Mudlarking Mosaic - 3/4 way through

Visually this pipe section would have looked better if I'd orientated the pipes so they cascaded in a more higglety pigglety way with their bowl mouths open to the viewer, as in Emma Bigg's original mosaic. Instead illuminating the history won out. Lined up in date order lie 50% of the types of clay pipe produced. Starting with the small ones from the 1610 on the right and ending with the large spurred pipes made until the 1840s, positioned so it's easy to see their development over the centuries. Their spurs, different types of feet with or without initials  are all exposed.  I couldn't quite bring myself to cement in any of my decorated relief pipes. 

And then the view from the top, which once on the wall will never be seen. 

Rather chuffed how this line of Westerwald turned out, its deep cobalt blue creating such  a strong impression. The epitome of German domination of 17th and early 18th Century European ceramics, with its precise moulded reliefs and careful incised patterns executed by hand and perfectly glazed.

To the right, purposely included one of the drilled mother of pearl 'shards' I've picked up along the Thames, in this section of iridescent discarded worked pieces. 

The Westerwald shards most likely came from tankards and jugs

Westerwald Jug 1702-1714  with moulded relief design (prices4antiques)

Westerwald Mug 17th C (Crocker Farm) 

Westerwald Jug circa 1730 with incised patterns made by hand (Martyn Edgell) 

Again copying Ms Biggs mosaic, I've included a row of large chunks of 19th century utilitarian English stoneware, the remains of ink bottles and other storage vessels. The impressed writing reveals a Derbyshire bottle produced by Bourne (a longer post on this can be found here) and the neat lettering of Stephen Green's Imperial Pottery in Lambeth, the centre of English saltglazed stoneware pottery from the mid 17th - mid 19th century.

'The imperial pottery in Princes Street Lambeth places Mr Stephen Green amongst the foremost.. The variety of its productions comprises jugs, garden vases and figures, water pipes, filtering machines and vessels for chemical purposes..About seventy persons are employed on the premises; and the consumption of materials amounts to one thousand tons of clay, one hundred of sand, twenty tons of burnt flint and Cornwall stone, twelve tons of salt and eight hundred tons of coal annually...The business was begun nearly 60 years ago' (E W Brayley 1841).

I haven't been able to track down the the origin of 'Waterlow London'. 

Complete Bourne Ink Bottle (Museum of London) 

The hand painted blue and red laced with gold, Japanese Imari porcelain (1650-1750) is scattered through this next section. A previous post about its history can be found here.

and to end - a large chunk of the will be finished in another month or so mosaic.