During the 1760s and 1770s Josiah Wedgwood modified the body and glaze of his creamware until it was very pale in colour and not subject to crazing. This was one of his most significant achievements and contributed to the development of the durable white bodies in use today. In the autumn of 1761 Wedgwood began to send creamware to Liverpool to be printed by John Sadler and Guy Green, who had been decorating delftware tiles by that method since 1756. From 1763, he sent increasingly large amounts, and after Sadler retired in 1770, he continued to trade with Green until the early 1790s.

The pale colour and clear black printing on this teapot indicate that it was made towards the end of the 1770s. On one side it has a scene known as The Tea Party and on the other The Shepherd. Both had been used in the 1760s, but the costume of the tea-drinkers was changed to keep abreast of fashion. It used to be thought that onglaze prints like these were applied with tissue transfers, but recently convincing evidence has been put forward for the glue bat method (see glossary).

In conjunction with creamware, onglaze printed decoration was an important technical advance, allowing potters in Staffordshire, Yorkshire and elsewhere, to supply a rapidly expanding market with crockery which was elegant and cheap. Initially printing was a decorative medium in its own right, executed in black, red or lilac, but increasingly it was used to provide guidelines for hand-painting in enamels.