The Ceramic Art of Great Britain From Pre-Historic Times Down to the Present Day (Complete)

I have the proud satisfaction, however, of knowing that my work is the only one of its kind yet attempted, and I feel a confident hope that it will fill a gap that has long wanted filling, and will be found alike useful to the manufacturer, the china collector, and the general reader.

When, some twenty years ago, at the instance of my dear friend Mr. S. C. Hall, I began my series of papers in the Art Journal upon the various famous earthenware and porcelain works of the kingdom, but little had been done in that direction, and the information I got together from time to time had to be procured from original sources, by prolonged visits to the places themselves and by numberless applications to all sorts of people from whom even scraps of reliable matter could be obtained. Books on the subject were not many, and the information they contained on English Ceramics was meagre in the extreme. Since then numerous workers have sprung up, and their published volumes—many of them sumptuous and truly valuable works—attest strongly to the interest and pains they have taken in the subject. To all these, whoever they may be, the world owes a debt of gratitude for devoting their time and their talents to so important a branch of study. To each of them I tender my own thanks for having devoted themselves to the elucidation of one of my favourite pursuits, and for having given to the world the result of their labours. No work has, however, until now been entirely devoted to the one subject of British Ceramics, and I feel therefore that in presenting my present volumes to the public I am only carrying out the plan I at first laid down, and am not even in the slightest degree encroaching on the province of any other writer.