With its harbour and an abundance of red clay to the north of
the town, Poole in Dorset had long been a centre for pottery making
ever since a builder's merchant and ironmonger, Jesse Carter,
bought a run-down tile manufacturing company on the quayside in
1873.
However, the Poole Pottery, as it became known, is now
remembered as the maker of instantly recognisable Art Deco
ware and the striking wares of the 1960s which marked it among the
most innovative of British post-War industrial potteries.
Now based predominantly in Staffordshire, Poole Pottery
production continues today.
Established in 1873, the Carter Company was primarily concerned
with the manufacture of tiling and architectural products. It was
Jesse Carter's son Owen who developed the art pottery. By the end
of the First World War this was making a wide range of decorative
wares under design head James Radley Young and had established
important links with the Omega Workshops.
Two years after Owen Carter died, his brother Charles formed the
partnership with the designer and silversmith Harold Stabler and
the Stoke-on-Trent potter John Adams in 1921 that ushered in
Poole's heyday.
It was during the Carter, Stabler and Adams period that some of
the most memorable Poole wares were produced. Much of the
traditional range was based on the work of the chief designer in
the 1920s, Truda Carter. These red earthenwares, covered in a white
slip and then dipped in a semi-matt clear glaze before decoration
in a variety of floral and geometric patterns, drew high acclaim at
the time and were retailed through leading stores, including
Liberty's and Heals in London.
The Second World War caused a complete rethink at many of
Britain's potteries. Wartime restrictions had left staff numbers
reduced, buildings and machinery were in a poor state of repair and
there was little appetite for repeating pre-War designs. At the
Poole Pottery this meant investment in a new kiln and an influx of
new talent to complement some of the old guard.
Above: An Atlantis vase modelled with a stylised face by Guy
Sydenham, 13in (33cm), that sold at Woolley & Wallis, Salisbury
in November 2006 for £2500.
Poole first exhibited their Contemporary wares in London in
1953, two years after the Festival of Britain. Heavily influenced
by Scandinavian design and associated developments in science, they
combine the talents of master potter Guy Sydenham, who had worked
at Poole since 1931, and Alfred Read, an established industrial
designer who became head of the so-called Design Unit in 1951. The
following decades reinforced Poole's reputation as a business that
could bridge the gulf between studio pottery and mass
production.
Delphis, Aegean, Ionian and Atlantis - all are trademarks given
to wares from the 1960s and 1970s that came under the umbrella of
Poole's Craft Section that gathered momentum with the influx of art
students who were encouraged to make their own individual
statements on what were otherwise standardised shapes. The most
talented of these was Tony Morris, a student at Newport School of
Art, who joined Poole in 1963. These Studio wares that married a
new range of contemporary shapes decorated with largely abstract
patterns and experimental glazes, are among the most avant garde
works to emerge from a commercial pottery.
The subject of a management buyout in 1992, the company went
into administration in 2006 - having already sold the museum
collection at Christie's South Kensington. Now under the control of
Group Ltd, which also owns Royal Stafford Pottery, a pottery shop
remains open on Poole Quay with a studio on site where one-off
pieces are produced. However, most production is now based at
Burslem, Stoke. The most popular current line is Living Glaze.
The Poole range is vast and fleamarket finds can still be made
for a few pounds. The distinctive Twintone dinner and tea services
(made right up until 1981) or the post-War floral decorated wares,
for example, remain very affordable. The Art Deco wares produced in
the 1920s and 30s heyday are traditionally the most sought after.
Designs are typically identified by the two-letter code that
appears to the base alongside the initials of the artist. The
standard reference works are a great source of information on both
of these.
Prices were at their peak in the early 1990s when Cottees, the
Dorset auctioneers who, for more than a decade, have held biannual
sales dedicated to Poole pottery, sold a massive 14in (36cm) pot
decorated in the striking DK pattern by Margaret Holder who worked
in Dorset 1927-41, for £17,000. When Christie's South Kensington
sold the contents of the Poole factory museum in March 2004, a
number of Art Deco wares sold for more than £5000. Poole Town
Council, a welcome contributor to the market for several years, was
among the major buyers at the sale spending £88,000.
But collecting taste is changing. CSA's Deco wares still command
substantial sums but prices have fallen away. As a number of key
buyers leave the market, it is a good piece that now brings four
figures at auction.
The classic retro Contemporary and associated Freeform slip cast
wares with their Festival of Britain styling were ground breaking
in British industrial ceramics design but they will not break the
bank. In fact, after some substantial price hikes a decade ago they
have stabilised at affordable levels. Expect to pay £30-300.
The designs of the 60s and 70s were a complete departure from
anything that had gone before. These patterns in their palette of
bright oranges, greens, yellows and reds defined the look of the
60s and, as with most extreme fashions, they were to become passé.
Hidden or discarded in the following decades, a revival of interest
in the 90s saw prices rocket.
Atlantis was the name given to a range of cutting edge vessels
made by Guy Sydenham between 1972 and 1977 in the twilight of his
career at Poole. Gouged, carved, encrusted, incised and fashioned
from stoneware or earthenware, these celebrated red clay in its
'natural' state. Lamps are among the most eagerly collected of
Sydenham's often wacky and witty Atlantis output (smaller
utilitarian pieces are less reliable) and prices over £1000 are
commonplace.
Tony Morris still works from his own studio - his non-Poole
chargers command sums between £300 and £500 each - but it is his
highly imaginative work from the 1960s that is so avidly sought
among the younger breed of Poole collectors.
When prices began to fall for Poole's floral-decorated
earthenware of the 1920s and 30s, prices for Morris chargers
accelerated. A 16in (41cm) diameter example depicting a signature
design for the artist - sunbursts and sunspots - and dating from
c.1963-64 established an auction high for a piece of post-War Poole
when it sold at London auctioneers Rosebery's in 2005 for £5200.
Prices for prime-period Morris start at around £500.
Other popular ranges from the post-War era include the 1970s
naturalistic stoneware models of birds and animals by Barbara
Linley. Her fieldmice groups are common and bring only a few pounds
but rarer breeds (such as the Canada goose or the kookaburra) can
command substantial sums.
Poole Pottery, Carter & Company and their Successors,
1873-2002 by Leslie Hayward, Paul Atterbury.
ISBN-10: 0955374162
Poole Pottery (Shire Library) by Will Farmer.
ISBN-10: 074780835X
Collecting Poole Pottery by Robert Prescott-Walker.
ISBN-10: 1870703634
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