I am writing."

William Cowper, Correspondence 1782, (Buckinghamshire)

From The English Year  compiled by Geoffrey Grigson

"Darwin took up his pen"

"In the gaps of time, morning and night, Darwin took up his pen.  He wrote indoors, balancing a cushion on the arm of his chair and resting his writing board on it; in the heat of summer he wrote in his summer-house, its windows opening over the river; on the way to see patients, he wrote in his carriage, the front of which 'was occupied by a receptacle for writing paper and pencils, likewise for a knife, fork and spoon; on one side was a pile of books reaching from the floor to nearly the front window ...  on the other, a hamper containing fruit and sweetmeats, cream and sugar'.  As well as countless letters, Darwin was writing on clouds and spa water and piling up material for his Zoonomia, his ever expanding work on diseases.   And all the time his poem lay on his desk, acquiring new touches and more notes."

The Lunar Men  Jenny Uglow
[quotation from The Life of Mary Anne Schimmel-Penninck, ed. C. Hankin]

August thoughts

"Charlotte Street, August 18th, 1823:  I was at the Countess of Dysart's fete champetre at Ham House.  I have pleased her by painting two portraits lately, and she has sent me half a buck."

John Constable to John Fisher.

Well Walk, Hampstead, 16th August 1833:  "I can hardly write for looking at the silvery clouds; how I sigh for that peace (to paint them) which this world cannot give, (to me at least). "

John Constable to C.R. Leslie.

John Thorpe's house

"Another curiosity is a plan for a monogram house built on the plan of his own initials I-T, with the verse beneath:

'Thes 2 letters I & T
Joyned together as you see
is meant for a dwelling house for me.'  "

British Architects and Craftsmen  Sacheverell Sitwell

Islamic calligraphy

"The curvilinear script of North Africa and Spain is very different from those of the East.  Its most characteristic feature is the use of deep, almost hemispherical loops for the letters which descend below the line; in addition, the tops of the verticals incline to the left.  The loading of the rather thinnish, brown ink is very variable and this, together with the very soft attack of the strokes and the flick of the descenders, gives an appearance of brushwork rather than pen work; however, it is more probable that a rather soft and fibrous reed was used."

Islamic Art   Barbara Brend

Romances -- possible or probable?

"The reading of romances is a most frivolous occupation, and time merely thrown away.  The old romances, written two or three hundred years ago, such as Amadis of Gaul, Orlando the Furious, and others, were stuffed with enchantments, magicians, giants, and such sorts of impossibilities; whereas, the more modern romances keep within the bounds of possibility but not of probability."  (1740)

Letters    Philip Dormer Stanhope, fourth Earl of Chesterfield

A merchant's letters

"'It befits a merchant,' wrote Leon Battista Alberti, the great architect who belonged to one of the chief trading-companies of Florence, 'always to have ink-stained hands.'  Datini was of the same opinion.  While the heads of some firms left much of their correspondence to their fattori, he insisted, even in his old age, on writing every letter with his own hand--

'I wish to look over each of my papers,' he wrote in 1399, 'and set them in order and mark them, that I may be clear about each man with whom I have to do.'

What did all these letters look like, and how did they reach their destination?  They were written on sheets of paper folded in three, closed by a small cord passing through holes in the edges, and sealing it at each end.  The side containing the address was marked with the same trade-mark  which was also placed on Francesco's bales  of merchandise.  Each bundle of letters was then wrapped in a water-proof canvas and enclosed in a bag or purse called a scarsella, sealed by the merchant and worn at the messenger's belt."

The Merchant of Prato   Iris Origo

A Pin to see the Peepshow

"More people were arguing now, arguing about the letters, her letters to Leo.  There was her counsel, arguing, as far as she could follow, that the letters were not what he called admissible.
The judge seemed to be arguing that they could prove a conspiracy -- Oh, thought Julia desperately, I've got a good business brain, I know I have.  Why can't I follow this?

But fear had invaded her, invaded all her brain and all her body, and she was almost numbed with it....

The man who was against her, the man who was for the Crown, was arguing about the principals in the second degree, and about something called incitement.  She hardly followed the remarks of the judge, except that he used the word 'admissible' again.  So she supposed that the letters, her precious private letters, that Leo had kept in spite of their agreement, were going to be read in this dreadful place...

How ordinary this man made her life sound, ordinary yet dreadful.  Why, he was even quoting the letter she had written to Leo after they had had tea together -- that time when it had first occurred to her it would be marvellous and splendid to be one of the great lovers of the world...

Letter after letter.   Why, here was that silly chlorodyne letter now, as though chlorodyne would hurt anybody; and all the letters she had written to Leo about their meetings and about when he was coming back.  Why, he was even reading the one about how she had managed to get rid of the baby.

Julia came out of her dream, and leaned forward.  How horrible. He was making it sound as though it referred to getting rid of Herbert.  What was he reading now? -- My heart, I always think of you as my heart.  How horrible to hear that sort of thing  read aloud in that dreadful place....


The next morning, there he was at it again.  All her letters, her precious beautiful letters, building up the future, her future life with Leo -- which she realised now she had always known at the back of her mind would never be an actuality  -- all these precious letters, the spun web of her fancy with which she had tried to enmesh him while he was miles away, continued to be read out in this blind white place."

A Pin to See the Peepshow  F. Tennyson Jesse

Dictionopolis

 " 'You see,' continued the minister, bowing thankfully to the duke, 'Dictionopolis is the place where all the words in the world come from.  They're grown right here in our orchards.'
'I didn't know they grew on trees,' said Milo timidly.
'Where did you think they grew?' shouted the earl irritably.
A small crowd began to gather to see the little boy who didn't know that letters grew on trees.
'I didn't know they grew at all,' admitted Milo even more timidly.  Several people shook their heads sadly.
'Well, money doesn't grow on trees, does it?' demanded the count.
'I've heard not', said Milo.
'Then something must. Why not words?' exclaimed the under-secretary triumphantly.  The crowd cheered his display of logic and went about their business.
'...people come from everywhere to buy the words they need or trade in the ones they haven't used.'

'Our job,' said the count, 'is to see that all the words sold are proper ones, for it wouldn't do to to sell someone a word that had no meaning or didn't exist at all.  For instance, if you bought a word like ghlbtsk, where would you use it?'

...'But we never choose which ones to use,' explained the earl, as they walked towards the market stalls,  'for as long as they mean what they mean to mean we don't care if they make sense or nonsense.' "

The Phantom Tollbooth  Norton Juster 1962