Three Fenton shape jugs, with dragon-formed handles. Ironstone, decorated in under-glaze blue and over-glaze enamels with The Old School House pattern, c.1815-20.
(© Clive Payne, Winson Antiques)

Assuming control of Farrer & Co, Miles Mason, Chinaman, quickly rose to prominence within the wider London-based china and glass trade, serving as a Freemason of the Glass Sellers Company and, from 1785-88, as Chairman of the China Club. Although ostensibly regulating commercial practice, the China Club actually operated as a ring whereby Miles Mason colluded with other dealers to lower the prices of Oriental porcelain they purchased wholesale at the Hon East India Company's biannual auctions. The scheme was thwarted in 1791 when the Company ended its bulk importation of 'china ware', thereby switching off supplies of Oriental porcelain for English traders.
Duly punished with dwindling stocks. Miles Mason cast around for an alternative supplier before deciding to manufacture his own china. With the Farrer fortune at his disposal, in circa 1796 he invested in two new ventures: Thomas Wolfe & Co, which produced greyish-coloured hybrid hard-paste porcelain at the Islington China Manufactory in Liverpool, and Wolfe & Mason, which manufactured earthenwares at the Victoria Works in Lane Delph (now Fenton) in the Potteries. Both partnerships ended in 1800 but interest in their products survives, especially the un-marked porcelain teawares manufactured in Liverpool; usually underglaze blue-printed in the Chinese style, or with simple enamelled floral patterns of the New Hall type, they mark the first origins of Miles Mason's wares.

Miles Mason Wares
From circa 1800, Miles Mason operated alone at the Victoria pottery, producing good value tablewares for the aspiring middle classes. As at Liverpool, he manufactured hybrid hard-paste porcelain but before long a strong, white bone china was also in development. No longer retailing, he set about marketing his own wares with an 1804 advertisement proclaiming 'Mason's China' as 'more beautiful as well as more durable' than 'Indian Nankin China'. The potter was rightly confident; business was such that in 1806 he moved to larger premises, the Minerva Works, also in Lane Delph, where he was joined by his eldest son, William Mason (1785-C.1862). While continuing to produce porcelain and improve his bone china, Miles also began trialling an ironstone body based on Turner's 'Stone China' whose patent he possibly acquired in 1806.
Miles Mason's earliest shapes are distinctive, elegant and sometimes based on silver. Although they included dinner and dessert wares (and related items such as supper-sets and egg-cups), early production focused on tea and coffee services. Nine different teapots, such as the handsome 'oval drum' shape, were produced, together with sucriers, creamers and Bute-shaped or moulded teacups. The vogue for coffee produced simple coffee-pots and straight-sided coffee-cans, some with loop handles and thumb rests.