During the seventeenth century two types of homely pottery known as Midlands yellow-ware and Midlands blackware were widespread in northern and central England, and extended south of London into Surrey and Kent. Yellow-ware, has a pale buff body with a warm yellow lead glaze, and survives mainly in the form of cups, candlesticks, cooking vessels and chamber pots. Blackware had a red body with black or very dark brown iron-stained lead glaze. It had developed from black-glazed Cistercian ware, made in the late Middle Ages, and first recorded in the late nineteenth century at the sites of Cistercian abbeys in Yorkshire.

This flagon, found at Youlgreave in Derbyshire on 1 May 1861, is a handsome example. Most seventeenth-century blackwares were drinking or serving vessels, such as mugs, beakers, flagons and jugs. Horizontal rilling or corrugations like those on this flagon were characteristic. In the eighteenth century blackware became more refined, and by the 1750s and 1760s Staffordshire potters were making attractive tea and coffee utensils.