John Dwight (died 1703) was an English ceramic manufacturer, who founded the Fulham Pottery in London and pioneered the production of

stoneware Stoneware is a rather broad term for pottery or other ceramics fired at a relatively high temperature. A modern technical definition is a vitreous or semi-vitreous ceramic made primarily from stoneware clay or non-refractory fire clay. Whether vi ...

in England.

Early life

He is now thought to have been born in the years 1633 to 1636 at Todenham in

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

, the son of George Dwight, a farmer, and his wife, Joane Greenough. The family then, shortly afterwards, moved to North Hinksey. He studied at

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to th ...

, and worked as an assistant to

Robert Boyle Robert Boyle (; 25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the founders of ...

in the later 1650s. In 1661 Dwight was appointed registrar and scribe to the

diocese of Chester The Diocese of Chester is a Church of England diocese in the Province of York covering the pre-1974 county of Cheshire and therefore including the Wirral and parts of Stockport, Trafford and Tameside. History Ancient diocese Before the si ...

, and the same year he proceeded to the degree of B.C.L. at Christ Church, Oxford. He lived at Chester for some time, where he acted as secretary to successive bishops. At the end of the 1660s he fell out with

John Wilkins John Wilkins, (14 February 1614 – 19 November 1672) was an Anglican clergyman, natural philosopher, and author, and was one of the founders of the Royal Society. He was Bishop of Chester from 1668 until his death. Wilkins is one of the f ...

, and turned to a new career.

Potter

Dwight was living in

Wigan Wigan ( ) is a large town in Greater Manchester, England, on the River Douglas. The town is midway between the two cities of Manchester, to the south-east, and Liverpool, to the south-west. Bolton lies to the north-east and Warrington t ...

at the end of the 1660s, when he sold his church posts, and invested in a career as a potter. He moved to London, where he was supported by Boyle and Robert Hooke. In 1672 he was granted a patent of 14 years for "the mistery of transparent earthenware, commonly known by the names of

porcelain Porcelain () is a ceramic material made by heating substances, generally including materials such as kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to other types of pottery, arises main ...

or china, and of

, vulgarly called Cologne ware". He then established the Fulham Pottery. The staple output was brown stoneware. Ambitious to replace all imported ceramics by his own products, Dwight experimented on a large scale. He also took out a second patent, and attempted to enforce it with extensive litigation: the targets of his legal action included

John Philip Elers John Philip Elers (7 September 1664 – 1738) and his brother David Elers were Dutch silversmiths who came to England in the 1680s and turned into potters. The Elers brothers were important innovators in English pottery, bringing redware or ungla ...

and the Wedgwood brothers of

Burslem Burslem ( ) is one of the six towns that along with Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Longton and Stoke-upon-Trent form part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. It is often referred to as the "mother town" of Stoke on Trent. ...

Death

Dwight died in 1703, and his business was carried on by his descendants for some time, but with gradually diminishing success.

Works

He is the earliest clearly documented maker of

in England, although immigrant Dutch or German potters were probably doing so several decades before. From the earliest days, Fulham was a significant manufacturer of salt-glazed stoneware, initially brown, but later white as well. But Dwight was a very early experimenter with

, approaching the matter scientifically, keeping records of his trials. Excavations in the 1970s uncovered many of his coded test pieces, which the

Museum of London The Museum of London is a museum in London, covering the history of the UK's capital city from prehistoric to modern times. It was formed in 1976 by amalgamating collections previously held by the City Corporation at the Guildhall Museum (fou ...

feels able to call "porcelain", although such wares never seem to have been produced for sale. The

British Museum The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...

contains a number of the best of Dwight’s pieces, of including a bust of Prince Rupert. Other specimens are in the

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...

. On 3 March 1674 Dwight's six-year-old daughter Lydia died. In her memory he produced two ceramic sculptures, which are among the oldest examples of this type in Europe. In one she is standing in her burial clothes with a skull at her foot. Another half-length figure shows the girl dead in her bed, holding a posy of flowers. These was private images for the family of the dead girl. In the same year he exhibited similar sculptures to the Royal Society, indicating that he was developing his method of manufacturing salt-glazed stoneware in order to enable it to be used for this purpose. Statues and figures are mentioned in his revised patent of 1684, although he does not seem to have produced any after this date, almost all the known examples having been made in the 1670s. The names of the modellers of the sculptures are not known. Most of the small number of examples in the London museums were made as one-off hand-modelled pieces, rather than using moulds to allow repetition, and seem to have come from a sale after Dwight's last descendant died in 1859."Neptune"
an
"Bust" (of Dwight)
both V&A Museum

Notes

References

*Elliott, Gordon, "The Elers in Staffordshire", in ''Aspects of Ceramic History: A Series of Papers Focusing on the Ceramic Artifact As Evidence of Cultural and Technical Developments'', 2006, Gordon Elliott, , 9780955769009
online
*Bergesen, Victoria, ''Bergesen's Price Guide: British Ceramics'', 1992, Barrie & Jenkins, *"MoL

Sources

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dwight, John 1703 deaths English potters Alumni of the University of Oxford Year of birth unknown