Occupations
Whieldon-type is not a single artist but a catalogue attribution used by museums for unmarked mid-18th-century Staffordshire earthenware in the manner of Thomas Whieldon (1719-1795), the celebrated English potter of Fenton Vivian. Whieldon perfected lead-glazed cream-colored earthenware streaked and dappled with metallic oxides - manganese browns, copper greens, cobalt blues - producing the mottled surfaces known as tortoiseshell ware. His workshop trained or partnered with some of the greatest names of English ceramics, including Josiah Wedgwood and Josiah Spode, and its wares were so widely imitated across Staffordshire that unsigned pieces in this style are conventionally labelled Whieldon-type: made in his manner, whether by his own factory, his rivals, or his many followers. Pieces carrying this attribution - teapots, plates, figures, and wares modelled after fruits and vegetables - represent the exuberant experimental era of English pottery just before industrial standardization.
