Lid, teapot, teapot lid

In 1672, John Dwight set up a pottery in Fulham. He became the first Englishman to make stoneware, produced by firing clay at very high temperatures. In the 1970s, excavations at Fulham revealed the extent of Dwight’s wares and experiments.

This fragment of a red stoneware teapot lid copies Chinese Yixing ware. The lustrous surface results from a 'heat polish' indicative of higher fired wares. The teapot and lid has fairly large inclusions of quartz and iron ore, a special composition no doubt due to the requirement that these vessels needed to withstand considerable thermal shock. They are wheel-thrown and lathe turned and were fired together.

Yixing readware was exported from China with tea and was generally viewed in Europe as a 'porcelain'. Red stonewares were produced in Delft in the Netherlands during the 1670s but these sherds from Fulham and later documentary evidence suggest that Dwight was marketing redware in the 1690s. This lid and others vessels from the excavation constitute some of the earliest surviving English-made ceramic teawares.