Welsh Journals

PONTYPOOL JAPAN WARE. By T. H. THOMAS, R.C.A. The art of lacquering iron and other metals is not British, or even European, in its origin, having been practised in the East for centuries. Probably the introduction of objects in lacquer upon metals may have been due, as so many other arts have been, to the contact of the Crusaders with the then finer and more elegant productions of the Orient. So far as Pontypool manufacture of lacquered iron is concerned, we find it covers a period roughly of about 160 years. It dates from soon after 1660, about which date Thomas Allgood, a native of Northampton, came to Pontypool for the purpose of experimenting upon the production of oils from coal and the extraction of copperas. During his experiments he obtained a substance which was capable of application under heat, to metal, and which, when improved, showed itself to form the hardest lacquer then, and perhaps even now, known. This was the much envied secret" of what came to be known as the Pontypool Japan Ware," a title long used by its legitimate owners, but also assumed for ware manufactured at other places. Thomas Allgood's selection of Pontypool for residence and experiment is easily accounted for. The place was the centre of a noted coal-mining district and a still more notable iron-manufacture. Allgood, as an experimenter and expert, came to assist Richard Hanbury, the master of the ironworks, which had been established as early as 1588, in improving the methods of that manufacture. Richard Hanbury and he were personal friends, and seem to have had the additional tie of both being members of the Society of Friends-a Sect to members of which almost all the highly specialised manufactures of Great