Naturally the close connection of the royal house of England with Holland accelerated the fashion of storing delft in closets and making considerable use of its rich colours as a decorative effect on sideboards and buffets. The lac cabinets and the fine blue and white delft jars at Hampton Court testify to the influence that the advent of William of Orange had on the taste of the country from the memorable year of 1688, when he landed at Torbay.
Delft was presumably being made in this country fifty years before that by Dutch refugees, but the thirties of the seventeenth century was not a very happy time to inaugurate the birth of a new branch of art in England. The rumblings of the civil war were in the air. It was in 1642 that Charles precipitated matters by going with an armed force to the House of Commons to arrest five members; and seven years later he lost his head in Whitehall. It is not until the last years of Charles II. that there appears to be any documentary evidence connected with the actual manufacture of delft in England. John Ariens van Hamme, evidently a Dutch refugee, a potter working at Lambeth, took out a patent for making "tiles and porcelain after the way practised in Holland." The word "porcelain" was used somewhat indiscriminately at this date and apparently meant anything having the appearance of the wares coming over in large numbers from the East, imported by our East India Company.
LAMBETH DELFT WINE BOTTLE. Inscribed "SACK WKE 1652."
BRISTOL DELFT WARE. (About 1784.) Representing balloon ascent, two figures in car, with Union Jack flying.
(_In the possession of Mr. W. L. Yeulett._)]
=Lambeth Delft.=--To Lambeth must be accredited the best results of English delft ware. The glaze is thinner and whiter than is used elsewhere and the tone of the blue is less crude. It is difficult to differentiate between the work of Dutch refugees and of English born potters. Drug pots and sack bottles formerly imported from Holland began to be made at Lambeth. Some of these bottles are dated and the dates upon them range from 1649, the year of the execution of King Charles I., to 1664, during the early years of the reign of Charles II., the year in which New York, then New Amsterdam, a Dutch settlement, was surrendered to the English.