Spitalfields Life

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Today ceramicist Matilda Moreton reveals her passion for delftware

Delftware fragments from the Thames foreshore

The charms of delftware pottery are manifold. The silky smooth white surface, the rich cobalt and mushroom-purple manganese, warm ochre and brilliant green, the sweeping spontaneity of the brushwork – all this is instantly obvious to the eye. Yet behind these immediate charms lies an intriguing history that takes in waves of international trade, economic boom and bust, conflict, emigration, piracy and most importantly, an explosion that destroyed quarter of the city of Delft.

The term “delftware” is often used as a generic term to describe tin-glazed ceramics predominantly decorated with cobalt, much of which was in fact made in Antwerp or London before the business got going in Delft. The primary purpose of the tin glaze was to imitate the shiny white beauty of coveted Chinese porcelain, concealing a darker, cheaper clay.

Tin-glazed pottery originated in the Middle East over a thousand years ago. It was gradually spread by Moorish potters into Spain, then through Italy into Northern Europe. As it travelled, it mutated and was known by different names. In Italy it was known as “maiolica”, because it came through Majorca. Wares imported from Faenza into France and Germany were known respectively as “faience” and “fayence”. These terms are still in use today.

Subsequently, in England and the Netherlands, tin-glazed pottery became knows as “galleyware,” after the Venetian galleys that transported it. In 1513, maiolica or galleyware came from Italy to Antwerp with an Italian potter named Guido Andries and from there over to England, with his son or grandson, Jasper, who started up a pottery in Aldgate in 1570. Other Flemish potters soon came across the Channel to make “gallipots” too and what became known as ‘delftware’ potteries multiplied and flourished along the Thames. Archaeologists have found evidence of twenty-nine sites of delftware manufacture in London.

During the first half of the seventeenth century, the Dutch East India Company imported porcelain from China in vast quantities. After the fall of the Ming dynasty in 1644, there was a sudden break in the supply, leading to a huge increase in demand for delftware with Chinese designs. The Dutch potters used an extra coating of clear glaze over the decorated tin glaze, creating a close imitation of porcelain’s high-fired glassy surface.

In 1654 – a pivotal moment in our story – an accidental explosion of dynamite in a warehouse destroyed a quarter of the city of Delft and killed many of its citizens. The city lost many of its breweries in the blast and those remaining suffered a fall in demand as working-class tastes switched from beer to gin. Vacant breweries provided the ideal new premises for potteries. Flemish potters, who had sought refuge in Holland from the Spanish Wars, now flocked to Delft to set up shop and soon a quarter of the city’s labour force was involved in the ceramics trade. More than forty potteries were operating in Delft, exporting their wares all over Europe.

The Delft potteries were particularly well-known for their tiles – functional art, perfect for protecting kitchen walls, preventing Dutch canal water from seeping in, and shielding the rear of fireplaces from soot. Huge quantities were exported, mainly to France, Germany, and Britain. Samuel Pepys had a number of his fireplaces “done with Dutch tiles” in 1662, later a popular decorating decision in well-to-do in Georgian England. Elsewhere in Europe, tile panels were commissioned for palaces and large houses, entire rooms were lined with them. An estimated eight hundred million tiles were made over two hundred years.

Alongside tiles, Delft potters manufactured luxurious “tulipières”, status symbols for the seventeenth century super-rich in a tulip-mad era. These were tall pyramidal display vases, made with spouts to display not just the stems but also the extortionately expensive bulbs of tulips, crocus and hyacinths. The skill of Delft potters has reached its height.

As Delft pottery became more and more popular, a particular version of delftware developed in England, more informal than the Dutch and somewhat naive in style. Expressive portraits were painted on “blue dash chargers”, for display on a wall or shelf, depicting Kings and Queens, Adam and Eve, and of course tulips. The imagery here is spontaneous and playful and the royal portraits have a quizzical look, with one eye higher than the other, under a raised eyebrow. This sums up the essential wry character of English Delft.

While the Dutchness of the Dutch was reflected in tiles and tulipières, the Englishness of English delftware – and the affluence of the Georgians – can be seen in these blue dash chargers, and in the pot-bellied wine bottles, mugs, goblets, posset bowls and porringers.

By the late eighteenth century, the price of porcelain had dropped and English creamware, which was stronger and cheaper than tin-glazed wares, developed in the Staffordshire potteries. Moreover, decoration could now be applied with the use of printed transfers. The beginning of the nineteenth century saw the virtual disappearance of the delftware industry, except for tourist souvenirs and in the form of art pottery, in both England and Holland.

Above all, Delftware is appealing for the exciting qualities that spring from the requirements of its technique of production. In order to paint onto an absorbent, unfired glaze with a watery solution of oxide, the brush work must be fast and fluent. If the brush hesitates and moves too slowly, the powdery glazed surface sucks up the liquid like blotting paper and the brush stroke is interrupted. Once the glaze has absorbed the oxide, mistakes cannot be corrected. To succeed, painting must be carried out with a dash and this requisite spontaneity is what makes delftware so special.

Tin-glazed earthenware is popular today among potters who love to draw and paint. Some of them use traditional motifs and styles while others employ a modern twist. An artist who did both was Simon Pettet, whose twentieth century delftware, complete with tiles, tulipières and much more, is on show at Dennis Severs’ House until June 4th.

Join one of Matilda Moreton’s half-day workshops next weekend, Saturday 20th and Sunday 21st May, and learn how to paint your own botanical design on a tin-glazed plate or tile at Townhouse, Spitalfields. Click here to book your place

Vermeer’s The Milkmaid, showing delft tiles along the foot of the wall

>William III, London, 1689-1705 (courtesy of V&A)

Queen Mary, Bristol, 1685-89 (courtesy of V&A)

The Temptation, Brislington, c. 1690-1700

Delft tiles in the kitchen at Dennis Severs House

Tulipière by Simon Pettet (photograph by Lucinda Douglas Menzies)

Click here to book for my Spitalfields walk next Saturday and beyond

Click here to book for my next City of London walk on 4th June

Dennis Severs dressed as a coachman in the seventies

During these last months at the end of winter, I have been travelling back and forth from Liverpool St Station to Wivenhoe to interview Paddy Handscombe who lived at Dennis Severs’ House for a spell in the eighties. These interviews were the basis for a new scripted tour that opened last week at the house, SIMON’S STORY that I devised and directed and which is performed by actor Joel Saxon who plays the role of Paddy.

My tour complements the current exhibition MAKING HISTORY: THE CERAMIC WORK OF SIMON PETTET.

Performed from Wednesday to Sunday at 8pm nightly by candlelight until 4th June for an audience of just eight people, this tour offers the opportunity to learn more of the personal lives of those who created Dennis Severs’ House in the last century.

Here is an excerpt to give you a flavour.

“When I first met Dennis in the seventies, he was this blonde Californian surfer boy who was sharing a flat in Kensington with some friends of mine from Bristol University.

Dennis was a free spirit. Of course he was not poor, not like us students and ex-students. When we first got jobs in London, we were just making our way, whereas Dennis was fairly comfortable. That’s how he was able to set up his tour with the carriage. He was studying for the bar and I don’t know how long that lasted, a year or maybe two, but he decided suddenly he would give it all up and take this carriage which he’d seen at the Royal Mews.

Of course Dennis rode because he was a Californian and, through a connection to Lord Denning, he got an introduction and was able to ride a horse from the Mews. That was how he saw this Victorian coach, so Dennis got permission to refurbish it and take it out.

I don’t think he needed the income, I think the whole thing was to do with Dennis being an actor. He had this side of him which was all about performing an act. I don’t mean an illicit act, I mean it was ‘a front’ – it was a thing that he did. Dennis was a showman and he loved doing his tours. According to him, his elder brother and sister were much older and more conventional, whereas he was the spoilt youngest child.

It was a big performance, when Dennis dressed up as a coachman, showing people London from an open landau. Starting at the Royal Mews, he used to pick tourists up in Victoria or Kensington and then come all the way along the Strand with his horse and carriage as far as the City. And I suppose he went up Bishopsgate into Middlesex Street and round Folgate Street, so he got to know Spitalfields and loved it.

Then I didn’t meet him for a long time, a number of years, and in that time he managed to pull off the trick of transforming himself into a gentleman dwelling in an old house in Spitalfields. It was a wonderful act, just like the carriage tours and everything else – all a performance really.

He was very clever Dennis, very perceptive. He got to know people here so when this house came up in 1979, he bought it from The Spitalfields Trust. It had a sitting tenant and he bought it for I think £18,000. Coincidentally, the day he signed the lease the old tenant died which meant he got the whole house.

He used to tell me how he slept in every room as soon as the old chap was carted away. And he imagined different periods in each of the rooms, so that’s what he decided to do, decorate each room in the style of a different period.

I had studied History of Art and, at that time, I ran James Bourlet, the oldest picture frame makers in London, founded in 1828, which was part of Sotheby’s then. So Dennis gave me a personal tour of his house and he was delighted that I ‘got it.’”

Dennis Severs giving a coach tour of London in 1977

Dennis the coachman

You may also like to read about

Making History at Dennis Severs’ House

Simon Pettet at  Dennis Severs’ House

Simon Pettet’s Tiles

Click here to book for my next City of London walk on 4th June

These weeks in May when all the leaves are coming out green and fresh comprise my favourite time of year, and for me it is the true beginning of the year – which makes it the ideal moment to present this chapbook of The Seasons by W S Johnson from 1846 which was brought to my attention by Sian Rees.

Courtesy of McGill Library

You may also like to take a look at

The Juvenile Almanac

The Trade of The Gardener

Darton’s Nursery Songs

The Little Visitors

Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s next City of London walk on 4th June

Today Griff Rhys Jones outlines the fight to Save Liverpool St Station from bad redevelopment

Liverpool St Station by Edward Bawden

It is my station. I am an Essex boy. I only ever moved just across the river Stour into Suffolk so I could look up towards my home county. (Well, down on it, if I am truthful). But Liverpool St is my own personal cherished gateway to proper London town.

Coming in to Londinium once – with the poor sods who commute daily – just as we entered that crazy, dirty brick-built hinterland of the station approach, (where you ponder those strange tubes on the walls), I spotted a fox. This Fantastic Mr Urban Fleabag was staring at me from an archway. “Look at him,” I blurted loudly, now on my feet, momentarily forgetting that I did not have my infant children alongside me in need of diversion. Not requiring any particular educational instruction, the rest of the carriage stared aghast and glanced at the communication cord. Someone had spoken on the train! And in the middle of the dusty, dark bit.

But, God, that station has grit and purposefulness. Have you seen this dramatic linocut by Edward Bawden? A stark, looming, lovesome place. One of the things that really bothers me about the proposed developer-assault on this storied, workmanlike exemplar of Victorian good sense is the unmitigated tosh Sellars and Network Rail have spewed out to veil their repellent greed.

They claim the station is “creaky”. The station is “not fit for purpose”. They will blend it “seamlessly” into the surrounding streets. On my way to take a butchers at their “consultation”, which was set up only two weeks before their final planning application splatted on to the Corporation’s desk (some consultation), I noticed – in the middle of an evening rush hour – that the only queues for escalators were leading up from the Elizabeth Line, a brand new bit of construction. I do not suppose they are planning to rip that out. Their new street level shopping centre – sorry “concourse” – will be as nicely deserted as the current one leading out towards Broadgate, I am sure. I bought a book that afternoon but – let us face it – nobody will be hurrying to get a Fendi bag before heading back to Billericay for tea.

Liverpool St is simply not the sort of gateway hub they trumpet. Of course, it is busy. The sheds (train not engine) that used to welcome so many from Harwich and were, once upon a time, the immediate destination of Kindertransport, and the continent, now only serve the international glamour of Stansted. That Essex misnomer, “The Stanstead Express”, stops at Harlow, Bishop’s Stortford and all halts in between. If Network Rail are so keen on creating a gateway experience for the international visitor, why do they not improve that service first. I can assure them that any discerning jet-setter flying in on Ryan Air, would prefer to see a careful conservation of the existing Victorian station than any space-age, by-pass-worthy, shopping experience “world class gateway” stuck in its place. Visitors come to see our mythical great Victorian metropolis – of Sherlock Holmes and Charles Dickens – not some polished concrete Westfield.

A recent report from Arup and the LSE has pointed out that the City might never return to its pre-Covid massed-ranks office structure. It is estimated that the numbers will not be back to pre-Covid levels until 2030, even by the most rabid corporate prophets. There is no need for new office space. Any new offices will have to attract new, upmarket executives who – we are told – will value what is available on the ground. That means preserving whatever historic fabric remains, like great Victorian stations.

Network Rail claim they need disabled lifts and new escalators. If they do, there is room to fit them in the airy existing, light filled space. If they need them urgently, then they should do their duty and just put them in, not hide behind false pretences.

Because missing from the entire developer presentation  – in their over-manned little hut opposite a deserted Boots – was the elephant in the room. The giant white elephant that they really want to foist on Bishopsgate. I could see no sensible visualisations of what this devil’s bargain really constitutes. To gain this “free upgrade” to the concourse and some fanciful open air swimming pool in the sky, Network Rail are selling the “airspace” above a grade-II-star listed building. The original Great Eastern Hotel, the historic first major hotel in the City, will simply be subsumed.

The worst lie of all is that they intend to do no harm to heritage buildings when they are building directly on top of a grade-II-star listed historical landmark with 800,000 square metres of office space and sixteen storeys of hotel. They are demolishing the sensitive twentieth century additions which many feel should be listed itself. They are plunging the light-filled station concourse into darkness. The station as it exists would simply become unrecognisable. Lost.

Why stop there? Let us sell the “airspace” over Leadenhall, or St Paul’s, or the Houses of Parliament while we are at it. It is a rotten, unnecessary, deplorable precedent. A grovelling puff in the Times Business pages recently reported that “some campaigners” were “worried” but the developers say “no harm” would come to the sheds. Bollocks. All heritage bodies are very worried. I have never seen such a meeting of the families. The Twentieth Century Society. The Georgian Group, The Victorian Society, Historic Buildings and Places, The Spitalfields Trust, The Betjeman Society, Historic England and a huge list of others have conjoined in appalled horror at this proposed opportunistic excrescence. There is a unity of outrage.

I hope we can gather and flash-mob the existing station before we march to make our feelings known. I hope we can get Michael Gove to call this one in. Nothing is inevitable here. They were stopped from doing the same to Waverley Station in Edinburgh and they must be stopped here. The ancient City of London and its number one historic railway station deserve a lot better.

Click here to sign the petition to SAVE LIVERPOOL ST STATION

The developers’ visualisation of their proposed redevelopment of Liverpool St Station with a sixteen storey tower plonked on top of the grade II star listed Great Eastern Hotel

Click here to read The Gentle Author’s article about the redevelopment of Liverpool St Station in Apollo Magazine