POTTER’S MADNESS

Wairarapa Times-Age, 10 July 1940, Page 3

POTTER’S MADNESS

HOW A SECRET PROCESS WAS OBTAINED.

About 1690 two brothers from Numberg settled at Bradwell in Staffordshire. They were known .as the Elers. and were famous, for a secret process they had brought with them, a way of manufacturing red ware which was in great demand. One day the Elers were surprised to see a poor idiot lounging about thenworks. They sent him off, and the wretched fellow seemed glad to go. But he was back again the next day. and the next, and in his stupid way lie played about with clay and tried to give a hand at the kilns, and at last the Elers found him some sort of employment, paying him a trifle to shuffle about the place. He seemed more useful than they had anticipated, and they got more work out of him than they really paid for. When they-spoke to him he laughed and could not give a straight answer, so they left him pretty much to himself, and he had the run of the place. Owing to sickness, however, they had to discharge him. and his shadow was seen no more in their potterx works. The idiot had gone—and with him their secret.

For the man who had played the fool was John Astbury. a clever mechanic, and no bigger fool than the Elers. Making a pretence of being a simpleion. he had watched the process by which red ware was made, and having mastered it from beginning to end he set up his own works at Shelton in the potteries.

His business prospered. He made money quickly. He wont on to improve his ware by adding calcined flint to the clay. From a poor workman lie rose io a position of importance, dying a rich man in 17-13. His gravestone is in Stoke churchyard. One of his sons, as great a potter as his father, was the first to manufacture cream ware. John's brother married the sister of Thomas Wedgewood, father of the famous Josiah.