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SLIPWARE INTRODUCTION 
he Longridge collection provides an excellent opportunity to focus on post-medieval
wares made in some of the most important slipware-producing regions in Britain.
Wrotham in Kent is unusually well represented, as are the Potteries region
in Staffordshire 
and, to a much greater extent than is common in private collections, North
Devon and 
Somerset in the Southwest of England. An example of "Metropolitan"
slipware made near 
London in Harlow, Essex, also is included, as is slipware from other English
counties and 
Wales.' 
CLAY PREPARATION AND SHAPING 
Slipware in the context of the Longridge collection may be defined most simply
as a type of 
earthenware typically made of locally dug clays and decorated with slip,
a syrupy mixture 
of clay and water. Clays for slipware required relatively little preparation,
compared to the 
process used to prepare the materials for more refined wares, including delft.
(For a late 
seventeenth-century description of delftware clay preparations, see vol.
2, p. 24.) 
   In 1686 Dr. Robert Plot described how Staffordshire potters refined the
clays destined for 
slipware: 
I. For more on the broad range of slipware made 
throughout Britain, see Grigsby, Slipware; Barker, 
Slipware; Freestone and Gainmster, eds., Pottery in the 
Making. pp. 128 133; Grigsby, Chipstone, nos. 100-122; 
Grigsby, Weldon, pp. 31-33, nos. 67-78, 234; Grant, North 
Devon; Coleman-Smith and Pearson, Donyatt; Brears, 
Ilistorv. 
38 The Longridge Co[lection 
I!