A History and Description of English Earthenware and Stoneware (to the beginning of the 19th century)

London: Cassell and Company, Limited, 1904. Copy 677 of 1450. Hardbound. G+ (Binding spine has faded; book has moderate foxing on book block edges and on outermost pages; book is tight and crisp.). Red linen cloth with gilt letters on spine & front cover. Top edge gilt. xv, 192 pp., 24 color and many bw plates. A history of English earthenware and stoneware, compiled judiciously and diligently, according to the author's preface. "Unfortunately, most of the early writers on this subject wrote with much greater zeal than discretion, and it has been a serious task to disentangle from the narratives of Simeon Shaw, Ll. Jewitt, W. Chaffers, and Miss Meteyard, the true facts connected with the origin and development of the English earthenwares and stonewares of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Where there has been so much repetition of ill-understood tradition, and such an evident bias in favour of particular men or particular factories, it is not always possible to arrive at such a view as can be put forward without hesitation, and some amount of misgiving. Fortunately, the more competent and conscientious work of Mr. Solon, Professor Church, and of Mr. Hobson in his lately issued British Museum catalogue, helps to clear up many difficulties. My own experience as a student and as a potter, has, however, forced me to certain conclusions, which I have embodied in the following pages, and it will be found that the views herein expressed, on many subjects, differ in some important particulars from those that have hitherto been accepted. There is scarcely a chapter in the book which does not contain either fresh information or some novel view of the subject under discussion." (preface) An early and still useful study. #677 of 1450 copies. An original printed copy, and not a facsimile or print-on-demand title.