From about 1720 Staffordshire lead-glazed red earthenware became more refined in response to the demand for tea and coffee ware. Fine throwing and lathe-turning produced neat, light vessels in plain red or dark red and brown agate ware, sometimes decorated with cream slip bands round the edges. Unlike slipwares they were fired twice, once before and once after glazing. Plain redwares and those with cream clay sprigs are often referred to as Astbury ware after John Astbury (1686–1743). Some were no doubt made by him at Shelton, but similar redwares were made by many other potters, such as Samuel Bell (d. 1744) at Lower Street, Newcastle-under-Lyme between 1725 and 1744. The recovery in Broad Street, Shelton, of redwares very like Samuel Bell's shows that attributions of redware to specific potters is inadvisable unless the forms and decoration match sherds from identified sites.

A waster decorated with the Royal Arms and motto with an error which also occurs on this teapot, and a lid decorated with a squirrel were found in 1925 on the site of a pottery at Fenton Low. It is not clear who potted there in the 1740s but by 1750 it belonged to Thomas Whieldon (1719–95), who let it to William Meir in that year and in 1752 to Edward Warburton. Whieldon had occupied a factory about half a mile away at Fenton Vivian since 1747.