POTTERY IDENTIFICATION BY MANUFACTURING FEATURES
If they are not pottery-marked, it is exceedingly difficult to identify the manufacturer of any particular flask, but there are factors which can suggest a link between a number of flasks and individual potteries. One such factor is a peculiarity in the text application. An example of this is a group of thrown oval flasks which I believe all come from the Fulham Pottery. When comparing some flasks, all of which had large text impressed vertically down the narrow side, it was evident that the upper part of the first down-stroke of the letter 'W' (at the start of the words 'Wine & Spirit Merchant',) was missing, where the tool used to impress the letter 'W' had been damaged. A collector then happened to show on an internet forum, an image of a recently acquired saltglaze jar, which was also impressed with the words 'Wine & Spirit Merchant', in the same font, and with the same incomplete 'W'. This jar also bore an impressed Fulham Stone Pottery mark. This characteristic is so distinctive that it is my view that this group of flasks can also be attributed to the Fulham Stone Pottery.
When comparing flagons with flasks of the same period, I have identified a further group of items which are likely to be from the same pottery. The linking feature is again in the text impressing, where the same stamps were used on each. The jar and flasks below all have the identical impressing where the ‘&’ symbol is of a different font from the other letters. They also use the same abbreviation of the word 'Merchant' to 'Mercht'. I now need to find a piece with this characteristic, which also has a pottery mark, to link them all to the same pottery!