Staffordshire redware teapots

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I recently got a Staffordshire coffee/chocolate pot being sold as Yixing.

The first image is said pot brewing some Oriental Beauty today.

I've found it to generally sweeten my tea so far, and it only had a slightly negative effect on the aromatics of this tea, despite being underseasoned.

The Yixing-imitations weren't the only unglazed red stonewares to come out of Staffordshire, too. There was also Prattware, pictured second.

I've not verified the performance of this one yet. I'm a bit skeptical, given the painting, but a collector I spoke to believed it to be enamel. There's not much information on these out there. I'm considering reaching out to Wedgwood, who now own the rights to the Prattware name.

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And, as a third addition, I have a gong-fu sized Staffordshire pot, clocking in at 160ml usable volume, the first one I've seen this small. It's currently being reset with some percarbonate, I'll see about evaluating the clay later, maybe with some direct side by side tastings.

A lot of these unglazed wheel thrown Staffordshire wares didn't serve as direct imitations of Yixing wares, but actually of the earlier Elers wares, themselves imitations or derivatives of Yixing. A previous collector labelled this one as Elers, and it was only recently that we started to figure out that Elers was slipcast, not wheel thrown. Supposedly, the Elers brothers were quite defensive of their technology, with early accounts having them only hiring unintelligent people to operate their machinery:

Being extremly jealous lest any purchaser or visitor should approach the scene ot their operations, between the two factories was preserved a mode of communication to intimate the approach of any persons supposed to be intruders.
Their servants were the most ignorant and stupid persons they could find; and an idiot was employed to turn the thrower's wheel.

This makes reference to a thrower's wheel, but not slipcasting. I suspect this may be their innovation of engine-turned decorations, that being the use of a lathe to inscribe geometric patterns into the teapot, mentioned later in the text: https://www.thepotteries.org/shaw/005.htm

Interestingly, these items are called "red porcelain" here, rather than as stoneware, which they're known as today.