Pottery has been made in Britain since the Neolithic period (3000–2000 BC) but it was only in the second half of the eighteenth century that England took the lead as the most innovative producer in Europe. Since then the functional and aesthetic qualities of English pottery have made it as renowned as Chinese porcelain.

The most striking feature of English production as a whole is its diversity. The unglazed and lead-glazed earthenwares made during the Middle Ages were joined in the second half of the sixteenth century by tin-glazed earthenware (also known as delftware). Salt-glazed stoneware was introduced in the second half of the seventeenth, and all three continued until the end of the eighteenth century when tin-glazed earthenware gradually went out of production. In addition to these major types, English potters in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries developed many variants of lead-glazed earthenware and stoneware. These included creamware and pearlware, jasperware and stone china.

This diversity also extended to the types of objects made. The present book deals mainly with tableware, ornaments and figures, but several other aspects of the industry were of economic importance. These included the manufacture of kitchen and dairy wares; garden pots and ornaments; pharmaceutical and industrial equipment, such as drug pots, crucibles and storage jars; architectural ceramics, ranging from colourful wall tiling to bricks and chimney pots; and, last but not least, sanitary ware such as sinks, lavatories and drainpipes.

The ability to make such an abundance of ceramic types and products depended primarily on England's geology and geography.