Shelley

Shelley china is so distinctive it is easy to spot at a show. Its modern angular shapes, flower-garden designs, chintz patterns, and unusual shapes and colors become familiar. The company began in 1860 as the Foley China Works owned by Henry Wileman. By 1872 Wileman had a partner, Joseph Shelley, and the company became Wileman […]

Collectible Goss China

Collecting small crested china souvenirs made by Goss and other companies was a craze in England at the turn of the twentieth century. Travelers wanted inexpensive souvenirs of the resorts, historic spots, famous people, places, and buildings they visited. William Henry Goss and his son had a pottery that made small white porcelain souvenir items […]

The Bride’s Choice

After World War II, a middle-class bride went to a department store or gift shop bridal registry and listed the dishes and other gifts she hoped to get as wedding presents. The dinnerware patterns were almost all traditional, the type of dishes her mother used. In the 1960s and 1970s, usually a less formal type […]

Chintz

Collectors rediscovered chintz pattern dishes in the 1990s. Chintz ceramics were first made at several English factories in the late 1800s. They went out of style by the 1960s because newlyweds wanted simpler dinner sets, not plates with flower decoration from edge to edge. Early hand-painted chintz patterns from the nineteenth century were inspired by […]

Keith Murray (1892-1981) and Wedgwood (1759–Present)

Josiah Wedgwood started making pottery in the eighteenth century, and some of his designs and products, like jasperware, continue to be popular today. In the twentieth century, Josiah Wedgwood & Company began to think about marketing its ceramics in the United States. It opened a New York office in 1906 and aggressively promoted Wedgwood products […]

Bernard Leach (1887–1979)

Bernard Leach is considered the father of contemporary studio pottery in England. He was born in Hong Kong and studied pottery in Japan and Korea. In 1920 he moved to England and started his own pottery in St. Ives, Cornwall, using local clay. At first he made slipware, later stoneware. Many of his simple, Asian-inspired […]

Lucie Rie (1902-1995)

Trained by Josef Hoffmann, Michael Powolny, and other important artists in Vienna, Lucie Rie was a well-known potter in Europe before she fled to England in 1938 to escape the Nazis. At the end of the war, she had a studio in London and made red earthenware; after 1948, she also made stoneware and porcelain. […]

British Art Potteries, Designers, and Studio Potters

This table lists art pottery makers and designers with dates and marks. Parentheses enclose the birth and death dates of the artist. Other dates given are approximate working dates of the pottery or artist.   Pottery Location Date of Operations Mark Ashby Potters Guild Woodville, Derbyshire 1909-1922 Ault and Tunnicliffe Ault Potteries Ltd. Swadlincote 1923–1937 […]

Susie Cooper (1902-1995)

In the 1940s, breakfast in an American middle-class home was often served on dishes by the English designer Susie Cooper. Cooper’s modern shapes and abstract designs sold well in England, but more conservative American buyers preferred her less unusual dishes, made with rings of beige and brown shades. Cooper started as a designer for A. […]

Clarice Cliff (1899–1972)

Clarice Cliff was a decorator and designer who began work at A. J. Wilkinson’s Royal Staffordshire Pottery in Burslem, England, in 1916. She is known for her original, bold, geometric art deco designs. By 1927 she had her own studio at Newport Pottery in Burslem, where she designed Bizarre ware, a hand-painted line of dishes […]