Milk jug, black basalte, Staffordshire, with engine-turned decoration.
Andreas Heege, 2020
Using a machine or engine-turning lathe to decorate pottery by cutting a series of repeated patterns into the smooth surface of the clay was an English innovation. The earliest evidence of a machine such as this being used in Chelsea purportedly dates from 1758-1759 (Blondel 2001, 204; refuted by Rickard/Carpentier 2004). Josiah Wedgwood used a lathe that was perfected for pottery production (a rose and crown lathe), which he began to develop, together with John Taylor, a machine maker from Birmingham, in 1763, taking their inspiration from a French book from 1701. Probably from about 1767, he incorporated the lathe into his production at the Brick House Works in Burslem, Staffordshire, where it was used to decorate the surfaces of refined white earthenware (Rickard/Carpentier 2004). Mounted on the lathe and rotating slowly, the leather-hard pottery could be rocked back and forth or left and right thanks to the use of two cams (rose and crown). Turning tools or cutting blades specifically designed for the purpose were pressed against the surface of the vessel to cut shallow patterns into the clay. The same lathe could also be used to apply very precise painted motifs or to trim the vessel. Engine-turned decorations were extremely diverse and were a characteristic element of English pottery production from the second half of the 18th and 19th centuries (Rickard 2006).
The same lathes could also be used to decorate blocks, from which plaster moulds were made. These were then used to cast slip decorations that were very similar to the engine-turned decorations; as a consequence it was sometimes almost impossible to distinguish between the two.
Translation Sandy Haemmerle
Film by Don Carpentier on how to use Josiah Wedgwood’s rose and crown lathe
German: Drehbankdekor
French: Décor guilloché (au tour)
References:
Blondel 2001
Nicole Blondel, Céramique: vocabulaire technique, Paris 2001, 204.
Carpentier/Rickard 2001
Donald Carpentier/Jonathan Rickard, Slip Decoration in the Age of Industrialization, in: Ceramics in America, 2001, 115-134.
Rickard/Carpentier 2004
Jonathan Rickard/Donald Carpentier, The Little Engine That Could: Adaption of the Engine-Turning Lathe in the Pottery Industry, in: Ceramics in America, 2004, 78-99.
Rickard 2006
Jonathan Rickard, Mocha and Related Dipped Wares, 1770-1939, Hanover 2006.
