A Greek tragedy? Why ‘Dillwyn’s Etruscan Ware’ failed^*

Abstract

Between 1847 and 1850, the Cambrian Pottery in Swansea made ‘Dillwyn’s Etruscan Ware’, a range of vases copying the designs of red-figure vases found in south Italian and Sicilian tombs. The vases were made for sale to ‘humble homesteads’, but they did not attract buyers and were discontinued. This article explores the economic and commercial milieu in which the Swansea ‘Etruscan’ ware vases were designed and made. It examines relationships between manufacturers’ design choices and their perceptions of the social, cultural, and political aspirations of intended buyers. It establishes the identity of the Cambrian Pottery’s intended customers and shows how practical issues, such as space, display, and utility, could influence buyers’ choices as well as design. Finally, it explores the influence of social, cultural, and religious ideals on domestic decoration in working-class households, and it offers an explanation of why ‘Dillwyn’s Etruscan Ware’ failed.

At some time between the years 1847 and 1850, the Cambrian Pottery in Swansea produced a new range of ceramics, copying the styles and shapes of red-figure vases excavated from graves in Italy and Sicily in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as shown in fig. 1. The act of making classical copies, more commonly called ‘Etruscan’ ware, was not unusual for a manufacturer of ceramics at this time. ‘Etruscan’ ware vases had been a popular form of domestic decoration since the eighteenth century.¹ What made the Swansea ‘Etruscan’ ware distinctive was the tale of commercial philanthropy attached to it.² According to scholars, Lewis Llewellyn Dillwyn, the owner of the Cambrian Pottery, decided to create and sell a range of cheap ‘Etruscan’ ware vases after suitable red clay was discovered at his brother’s estate at Penllergare, near Swansea. Lewis’s wife, Elizabeth ‘Bessie’ Dillwyn, designed shapes and patterns for the new range, which was christened ‘Dillwyn’s Etruscan Ware’. The couple kept their prices low, hoping that this would allow ‘the proletariat to enjoy some of the cultural benefits of classical art’, but their project failed.³ The vases did not sell.

In this article, I will re-examine the evidence for Lewis Llewellyn Dillwyn’s ‘Etruscan’ ware project. Through a careful investigation of sources, I will clarify how and why the project was initiated and show that the manufacture of the Swansea ‘Etruscan’ ware was not a single project, but two, separate schemes. While both schemes focused on the same product, each part was concerned with selling to a different type of buyer. The first phase of the project was aimed at using London shops to sell to the burgeoning market for home decoration amongst middling classes, and the second part comprised an attempt to sell ‘Etruscan’ ware to working-class households in Swansea. By examining the wider social, industrial, and religious milieu of the Swansea households, I will offer some suggestions for why Lewis’s project to sell classical vases to working-class homes failed.

TELLING STORIES: TALES OF THE MANUFACTURE OF ‘DILLWYN’S ETRUSCAN WARE’

The first study of Swansea ‘Etruscan’ ware was undertaken by William Turner, a journalist, who came to Swansea to research the history of the Cambrian Pottery in 1897. He spoke with ex-workers from the pottery, as well as local residents, and his book is our main source of information about the inception of the project and Bessie Dillwyn’s contribution as a designer. Turner received his information from three ex-employees: Lewis Evans, Henry Clowes, and William Rees.⁴ Evans told Turner that Lewis began to consider making ‘Etruscan’ ware in 1845, when a deposit of high-quality red clay was found at Penllergare.⁵ Evans claimed that Lewis tested the clay, to see if it could be used to make a strong enough body, and then, together with his modeller William Clowes and manager James Hinkley, he made and fired some test pots. Clowes told Turner that he had been present at the first trial, which failed, but the group refused to give up.⁶ They began to experiment, adding different ingredients to the clay to strengthen the body, and kept trying until they were successful. Rees told Turner that he made several journeys to fetch different types of clay for the group to experiment with, but the Penllergare clay proved to be the best.⁷

Clowes told Turner about Bessie Dillwyn’s involvement as a designer. He gave details of a meeting between Bessie, Lewis, William Clowes, and the manager of the pottery, James Hinkley, after the failure of the first trial.⁸ Other, unnamed informants revealed that Bessie was ‘frequently seen at the Pottery’ and had her own room there, which employees called ‘Mrs Dillwyn’s Room’.⁹ Turner saw drawings, lithographs, and patterns in the archives of the Royal Institution of South Wales, which he felt offered corroborative evidence for Bessie’s involvement.¹⁰ From these Turner claimed that Bessie had ‘designed the majority’ of the shapes and images for the range using red-figure vases from the Vatican and the British Museum as models.¹¹ She also copied pictures from books about the vase collection of Sir William Hamilton.¹²

Turner presents us with a tale of two talented people who tried to make art for the masses, but were let down by a buying public who failed to respond to beauty, and by a government that chose not to support its potteries in the face of competition from abroad.¹³ He says nothing about a project to sell to working-class homes. It is possible that Turner left this information out, to avoid diluting the romance of his chosen narrative, but it is equally possible that he had no knowledge of this part of the story. When Ernest Morton Nance began to research his own book on the South Wales potteries in 1942, he found serious discrepancies in Turner’s research. Turner confused different employees, muddling up James Brindley with E. H. Brindley; he attributed the designs of Thomas Baxter to Matthew Colclough, and the designs of Thomas Pardoe to William Billingsley.¹⁴ Morton Nance criticized Turner’s research methods, particularly his unquestioning acceptance of tales told to him, his failure to verify his sources, and his practice of allowing others to do his research for him.¹⁵

There are problems with Turner’s informants. Lewis Evans, Turner’s authority on the Penllergare clay, died before Turner began his search; Evans’s information came through an unnamed informant.¹⁶ There is no evidence that red terracotta clay was ever found at Penllergare, either in Lewis’s time or any other. Most red clay in the local area comes from the area around Neath, not Swansea.¹⁷ Henry Clowes worked at the pottery for only ‘a year or two’.¹⁸ He credited his father with the modelling of the ‘Etruscan’ ware, but a brief note written about donations to the ceramics collection at the Glynn Vivian Art Gallery offers a different view. William Grant Murray, the first curator, wrote that Eli Ball had ‘modelled the large vase’.¹⁹ Eli Ball was an integral member of staff at the Cambrian Pottery who progressed from mould-maker to modeller and then manager at around 1850.²⁰ Turner lavishes praise on Ball’s abilities as a modeller, and his involvement in shaping the ‘Etruscan’ ware makes perfect sense, yet he is completely absent from Clowes’s tale.²¹

Turner attributed designs in the Royal Institution of South Wales to Bessie because he recognized ‘a lady’s handwriting’ on them.²² The writing on the designs includes examples from a number of different hands, some neater than the others, but there is no clear evidence for any identifiable individual. The designs could have been drawn by Lewis, by his father-in-law Henry De la Beche, or by designers at the factory. Neat handwriting is not the exclusive preserve of women.²³ Bessie suffered ill health after the birth of her children and it is doubtful whether she could have sat drawing for hours in the British Museum.²⁴ Most of the designs come from books, rather than British Museum vases.²⁵ The detail about ‘Mrs Dillwyn’s Room’ comes from another unnamed informant.²⁶ There is no other evidence for Bessie working at the Pottery and, in light of her health problems, ‘Mrs Dillwyn’s Room’ may have been no more than a visitor’s room where Bessie waited for Lewis at times when she came to meet him.²⁷ Turner’s information is unreliable and must be treated with caution. His version of events has seriously impeded our ability to engage with the primary sources, which offer a different view of the project.

READING ‘RED WARE’

On 27 April 1847, Lewis went to the glassworks of Apsley Pellatt to discuss his ‘red ware’.²⁸ ‘Red ware’ is a name given by manufacturers and scholars to items made from terracotta.²⁹ Lewis gives no information about his conversation with Apsley Pellatt but, if we look at the meeting in the light of his wider commercial and economic behaviour at the time, it seems likely that he was looking to find an agent to sell his ‘Etruscan’ ware.

Most nineteenth-century British potteries served local markets. Those who wished to branch out further headed for London and looked for agents to sell their wares. It was normal practice. Josiah Wedgwood’s ‘Queen’s Ware’ was produced from 1765, but he did not open his own shop in London until August 1768.³⁰ Lewis’s father, Lewis Weston Dillwyn, first approached the Pellatt family in 1814 and arranged for his porcelain to be sold at their shop, Pellatt & Green, in St Paul’s Churchyard, London.³¹ At the time, Pellatt & Green was a prestigious establishment with the royal seal of approval, as ‘Glass manufacturers to the King’.³² They sold their own glassware in the shop, as well as the output of selected china manufacturers, for the ‘embellishment of the mansions of the great and wealthy’.³³

Apsley Pellatt was a friend of Henry De la Beche, Lewis’s father-in-law, who was Director of the Museum of Practical Geology. Pellatt shared Henry’s interest in the science of ancient manufacturing.³⁴ On 28 April 1847, Pellatt gave a lecture at the Royal College of Chemistry on the industrial and chemical facets of art manufacturing, ancient and modern, and included a case study of the manufacture of the Portland Vase.³⁵ In 1847, Pellatt’s shop at Blackfriars was a high-class establishment selling chandeliers, epergnes, decanters, punchbowls, and glasses.³⁶ He also stocked porcelain dinner services, plates with painted landscapes, and copies of classical vases made by British potteries. These were described in 1861 as ‘vases and urns, whose classic shapes might have been cut by the first Etruscan tools, and whose fine reliefs of satyrs and fauns vie with old cameos’.³⁷ The objects in Pellatt’s shop were quality designs, aimed at buyers who sought to enhance their homes and their social status.

Josiah Wedgwood’s copies of vases from Italian and Sicilian tombs had been a huge success in the eighteenth century.³⁸ They were bought by wealthy customers who were keen to use classical antiquity to advertise their knowledge, power, and status, but elites were not the only buyers interested in ‘Etruscan’ ware.³⁹ Wedgwood noticed that his vases had been ‘seen and admir’d by the Middling Class of People’, who ‘would probably buy quantities of them at a reduced price’.⁴⁰ Wedgwood made plans to sell cheaper copies to middling buyers and, when he did, he opened up a whole new market for ornamental ware.⁴¹ His competitors followed his lead.⁴²

By the nineteenth century, middling homes were filled with goods from the wider empire and decorated with copies of objects that had previously been the preserve of the rich.⁴³ Households purchased exotic carpets from Turkey and objects made in materials from far-away lands, as well as copies of classical vases.⁴⁴ Ceramics had a key part to play in domestic decoration.⁴⁵ As a result of industrial innovation, they could be obtained cheaply, and changed easily to reflect shifts in fashion. In the latter years of the nineteenth century, there were around 250 firms making all manner of objects for home decoration, including classical copies and adaptations in earthenware, porcelain, terracotta, and jasperware in Britain.⁴⁶ Lewis’s vine-decorated jug, shown in fig. 2, drew inspiration from Wedgwood’s jasperware designs. ‘Etruscan’ vases could be purchased in different materials, sizes, colours, and shapes, according to personal taste and wealth.⁴⁷ In 1847, a few months after Lewis had spoken to Pellatt, F. & R. Pratt & Co. made a huge Etruscan vase, as shown in fig. 3. The vase was four feet in height, with a circumference of six feet. Information about it appeared in the Art Journal alongside a report, which noted that smaller versions were also available to buy. They were ‘cheap without being common’.⁴⁸

Apsley Pellatt’s shop was the perfect place for a manufacturer to sell his new range of ‘Etruscan’ ware. It would give Lewis access to a wider pool of customers and a chance to take a share of the ‘Etruscan’ ware market for the Cambrian Pottery. Lewis’s decision to make ‘Etruscan’ ware was based on sound commercial reasoning, not a chance discovery of clay.

Lewis’s new range made economic as well as commercial sense. The 1840s were a period of severe economic depression. Trade slumped and harvests were poor, so that prices rose, leaving less income for households to spend on luxuries, such as ceramics. In June 1843, the counting house at the Cambrian Pottery was broken into, and silver coinage stolen.⁴⁹ In January 1844, Lewis recorded a loss of £1000.⁵⁰ In 1847, Lewis Weston Dillwyn wrote to Henry De la Beche with worse news. The Cambrian Pottery had lost contracts in Spain and Ireland, as a result of changes in trade regulations and economic problems, but Lewis was not the only manufacturer in trouble. Lewis Weston Dillwyn revealed in his letter that:

Through overproduction Alderman Copeland who was King of the Potters has withdrawn from the Business with a very heavy loss – Enoch Wood & Son who were about the second in point of Extent are Bankrupts & some of the Northern Potteries are wholly shut up.⁵¹

Lewis protected his local market assiduously. He kept a close eye on prices, and was not averse to reducing his prices to keep a competitive edge.⁵² When the Glamorgan Pottery, his main rival, ran into trouble and was forced to sell, Lewis bought the manufactory and closed them down.⁵³ Equipment from the Glamorgan Pottery was purchased by the South Wales Pottery, a new manufactory set up in 1839 at Llanelli by William Chambers.⁵⁴ Lewis and Bessie socialized regularly with William Chambers and his wife.⁵⁵ The two manufacturers appear to have colluded, or at least been respectful of the need to avoid direct competition. They met on many occasions throughout 1846 to agree advances in price, and they worked together, either at the Llanelli premises or at the Cambrian, studying each other’s wares and carefully arranging their prices to avoid conflict.⁵⁶ Lewis also sought new markets. He had meetings in Bristol in 1839, to discuss selling his ceramics to buyers in Jamaica.⁵⁷ On a trip to London in 1848, Lewis met an agent to organize the sale of his wares in Chile.⁵⁸

Lewis began to design new ranges to maintain his market share. Introducing new patterns was a good way to improve sales. Consumers liked to buy sets of dining, serving, and toilet ware in the same colours and styles, and with matching patterns. Once one object was bought, the customer would be back for more, seeking to collect a complete set. Lewis began to innovate, moving production away from the flowers and countryside scenes that the Cambrian Pottery had produced under his father’s stewardship and designing patterns to appeal to the tastes of contemporary consumers, who were looking for novelty.⁵⁹ ‘Rhine’ and ‘Oriental Basket’ showed wide, romantic landscapes but with sharp details, such as waterways, ships, and foreign buildings. ‘Amoy’ and ‘Cuba’, shown in fig. 4, mixed old designs with new places, using chinoiserie-style patterns to create images of locations of contemporary interest. Ore from Cuba had begun to arrive in Swansea in the 1830s, while the ‘Amoy’ design was created after Britain took control of the Chinese seaport during the First Opium War in 1841.

‘Dillwyn’s Etruscan Ware’ was part of Lewis’s efforts to stimulate demand by creating desirable new ranges. If his ‘Etruscan’ ware could find a niche in the middling market for ornamental pottery, it would provide a new, more stable source of income at a time of economic difficulty. Closer analysis of the scenes on Lewis’s ‘Etruscan’ ware vases reinforces the impression that this new range was aimed at the market amongst middling householders.⁶⁰

ETRUSCAN VALUES

Lewis’s ‘Etruscan’ ware range consisted of an amphora, a large and a small pelike, a kylix (tazza), an oinochoe, a patera, a pyxis, an aryballos, a spill vase, and a candlestick.⁶¹ All objects in the range were made from terracotta, with patterns and figures printed in outline using copperplates, and the spaces around them painted in with black enamel paint.⁶² The vases used ten principal scenes, taken from a number of sources. Five were copied from the first volume of Thomas Hope’s Costume of the Ancients, including the dancing girls shown in figs 1 and 5. Three more came from books about Sir William Hamilton’s vase collection.⁶³ The final two scenes were taken from paintings in private collections: Cupid’s Manufactory was painted by Francesco Albani (1578–1660) and owned from the late eighteenth century by the businessman George Aufrère, while Cupid in a Landscape was painted by Bartolomeo Schedoni (1576–1615) and owned by the King of Naples. Both pictures had been widely circulated in the first half of the nineteenth century in the form of engraved prints.⁶⁴

Wedgwood saw a desire for status objects among the ‘middling class’ as a matter of ‘social emulation and the emulative spending that it encouraged’, but there was more to the purchase of ‘Etruscan’ ware than a simple ‘trickle down’ of status goods through social levels.⁶⁵ Consumers at this time were ‘active’ in their choices; their selections were made to reflect and reinforce ideas about their own identity and place in the world.⁶⁶ While they wanted ‘Etruscan’ ware, the middling classes were not simply copying the aristocracy, whose lifestyles they rejected.⁶⁷ They saw different possibilities in the shapes and drawings, including reflections of their own lives. When studying consumer responses in the past, it is important to remain aware that phrases such as ‘middling’ can hide huge differences in lifestyle and life experiences. Sweeping generalizations usually render such terms inadequate, yet it cannot be denied that households in the middling classes did share elements of their background, beliefs, and ambitions in common.⁶⁸ ‘Dillwyn’s Etruscan Ware' was designed to appeal to an idealized vision of middling life in the nineteenth century.

The vases were industrial art, created in moulds and cut by precision tools. Their contemporary production methods spoke of the advancement and benefits brought to society by industry. Industry had brought changes in wealth for many middling households; it had also brought new ways of living. Industrial towns were communities of consumers, as well as workers; consumption and display were important ways to define and describe groups within the community, as well as create a community identity. Urban buildings often copied classical styles, appropriating the symbols of status to confer authority on a new community.⁶⁹ Domestic decoration echoed community ideals and adopted the same symbols in a message of unity. Drawing rooms were decorated with objects produced by contemporary artists and craftsmen, including paintings, copies of ancient vases, figures from biblical stories, and figures of the queen.⁷⁰ Decoration was an advertisement of affiliation; it displayed the household’s support for industrial society and civic ideals. In framing his ‘Etruscan’ ware as industrial art, Lewis was seeking to appeal to urban, middling class homes. He reinforced the desirability of his vases still further with the red-figure scenes that he painted on to them.

On his candlestick and spill vase, Lewis placed a group of cupids from the painting Cupid’s Manufactory, shown in fig. 6. These are the only two contemporary shapes in the collection. Both shapes are practical, being used to light a room, or to hold the tapers that allow a flame to be transferred. Both are shapes associated with fire, and fire is at the heart of Cupid’s Manufactory. On the mountain at the rear of the painting, the forge of Hephaestus belches out fire and smoke. In the foreground, a group of small cupids are workers, tempering their arrows in a smaller fire on the ground. The scene gives a classical sheen to industrial practice, reconfiguring industry to make it classical art and reflecting the importance of industry to the home. But this is more than a simple reminder of the source of a home’s income: Cupid’s Manufactory also invites the viewer to meditate on the divine. Cupids, or cherubs, were religious figures who mediated between man and God. The Ark of the Covenant had been decorated with cherubim, as a means for God to communicate with the Israelites.⁷¹ Cherubim also guarded religious spaces, such as the Temple of Solomon.⁷² Their presence reminded viewers that the workplace was also a place of God, who was the ultimate architect of their success. He was the provider of work, home, heat, and food, which explains Lewis’s decision to use another cupid, from the painting Cupid in a Landscape, on his patera and tazza—objects designed for serving food. Cupids reminded the household to keep God at the heart of their family and their lives.

Ideas of family and faith are also represented in a number of other scenes. Lewis’s large pelike is decorated with two scenes from the Meidias hydria.⁷³ On the original vase, the daughters of Leucippus are being abducted by Castor and Polydeuces, the twin sons of Zeus. Polydeuces drives off with his intended bride firmly ensconced in his chariot, while Castor wrestles with his bride, who is fighting back.⁷⁴ They are watched by Zeus and Aphrodite, who sit calmly, while Aphrodite’s assistants rush around in panic. Lewis redrew the scene. He moved the figures of Zeus and Aphrodite closer together, removed the panicking assistants, and placed the figure of Arniope, originally on the belly of the vase, next to Zeus. Instead of an image of cruel gods and abduction, we have a family. They are sat outside, picnicking together while watching a chariot ride. It is an idealized vision of family life.⁷⁵ Other figures of young men and women used by Lewis on smaller objects, such as the patera, small pelike, tazza, and oinochoe are also romanticized. The young women in fig. 1 dance gracefully, while a young man debates enthusiastically with an unseen companion.⁷⁶ Their youth and accomplishments, such as elegance and education, reflect the hopes that a family might have for its own offspring.

Homes were places of display.⁷⁷ Middling households set out their ambition on the mantelpiece as well as their affiliation to urban life.⁷⁸ Using classical scenes showed visitors that a family was cultured and educated, as well as religious.⁷⁹ While Lewis had altered the figures on the Meidias hydria, the scene could still be recognized by anyone who had seen the vase on a visit to the British Museum. Placing copies of ancient objects on the mantelpiece was a way to advertise a family’s cultural knowledge. It told visitors that they visited museums and art galleries, or had access to books about ancient collections. Many of Lewis’s chosen scenes conflate ideas of viewing ancient objects and reading classical texts. Homer, who ascends to take his place with the gods on Lewis’s spill vase, came from a vase in the British Museum, previously owned by William Hamilton.⁸⁰ His appearance reveals knowledge of the Iliad and the Odyssey. On one of Lewis’s amphorae, Achilles stands next to his chariot before leaving for Troy. He is a figure from another Hamilton vase and also a hero from the Iliad.⁸¹ On another amphora, Theseus battles the Amazon queen Hippolyta, while an Arimasp fights a griffin in a tale from Herodotus, possibly taken from Thomas Kirk’s line drawings of Sir William Hamilton’s vases, shown in fig. 7.⁸² Lewis’s vases are complex documents encoding multiple messages about knowledge, ancient material culture, and vase publications, as well as religious messages of the triumph of ‘good’ over ‘evil’.⁸³

Lewis’s decision to use terracotta was an integral part of his design, not a cost-saving exercise. In November 1847, Lewis gave a lecture on ‘Clay and its Uses’ to the Literary and Philosophical Society in Swansea.⁸⁴ Although the lecture makes no mention of his ‘Etruscan’ ware, it includes a substantial discussion on how terracotta had been used to make art in the past by notable craftsmen such as Luca della Robbia.⁸⁵ It shows that Lewis had undertaken considerable research into his new range and, at this stage, saw his products as art, not cheap copies. He was using terracotta as a novel device to stimulate interest and demand.⁸⁶ While Wedgwood had used black basalt for his vases, and contemporary manufacturers used porcelain or earthenware, Lewis’s vases were made from the same material as ancient versions. Lewis was remaking antiquity using modern industrial methods. His vases were true replicas of the past, but with shapes and designs to appeal to the present.

Although we do not know any details of Lewis’s meeting with Apsley Pellatt, we know the outcome: the vases did not sell. The majority of surviving vases were found in South Wales.⁸⁷ Either Pellatt turned Lewis down, or the samples that he took did not attract buyers. Lewis returned to Wales with his ‘Etruscan’ ware and began to sell small amounts to local gentry and industrialists in Swansea. John Dillwyn Llewellyn, Lewis’s brother, purchased two amphorae, which can be seen in a photograph of the mantelpiece in his library.⁸⁸ Turner’s list of private collectors includes important local families, such as the Vivians and the Talbots, but it was not enough.⁸⁹ The Cambrian Pottery still needed new markets. In 1848 Henry De la Beche wrote to his friend John Percy, asking if he knew an individual who might be able to take over at a small earthenware manufactory.⁹⁰ Lewis was looking to sell. He had reached crisis point, and it was at this point that his project changed direction.

ART AND THE ‘HUMBLE HOME’

Our final primary source is an article published in August 1849 in the Art Journal, the foremost art magazine of its day, which repositions ‘Dillwyn’s Etruscan Ware’ as a product made for working-class homes. After praising the beauty, quality, and forms made by Lewis, the author wrote of its potential. ‘Dillwyn’s Etruscan Ware’ promised ‘much towards carrying into the more humble homesteads of England forms of beauty with useful ends, and placing in the hands of all, ornaments of a high character at a cheap rate’.⁹¹ The article does not give the names of interviewer and interviewee but, as the interview took place in the Museum of Practical Geology, the information was most likely provided by Lewis’s father-in-law, Henry De la Beche, and the interviewer was the journal’s editor, Samuel Carter Hall.⁹² Carter Hall had complete editorial control over the journal and, where no writer’s credit appears, it is reasonable to assume that the information came from him.⁹³

Samuel Carter Hall created the Art Journal as a vehicle to discuss and publicize British art.⁹⁴ By the mid-nineteenth century, the journal was also championing the cause of those who made works of art not individually by hand but through industrial manufacture, elevating the status of such people from copyists to artists.⁹⁵ The Art Journal was an important part of a nineteenth-century manufacturer’s life. It was a repository of news, ideas, and inspiration. It was also a vehicle for Samuel Carter Hall’s campaign to disseminate taste.⁹⁶ Carter Hall was a firm believer in the civilizing effects of art, claiming that by ‘creating an elevation of taste, we induce a better order of society’.⁹⁷ He saw art as having a ‘democratising role’ and used his editorials and articles to castigate those who limited access to art, while lavishing praise on those who opened their exhibitions to all.⁹⁸

It was Carter Hall who used the phrase ‘humble homesteads’, rather than Lewis or Henry De la Beche. It is a phrase that Carter Hall uses frequently in the Art Journal to describe the working-class, who are ‘the humbler classes’, or ‘the humblest classes’, but his use of the word is not exclusive.⁹⁹ Carter Hall also uses phrases such as ‘humblest bourgeois’ and those ‘of humble means’ when writing about members of the middling orders.¹⁰⁰ The phrase reflects his evangelistic approach to art, yet it does not exclude the possibility that Lewis was trying to sell his vases to working-class homes. Indeed, Carter Hall praises Lewis’s project as well as his vases, noting that the tazzas ‘can be made exceedingly cheap, from 2s. to 3s. 6d. each, and vases, &c., provided a demand could be secured, might be placed in the hands of the public at an equally economical rate’.¹⁰¹ The tenor of his words suggests that an attempt to secure demand was taking place. In 1849, Lewis was promoting his vases as cheap ‘Etruscan’ ware, and I contend that this, in combination with the local find-spots of the surviving vases, and evidence for Lewis’s efforts to innovate and find new markets, supports the idea that Lewis was now conducting a trial of his ‘Etruscan’ ware in the ‘humble homesteads’ of Swansea.¹⁰²

Lewis’s change of direction made sense. Swansea was an industrial town. By the 1840s, it led the world in copper production and technology, and its population had expanded from around 2000 in 1750 to 6000 by 1800.¹⁰³ The town was full of merchants, manufacturers, investors, and entrepreneurs who moved into Swansea and rebuilt the town using classical styles of architecture for their new public buildings and houses.¹⁰⁴ In its civic centre, Swansea looked like any other small English town, but its social composition and distribution was very different: its middling order was unusually small for an industrial community. By 1841, the population of Swansea had risen to 16,747, with another 9394 inhabitants in the industrial areas adjacent to the town, yet the middling classes were still a considerably smaller group than would be found in an English town.¹⁰⁵ This was why Lewis had taken his ‘Etruscan’ ware to London when he wished to access middling markets.

The vast majority of people in Swansea were working-class. They worshipped in Dissenting faiths and spoke only Welsh.¹⁰⁶ Their wages were low, but specialist workers, such as top-level colliers and top-level copper-refiners, received higher pay.¹⁰⁷ Their skills were in demand and local factory owners competed to gain and retain the best men, using incentives such as housing and decent wages. Industrial magnates created townships for their workers, named after themselves, at Morriston, Grenfelltown, and Trevivian.¹⁰⁸ Lewis knew the industrial townships of Swansea well. Lewis had been a town councillor for the Upper Ward since 1839.¹⁰⁹ His area encompassed many of the industrial townships and his family owned land at Morriston, a settlement originally created to house the copper-smelters and colliers and still dominated by those trades in the 1840s.¹¹⁰ He also sat on various committees, such as for the hospital and the harbour, and he was on the Board of Guardians, which brought him into contact with people from the townships.¹¹¹

Lewis knew that township residents were ambitious, seeking education and a better future for their children.¹¹² He knew that they liked to buy ceramics. Lewis’s ‘Pot de Fleurs’ pattern, shown in fig. 8, is in a style, known as ‘Gaudy Welsh’, used by many manufacturers to decorate working-class pottery.¹¹³ Lewis also knew that workers in the townships had some knowledge of classical material culture. New chapels in Swansea were being built using forms, ornament, and names that echoed ideas from the classical world.¹¹⁴ This knowledge may have led Lewis to hope that households in the townships might be interested in his ‘Etruscan’ ware. He therefore lowered his prices.

A GREEK TRAGEDY

In order to have value, ‘Etruscan’ ware had to interest buyers in two ways: through aesthetic appeal, or through knowledge of acquired meaning. Lewis might have known about the inhabitants of townships, but he had no real understanding of life within their houses. The humble homesteads of Swansea’s townships were small, cramped, and dark, and Lewis’s ‘Etruscan’ ware would have been hard to see in the darkness.¹¹⁵ In such houses, pale and bright colours were far more desirable. This is one reason why ‘Gaudy Welsh’ was so popular: its colours reflected light and brightened the room, as did coloured patterns printed against a white background, such as ‘Willow’ pattern, or other chinoiserie styles.

In a small house with restricted space, objects needed to be decorative and useful. There is little evidence for internal glazes in ‘Dillwyn’s Etruscan Ware’ that would allow small shapes, such as the oinochoe or aryballos, to be used for liquids. The large pelike and amphora are hard to handle and heavy.¹¹⁶ As ornamental ware, it is hard to think where Lewis’s larger ‘Etruscan’ ware objects could have been placed. The houses did not have vast stone fireplaces where they could place objets d’art, only shelves or, if they were fortunate, a small dresser where plates could be safely stored and displayed.¹¹⁷

Lewis clearly knew little about the relationships between domestic objects and social identity in working-class communities. For working-class households, black was not a colour that reflected aspiration; it was the colour of the cheap pewter vessels that the poorest houses might use. Households selected patterns that appealed to the imagination. Decorated domestic objects presented fantasies of rural beauty, or took viewers to new worlds, such as ‘Cuba’, where the copper boats sailed. They might even encounter exotic animals, such the giraffe on ‘Ottoman’.¹¹⁸ Domestic rituals in the working-class home were not the same as in middling houses, so that their use of ceramics differed. Tea was drunk at work, rather than in tea-parties at home.¹¹⁹ The act of giving patterned earthenware at a wedding presented the couple with a message of hope for their success and prosperity, as well as providing a practical item for their new home. Domestic ornaments, where they existed, were small in scale and tended to reflect religious faith. A home might have samplers with religious texts, framed engravings of religious pictures, or, if they were sufficiently wealthy, a Staffordshire figure of a Bible character or a preacher.¹²⁰

Despite its poverty, Wales had a relatively high level of literacy. Hughes suggests that in a population of 400,000, 200,000 were able to read.¹²¹ Education was revered in Wales, but it was an adjunct of faith, not social status, and it was delivered in Welsh.¹²² Education was dominated by scripture, with basic education provided in Sunday schools run by the Nonconformist chapels.¹²³ No books about Greek vases had been translated into Welsh in the first half of the nineteenth century. In most working-class households, the only text was the Bible. Lewis had designed his ‘Etruscan’ ware with ambitious middling classes in mind. These groups had knowledge of the classical past, which enabled them to understand and appreciate the messages encoded in the vases. Without such knowledge, messages in the painted scenes become meaningless. While the humble homesteads of Swansea might have recognized cupids and understood them as God’s messengers, it is hard to see how other images in the range would have been received. Without knowledge of the classical past, the semi-naked girl dancing in fig. 9 would have looked immodest and immoral.

In the industrial towns of Wales, working-class understanding of the world was mediated through the chapel. Where names such as Caleb and Jeremiah appear in records, they are an expression of religious identity and faith.¹²⁴ Chapel's such as Horeb, Bethel, Carmel, Libanus, and Philadelphia took their names from biblical sites, transposing the geography of the Bible onto the landscape of the industrial town.¹²⁵ From 1820 to 1850, the form of chapels began to change, with the entrance moving to the short side of the building.¹²⁶ This, in combination with the gable roof, gave the appearance of a temple facade, which began to be exploited for decoration, especially by later builders. The classical doorway of York Place Chapel (1830) and the broad pediment of Seion Chapel (1845) were not created to reflect classical knowledge, but to represent holy spaces from the Bible.¹²⁷ They indicated religious rather than social identity.¹²⁸ Greek architectural forms were acceptable to Dissenters, as ancient Greek was the language of the New Testament. Classical-style chapels were Bibles of stone; they were the Word of God built into the landscape of the industrial town.¹²⁹ They were not a sign of interest in or knowledge of classical texts and material culture, but a desire to bring the Word of God into everyday life.

In nineteenth-century Britain, domestic ornaments played an important role in defining and describing the cultural identity of householders and in displaying their affiliation to the wider community.¹³⁰ ‘Etruscan’ ware was a key feature in social, religious, and political dialogues. Yet there is more to ‘Etruscan’ ware than just its end users. When designing products and researching markets, manufacturers examine the social and political milieu of their intended buyers. They try to create products that will appeal to them. By studying classical designs that fail, as well as those that succeed, we can compare and contrast the reception of the past in different but contemporaneous social groups, we can observe the interrelationship between production and consumption, and we can uncover information about families whose lives appear less frequently in textual or documentary sources.

Lewis’s decision to make and sell ‘Etruscan’ ware was based on sound commercial and economic reasoning yet, while he researched his objects in detail, he did not research his markets in sufficient depth. He gave too much thought to aesthetics, and not enough to reception. Terracotta was a novelty too far for an ambitious middling household, who wanted to display their wealth and status, as well as their knowledge. It spoke of poverty, not authenticity.¹³¹ Had Lewis used earthenware and more complex decoration for this group, like the example in fig. 10, his project might have had more appeal. Meanwhile, in the Welsh-speaking working-class homes of Swansea, ‘Etruscan’ ideas had little value or meaning. Had Lewis decorated his vases with stories or characters from the New Testament, they might have had more appeal and allowed him to begin to introduce classical ideas into working-class homes. The real tragedy of ‘Dillwyn’s Etruscan Ware’ is that with a little more thought about reception, Lewis’s project might have worked.

Footnotes

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