Pottery from the 'Josephine Willis'

The Josephine Willis was a first-class ship owned by Messrs Fletcher of Limehouse and chartered by Messers Willis & Co who ran monthly sailings to New Zealand.  The ship left St Katherine's Dock on February 3rd 1856 and was towed down the River Thames from Gravesend to Deal where the pilot left her to make her way out to sea.  She was laden with valuable and miscellaneous cargo, ten first class passengers, sixty steerage passengers and thirty five crew members.  

 Three hours later the Josephine Willis collided with the iron clad steamer Mangerton its iron hull sliced through the wooden sailing ship below the water line causing extensive damage.  The steamer then reversed causing the water to enter the sailing ship which sank an hour later. Sadly seventy lives were lost.

In 2012 the wreck of the Josephine Willis was discovered by the Folkestone Sub Aqua Club. During explorations a large number of pieces of Staffordshire Pottery, bound for sale in New Zealand, were found and several pieces have been donated to the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery.

The pieces are on display in the ceramics gallery, some showing signs of damage from their many years under the sea.

 Other pieces looking as they must have done when first loaded onto the ship.  Above pieces by Davenport of Longport.

 Above and below are cups saucers and plates some of them decorated with  the Gem pattern by Charles Meigh & Son of Hanley.

Here is a link to an interesting article about the ship, how it sank and the ensuing court cases and also how it was finally located.

Holly Hobbie

I was thinking about this plate the other day and went on a search for it in the dark, depths of the cupboard finally finding it amongst the sea of orange and brown Hornsea wares that were both mine (Saffron) and my mother's (Bronte).  We both started collecting it at the same time in the mid 70s after a visit to the factory on the South Yorkshire coast with the village WI that my Mum belonged to.  Anyway, back to the plate and  Holly Hobbie as she and her little ginger cat always make me smile.

I think Mum bought her at a charity shop in the local town and she went on display soon after,  hanging on the bright turquoise wall in the back porch right opposite the back door.  I remember she was the first thing you saw when you went into the house high up over a bookcase which was full of old hard backed books like dictionaries,  encyclopedias, little china ornaments and dangling spider plants.  The back door was at the top of three steps on which the rusty tin containing tokens for the milkman was always placed.  At the side of the steps was a small paved area with a seat under a window and which, in spring and summer. was always full of pots of colourful flowers.

Through the door, which was always unlocked and often, in summer, open with one of those candy striped plastic fly curtains fluttering in the breeze, past the downstairs cloakroom and into a warm living room with its Rayburn fire and settee covered in crocheted granny square throws and plush velvety cushions.  Holly Hobbie stayed in her place on the porch wall way after Mum died as Dad wouldn't move anything, any ornament or picture had to be left just as Mum had wanted it.  Later, when my sister and I cleared the house we boxed and bagged everything and halved the boxes and took them home sorting through them at our leisure.  Many of the things went to charity shops but I kept this plate.  I desperately need to have another clear out and I think all the Hornsea stuff will have to go to a charity shop or free to a good home if I can find someone who collects it. I'm holding on to the plate though as I love the words on it!

I always thought Holly Hobbie was the name of the little bonneted girl but it is also the name of the designer of the complete range of Holly Hobbie goods.  Here is a  - link - to her Wikipedia entry so you can read more about her.

The Gladstone Pottery Museum - Part One

The Gladstone Pottery Museum is in Longton and is the site of the former Gladstone China Works. It is also about 20 minutes walk away from where I live. I first visited it in the early 1980s when I was on an Open University summer school at Keele University and we were taken to the museum on a coach. I never imagined as I wandered around that I would one day live nearby and even, for a short while, work there.

I find it a fascinating place to visit and even more so now that lots of new features and exhibitions have been added to the tour. It isn't a famous pottery works like Spode or Wedgwood but like many other factories working at the same time it produced every day items for the mass market. Above you can see the main courtyard with the bottle kilns or 'pot banks' as they are called in Stoke in the back ground and foreground.

I took this photo inside one of the bottle ovens - you can walk between the outer and inner layer of the structure. The outer layer is called the 'hovel' and acts as a chimney taking the smoke away and protecting the inner layer or 'kiln proper' from the weather. This walkway is where the fireman would stoke the fires under the inner kiln where all the pottery had been stacked in the protective saggers to fire the clay.

This was hot, dirty and back-breaking work. Everything depended on the fireman doing his job properly if the firing was stopped too early or carried on to long the china would be ruined. The doorway through which the saggars were inserted and then collected after firing was called a 'clammins' or 'wicket'. This was bricked up during firing.

The workers were made to go into the really red hot atmosphere to remove the fired china as soon as possible. The kilns were fired once a week and were supposed to be left for 48 hours to cool but many would open them up after 24 hours. The men who did this job would suffer ill health including burned skin and eventually many would die of heart attacks because of the intenseness of the heat endured whilst doing the job.

There are many other original workshops in the factory including one for the making of the saggars, the fire clay boxes used to hold the wares whilst they were being fired in the kilns. The saggar maker was a skilled man using his thumbs to join the sides and base of the saggar. His assistant, usually a young boy, was the 'saggar maker's bottom knocker'. He made the base of the saggar by knocking the fire clay into shape with a wooden mallet or 'mawl'.

Above is the mould making workshop full of the moulds for forming the china wares. Young boys would be employed as ' mould- runners' and spent their day running backwards and forwards at great speed with new moulds and fresh clay. This was exhausting work.

This is the clay throwing workshop. Here visitors can make a pot on the potter's wheel and have it boxed to take home.

A new addition to the Museum over the last couple of years has been The Doctor's House where factory workers would visit if they became ill, which they often did. Disease was rife as the potters worked in such a hot, smoky atmosphere. Silicosis and plumbism were the most hazardous conditions suffered by the workers. Silicosis affected the lungs and was caused by the fine particles of dust or silica which came from the dried, fired clay, this disease was known locally as 'Potter's Rot' and the 'fettlers' and 'scourers' were most prone to this.

Plumbism was caused by the lead in the glaze given to the pottery after its firing so the 'dippers' who were most likely to contract this were the highest paid workers in the factory - their life-expectancy was no more than 40 years.

The dipper's would take Epsom salts and drink milk to line their stomachs. Also at risk were the decorators, mostly women, known as 'paintresses' and especially the ones who worked with majolica wares where the lead content was almost 60% , as they would lick their brushes to straighten and fine the bristles. Eventually, towards the end of the 19th century various Factory Acts were brought in to tackle some of these problems by raising the age at which children could be employed in some of the more dangerous areas of the factory and introducing ventilation and exhaust fans to the factories.

I think that is enough for one post so there is more to come in part two.

Lots of Plums and Pots

The plums are nearly ready, they are almost there - just a little more sun is needed to complete the process; there are lots of them, the tree is laden with fruit.

On Saturday we took our neighbour up to Kidsgrove to visit her mother. After we'd dropped her off we came back via Westport Lake and took a look at the new visitor centre and then popped into the Burleigh Factory Shop which is next to the canal at Middleport.

This is a very interesting place and apparently, acording to their information leaflet, it is England's last working Victorian factory. It was saved from closure in 1999 by a couple from Hampshire and has been working to the same designs and techniques as it did when it first opened in 1851.

This is the main factory gate where the workers would have arrived for work. It was the rule at most factories that if you were late for work the gate would be closed and you would lose your shift and therefore your wage for that day.

I love the cobbled roadway and could image the workers walking along in their 'trashers' (working shoes) and carrying their 'snappin' (breakfast or lunch).

Above are some views around the entrance to the factory and below some views inside the factory shop

On this side of the factory the car park is right next to the canal.

Of course we couldn't leave without a small souvenir so we chose a mug each from their bargain basket mine was a blue and white pattern made especially for Crabtree and Evelyn and Paul's was brown and white with an oak leaf and acorn patterm made for Williams-Sonoma Home.

Well, we don't mind you going out and leaving us but you could have brought home new cat bowls instead of mugs!

World Heritage?

Council and Tourism officials have decided to apply to UNESCO for Longton, the southern most of the six towns which make up the city of Stoke-on-Trent, to be designated a World Heritage Site. Apparently making an application is a very long and drawn out process; the project has first to be accepted as an eligible site by the Government and then government officials have to put the bid forward to UNESCO. I expect that going through these stages will create a lot of interest in and possibly bring money to the town so it surely can’t be a bad thing; although people are already saying that the money that would have to be spent by the council to even get the project off the ground would be better used on other things and that Longton wouldn’t stand a chance anyway so why bother. When you compare the town with some famous places that have World Heritage Status you may be forgiven for thinking it doesn’t stand a chance, I’m thinking here, Great Wall of China, Grand Canyon, Taj Mahal and Venice. On the other hand, when you compare it with places in Britian that have achieved World Heritage Status, places like Ironbridge Gorge, Blaenavon in South Wales and the Cornish Tin Mining areas then it doesn’t seem quite such a daft idea.

The area around the Gladstone Pottery Museum (known as the St. James Quarter) is rich in the history of the Pottery Industry and as it is only a twenty minute walk away from where we live I thought I would go down today and have a walk around and take some photographs.

The Gladstone Pottery Museum

The Church of St. James the Less

One of the numerous factory shops to be found across the town.

Other nearby factory shops include Aynsley, Hudson & Middleton and Leeds. Not far away on the other side of town are the two big ones- Portmeirion and Wedgwood. If you go into the Wedgwood shop, even on a quiet day, there are at least two or three coach parties visiting at any one time.

I'm not local, I wasn't born here, in fact we've only lived here for the last 10 years but I must admit I felt a little pride in what I saw today.