…Making Vessels for Apothecaries and others very artificially.
John Stowe, A Survey of London, 1633 ed.

Immigrant Dutch potters began making delftware in the London area in 1570, but after 1614, the principal area of production lay across the Thames River in the notorious Borough of Southwark. By the end of the century, the craft had spread westward to Vauxhall and Lambeth where production continued for another hundred years.

Known in the seventeenth century as galleyware, the thickly white-glazed earthenware required two firings, the first at a high temperature to create the stage defined as biscuit (1 and 2). It was then coated with a lead glaze, made white and opaque by the addition of tin, and hand-painted before being fired again at a lower temperature.

Although all surviving delftware from the first years of production is painted in one or more colors (3, 4 and 5), by about 1630, utility wares were being sold unpainted. These ranged from ointment jars to caudle pots and later to washbasins and chamber pots, whose production continued to the end of the eighteenth century.