Artifacts at our Center in America 

We have more items in our Center, framed documents and old photographs of ancestors, etc. that we will be adding on to this page as we go. Here is a recent addition to our collection. We would love to have any old Wardlaw ancestor items that you would like to donate to either of our Centers.


I bought this item on eBay when I realized it was from the Star Pottery that Alastair Wardlaw had told me about. I wrote to him and he has given me this information about it.

Dear Diane:

The item described is from my grandfather's (Johnstone Wardlaw, 1854-1922) Star Pottery in Glasgow which specialized in industrial ceramics for storing bulk commercial liquids like acids, and also made chamber pots for under beds. We have a similar brown jar, with a star-shaped logo impressed into the clay.
The Pottery burned down just before 1900 and was rebuilt, and then burned down again soon afterwards, leaving my grandfather bankrupt. He went from being an independent owner of his own business and Freeman Citizen of Glasgow, to being penniless and desperate for any work.

There is nothing to see at the Star site, and the ground is now a city park, I believe with tennis courts where the pottery was actually located.

The Star Pottery in addition to making ceramic storage containers and piss-pots, teapots, etc, also produced Stilts and Spurs. My grandfather, Johnstone Wardlaw Jr (1854-1922), is supposed to have made more money out of these items, apparently of his own design, than from the jars and pots themselves.
 
Stilts and Spurs are small (3-5 inch diameter) sharp-edged, three-armed supports with vertical, needle-sharp, up-and-down points at the end of each arm, supposedly somewhat like horse-rider's spurs. They are made of fireclay and are essential as separators, to keep pottery items apart during the glaze-firing in the kiln. Without such separators, a stack of saucers (for example) would come out of the kiln all permanently stuck together as a useless pillar of dishes where the glaze had melted and flowed over all the surfaces. Ordinary cheap ceramic saucers and dishes, if you inspect the underside and top-surface central-areas really critically, often have tiny (ca. 1/50th inch) unglazed depressions, where the points of spurs kept the item separated from the saucers or plates, above and below it in the stack in the kiln.  I think the stilts and spurs are thrown away after each firing and mostly not reused, because the points get broken off when the kiln is unpacked. I would suspect that the Star Pottery site, if excavated archeologically, would have lots of discarded stilts and spurs in the rubble.
 
Johnstone Wardlaw Jr, in addition to building, operating and owning the Star Pottery in Glasgow (around 1900), was a volunteer officer in the Highland Light Infantry, a regiment with a long and proud history, having fought at the Battle of Waterloo (1815). I have his original Certificate of Commission, signed by Queen Victoria personally. He was also a Freeman Citizen of Glasgow, and a Mason, both with certificates that I have. He was a crack-shot with a rifle, and I have the regimental silver cup with his name on it that he won for target shooting. Haven't looked at it for ages but could send you a picture (also pictures of Johnstone Wardlaw himself and copies of the certificates, etc and my Star jar).

Love and best wishes from your Wardlaw cousin
Alastair
Alastair C.Wardlaw
92 Drymen Road
Bearsden
Glasgow G61 2 SY
Scotland, UK
Tel: 0141 942 2461

(note: we also have a book in our Heritage Library that our distinguised member, Alastair Wardlaw, wrote, "Practical Statistics for Experimental Biologists", by Alastair C. Wardlaw, 1985 (our CWA Member #15) )