Customer Reviews

19th and 20th Century Yellow Ware (Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Yellow Ware)

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There is no doubt that this book is the " bible" on yellow ware as my friends and others refer to it as such. It's a must for any collector and We finally tracked down the author J. Gallo to get a copy. Unlike other books this book has the correct information on the subject. Thanks John

After reading this book on yellow ware I learned alot about the manufacturing, history, and location of yellow ware. The information with each picture ,as a collector, was great. Thanks John

This is one of the most organized and well written books on pottery. The information is excellent and I would recommend this book for all antique libraries.

John Gallo deserves credit for being the first to tackle this subject in a book. However, his position as a dealer specializing in his subject creates a problem. To begin, way up front in the acknowledgments, he thanks curator Pat Hoffman of the Stoke on Trent Museum and Art Gallery, Hanley. In 1985, when this book was published, Pat HALFPENNY was Assistant to the Curator, Arnold Mountford, at the City Museum and Art Gallery, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. Pat went on to become Director of Collections at the Winterthur Museum and Gardens in Delaware. It may not seem like a big deal, but if an author can't get his source information correct, then it throws the rest of the book into doubt. There are basic facts about his subject that are obscured by his writing. The pots under discussion were slipcast, press-molded, or jollied and lathe-turned. The slip banding on many examples would not have been possible without the horizontal lathe and its operator, the turner, and yet he never mentions the use of lathes. Nor does he refer to the jolly--the invention that replaced wheel throwing of the basic shapes.. He muddies his geography by referring to Manley instead of Hanley, one of the six towns that comprise the city of Stoke-on-Trent, the heart of the Staffordshire Potteries district, and to "Many Staffordshire potteries in Derbyshire . . ." which makes no sense at all. It's like saying "Maine factories in New Hampshire."
In his explanation of slip, Gallo omits the key ingredient, water. When water is mixed with clay to reach the consistency of heavy cream, it can be used in many ways in pot-making--as an adhesive to attach handles; to pour into molds, or, with various colorants, as a decorative medium. During the period when these pots were being produced, white-firing clays were imported from Cornwall to the various potting centers in Britain as vastly more tonnage of coal was required to fire the kilns than clay used to create the bodies. So it made economic sense to build potteries near coal sources. When potteries had no access to the white firing clays, (economics, transportation, etc.), they used more readily available yellow-firing or red-firing clays. In America, other than the discovery in the mid-18th century of excellent white Cherokee clays in North Carolina, only yellow and red-firing clays were generally available and, for some reason, either the clay's workability or aesthetics, American factories used the yellow-firing clay. Another area of confusion arises in the author's discussion of glazes. The word GLAZE derives from GLASS. A proper glaze on the pots in question is clear, glassy, allowing the body color or the colors of slip decoration to not only show well, but because of the early use of white lead, to be enhanced. With the change-over to lead-free glazes, the transparency continued. On mid 18th-century British creamwares, calcined metallic oxides were sometimes brushed or sponged onto the leather hard bodies, fired, then dipped in the glaze material, and fired again at a higher temperature which caused the oxides (copper, manganese, iron, etc.) to melt and flow into the glaze. Gallo found some excellent period documents which he illustrated in abundance. Unfortunately, the quality of reproduction is poor. Altogether, this is a frustrating book for what could have been.