Doing the Lambeth Ware…

ON THE introduction and acknowledgements pages there is a picture of the Duke of Edinburgh with Desmond Eyles, the now late author of the original book, a collector’s item, Doulton Lambeth Wares, published in 1975 and then the main reference on Doulton Lambeth. The two men are pictured discussing the Doulton display at the Brussels International Exhibition in 1958 and Prince Philip looks as if he is about to make one of his merry ‘factory’ quips about the two graceful modelled gilded figures seated atop an exquisite bowl... “Two of your assembly workers sitting down on the job again, I see.”

Louise Irvine has written books and features on Royal Doulton wares and is regarded as the authority on the subject, and she, with Richard Dennis, decided that collectors needed a new reference on the remarkable 19th and 20th century Lambeth wares from the Lambeth factory; the work of two of whose most famous artists, George Tinworth and Hannah Barlow, is highly desirous among collectors.

As a result, prices continue to rise and the sale of part of the Harriman Judd collection in Sotheby’s New York last year set some records, with rare Tinworth mice groups selling for around $5000. It is noted here that one American collector has put together a display of pieces made especially for Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese pub in London. It’ll be Ye Olde Pizza Express figures next.

The Doulton Lambeth Ware story is remarkable, and a good read is the chapter on the first Doulton art wares and the revival in Lambeth of the art of original salt-glass stoneware together with the links between Lambeth Doulton wares and the rise of the Lambeth School of Art. One photograph shows the Doulton factory buildings on the embankment at Lambeth with the great kiln chimney, all demolished in 1952.

The 233ft high campanile-like chimney of red brick blossoming into terracotta was inspired by Florence’s Palazzo Vecchio – a suggestion, apparently by John Ruskin, as it would be. The photographs of George Tinworth’s work show just how perfect was the detail in his terracotta work, and Tinworth’s biographical background is eye-poppingly awful or a key to his success – drink, abject poverty, mother’s “personal walk with God”, his own grinding work from the age of 14 at a hot pressers and his success at the Doulton pottery.

In this chapter too there is a section on ceramic designer Hannah Barlow who, in 1871 and somewhat akin to Japanese artists, incised onto damp clay instant animal likenesses. Hannah collected pets – at her home in the country she had more than 100 critters including “a Scotch deerhound, a black mountain sheep, a pet goose and a Welsh fox”, and the author comments that as a comment on the attitudes of the period that she lived in and “despite her wonderful powers of observation, she seems to have managed to avoid depicting, in her otherwise vividly lifelike studies of animals, any sign of what she would have perhaps called their “private parts”.

More remarkably was the fact that she lost the use of her right hand after working at the Lambeth Pottery for three or four years; this hand remained partly paralysed for the rest of her life and she achieved with her left hand as complete a mastery over her tools as she had with her right.

Today collectors visiting London can head to Lambeth and see the original studio building decorated with George Tinworth’s terracotta panel, they can visit Tinworth Street and admire the Tinworth’s memorial in the chapel at St Thomas’s Hospital, or they can read this book with its fine 700 colour plates showing every differing type of Doulton wares, including impasto, marqueterie and faience, while the chapter on Lambeth commemoratives has been expanded following further research.

There is also a new chapter – Useful Doulton Wares – muff warmers, cruet sets and an absolutely splendid silicon ware oil lamp base in the form of an owl. Appendices include artists and assistants and their monograms, symbols and other marks and, usefully, trade marks, backstamps and other aids to dating. This was a pioneering work back in 1975 and with much additional detail this is one for every ceramic collector, dealer and auctioneer. Check out the faience department artists section for extra collectability.