Ruskin Pottery

The Closure of Ruskin Pottery and the Mysterious Journey of the Showroom Pots and Stock

Fri, 06 May 2022 18:41:27 +0000

In December of 1933, Ruskin Pottery ceased production, which had lasted thirty five years. William Howson Taylor was suffering from prostate cancer, which claimed the lives of his father in 1912 and his brother in 1932. Taylor did not have the energy, nor the enthusiasm to continue producing his wares.

On December 1st, an article published in the Pottery Gazette confirmed the closure of the factory. Within the article Taylor stated he had not had a holiday since the start of the business and was now going to return to the countryside, to enjoy one of his favourite pastimes- gardening. The article also stated the selling of stock would commence as soon as the factory shut its doors. In fact, the selling of stock would last for fifty years as Fernyhough took over the mantle. Wages continued to be paid to Ruskin Pottery employees, out of Taylor’s loyalty and kindness, up to the closure of the factory at the end of 1933.

The reappearance of Florence Tilley on 19th November 1933, to assist Taylor through his terminal illness, was an indication that pottery production had come to an end. Tilley, a former employee, had left hastily for America in 1907. It was reported that she had been engaged to William Taylor, but his father Edward Taylor disapproved and the engagement was called off.

Tilley left Britain in June 1907 on the SS Baltic, arriving in New York on the 5th July. and was accompanied by Percy H. Pike, travelling under the name of Henry Andrews, each carrying a fund of £200. Pike had also doctored his birth certificate to Percy Atherley. The couple would go on to have two children, Harold Cecil Atherley in 1909 and Phillip Morton Atherley in 1912. It is believed that Taylor had financially supported Tilley’s journey to the States and her stay there.

Planning for his retirement must have been on Taylor’s mind for several years. In December 1931, a local builder in Smethwick William Lee, purchased two houses on Oldbury Road adjacent to the Ruskin Pottery factory. Lee refurbished houses 171 and 172 which he had bought for £333 and sold them both to Taylor for £1100 in May 1932. These properties belonged to his late friend Isaac Pitt and his wife, where he lived and undertook this business. Taylor commemorated his friend with a plaque, which was placed in the centre of the two buildings. A peal of eight bells were installed in 1924 at St Paul’s Church, Smethwick, in memory of Dr Isaac Pitt who practised as a doctor in the Parish for 60 years. One of the bells was inscribed with ‘IM ISAAC PITT 1924’.

Taylor’s new showroom would be erected in the front room of 171 Oldbury Road, with displayed cases made by Edmond’s of Constitution Hill. House 172 would be leased out to Tilley’s brother Harold Richard and his wife Hannah Annetta Gittins.

On the 1st December 1933 the following article appeared in the Pottery and Glass Trade Gazette:

We feel sure that there will be many old-established dealers having connections with high class pottery who will learn with extreme regret of the impending closing down of a distinguished pottery studio which served its day and generation with credit to itself and real satisfaction to its clientele. We refer to the Ruskin Pottery of Mr W. Howson Taylor, West Smethwick, near Birmingham.

We have always entertained a very high regard for the productions of this concern, and we ourselves, quite as much as any of the actual members of this distributing trades, are indeed sorry to learn that the manufacture of the famous “Ruskin” ware will shortly come to a definite termination.

We are informed by Mr W. Howson Taylor that it is his firm intention to retire from the business at the end of the present year, and the concern will then be closed down, except the showroom at the works will be retained until such time as the stock on hand is cleared. If however, we know anything of “Ruskin” ware at all, we imagine that it will not be long before that happens.

No excuse will be necessary at such a juncture as this if we recapitulated something of the history of the Ruskin Pottery, the memory of which is destined, we believe, to live on in connections with the memoirs of twentieth century pottery. Studio potters, it is true, come and go; but there are some who leave behind them an ineffaceable mark, and the Ruskin Pottery, to our way of thinking, is one of these.

It was the year 1898- just about thirty-five years ago- that Ruskin Pottery was started by Mr William Howson Taylor, whose father, the late Mr. Edward R. Taylor, was about to relinquish at that time his position as principal of the Birmingham School of Art. As to the prime reasons for the commencement of the venture, there are some definitely interesting underlying facts of which, perhaps, not everyone may be aware.

The truth of the matter was that the late Edward R. Taylor was himself of direct lineal descent from a long line of potters. To be precise, he came from Staffordshire, and his sires had been connected with, and associates of, some illustrious master potters of a very interesting period of pottery development. His father was William Taylor-one of a group of mid-nineteenth century Staffordshire potters whose names were associated with the manufacture of that once famous brand of earthenware known as “Ironstone”.

We believe-though we are not absolutely sure that Mr. William Taylor operated for a while on his own at a pottery in Brook-St, Hanley, where he manufactured earthenware chiefly

for the Australian market. He was certainly in the running with the potters of his day, and it is worth noting that one of his best friends was the son of the famous Enoch Woods of Burslem (grandson of Ralph Woods, of Staffordshire figure fame).

Mr. Edward R. Taylor’s forte definitely lay in the field of art, and, although he started to work for at his father’s pottery, it was not long before his artistic leanings asserted themselves and he induced his father to release him from the pottery in order that he might study the rudiments of art at the Burslem School of Art. There he made conspicuous progress, and subsequently passed on to South Kensington, where, be it noted, his studies were advanced in the company of such men as Oliver Lodge and the father of Rudyard Kipling. All three were at South Kensington together.

From South Kensington, Mr. Edward Taylor went to Lincoln School of Art, and in 1878 took up the head mastership of the Birmingham School of Art, the first school of art to be taken over by a municipality. It was some twenty years later that he decided to start his son, Mr.

W. Howson Taylor- then a young man in his early twenties- in business as a studio potter at West Smethwick. For some time Mr. Edward Taylor gave his son the benefit of his invaluable help and advice, and he maintained the warmest interest in the development of “Ruskin” pottery until his death in 1912.

During the fourteen years Mr. W. Howson Taylor had the advantage of his father’s advice and cooperation, as well as during the twenty-one years that have since elapsed since Mr. Edward Taylor’s death, it has been a definite aim at the Ruskin Pottery to produce not merely a particular make of studio pottery but a brand combining sound artistic qualities with a real measure of technique. “Ruskin” pottery, from the beginning, was a product of real experimentation. The mere covering of clay with colour and glaze was not deemed to be sufficient; what was aimed at was vitrification effects, the utilisation of special metallic colours capable of withstanding real high temperatures- pottery that could be classed, in the fullest sense of the term, as “true” pottery. We have always regarded Mr. Howson Taylor as more of a chemist-potter than aught else, and we were always eager, when viewing his sample range from time to time, to inspect the new and beautiful effects to which his experiments were frequently rewarded.

Pottery dealers will have good grounds to remember the wonderful colours which Mr. Howson Taylor produced in the earlier years of his concern- the beautiful blues, greens and yellows, and combinations of several of these colours, to say nothing of a delightful turquoise. Similarly, who could forget his productions in peach bloom, sang-de-boeuf and related flambé and crystalline effects, with which he scored so many successes at the leading National and International Exhibitions which took place periodically up to the commencement of the Great War.

At many of the leading exhibitions from Brussels in 1910 (where Mr. Howson Taylor secured a grand prix) down to the Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts in 1925- to say

nothing of the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley and others of a more commercial kind in between- we saw and took note of the various developments in “Ruskin” ware as they came along, and in the memory of that we shall certainly feel a sense of loss when the manufacture of this particular brand of ware ceases.

Mr Howson Taylor has now decided to retire, and we understand that, immediately Christmas has turned, he will reside in the country, there to pursue his love of the beautiful through the medium of gardening- his favourite hobby. Horticulture may be the richer by Mr. Howson Taylor’s decision, but ornamental pottery will assuredly lose by it; and to that extent we regret having to take leave of him.

It goes without saying that we shall merely be one of a large number who will wish Mr. Howson Taylor every happiness for his future life, and good health and many years in front of him to enjoy those quieter pursuits which shortly be his.

In conclusion, we will remind our readers that there is still time to make purchases of “Ruskin” Pottery but the opportunity of doing so is likely to be of short duration. Need more be said? “

The early 1930s had proven difficult, when staff had been reduced through deaths and others leaving the establishment. After firing the remainder of the biscuit ware and selling off the stock, the factory closed Christmas 1933. Within three weeks of closure, Howson Taylor married. He knew too well that his time was short.

On the 10th January 1934 William Howson Taylor, aged fifty seven, married Florence Tilley on her fifty-first birthday at the Birmingham Registry Office. The Tilley family members attended but there were no Taylor family members invited. The register was signed W.H Taylor batchelor, Florence Taylor spinster and the marriage certificate was prepared. The witnesses were Florence’s brother Frank and his wife Elizabeth Ellen.

An exhibition of Ruskin Pottery started on the 11th January 1934 held at Chamberlain Square. Seventy pieces were exhibited ‘specially chosen for their superb form and colour; the fire pieces of flambe in sang-de-boeuf, peach bloom and other magnificent colours.’ Description of pieces include an oatmeal caddy, a crushed strawberry vase, a Beaker shaped vase, snake-skin, Shagreen vase, moonlight blue vase, ivory bowl and a green and ivory vase.

Interviewed by the Evening Despatch, who also took photographs of him with some of the exhibits, Howson Taylor told the reporter that the greyness was present because smoke had got into the glaze. He also spoke of a certain green that, of late, he had never been able to get. Mottled green, almost emerald, on an oyster grey background. There was also a jar of robin egg blue glaze. Howson Taylor signed the 1913 catalogues and gave them out, some copies with Florence’s signature too. Shortly after on the 15th

January Howson Taylor made his will leaving his entire estate to Florence. The will was witnessed by Andrew Forrester, a potter operative and Harold R Tilley Carpenter.

On January 25th 1935 Howson Taylor wrote a letter replying to a businessman who showed interest in buying Ruskin Pottery:

Dear Mr Turner,

I should be glad if you will accept the 3 pieces of Ruskin ware for your kindness in the past and as a reminder that I finished my work and that nobody shall ever make Ruskin Pottery, which perhaps to you as a businessman seems wrong. Perhaps when you see it in my light it is different. Why let another firm make rubbish and call it Ruskin?

Yours sincerely,

W. Howson Taylor

Many advertisements were run to sell the remaining stock, selling at a third of the original price. Eventually the last firing took place on the 16th March 1935 using all remaining glazes for the biscuit ware. It was recorded in Birmingham Daily Gazette in an article titled ‘Ruskin Ware, Famous Smethwick Pottery Nearing its End’ on Monday 18th March 1935:

An event of interest in the history not only of Smethwick but of the country took place on Saturday at the Ruskin Pottery of Mr W Howson Taylor. It was the charging of the last oven with exquisite wares which this distinguished potter has been making for the past 35 years. Many thousands of notable examples of his art have been purchased and no two have been alike. Some time ago Mr Taylor announced that the Ruskin Pottery was to be closed now the clay has been used up and the potters wheel has revolved in its final mission- to the stocking of the kilns for this last firing.

Mr Taylor is to retire when the stock is cleared. He will take the secret with him, but the memory of his work will live in the twentieth century. It was in 1898 that the Ruskin Pottery was started by Mr Taylor whose father, the late Mr Edward R Taylor was about to relinquish at that time his position as principal of the Birmingham School of Art. The kilns at the pottery have been a familiar feature of the landscape, in close proximity to the great lighthouse works of Chance at Spon End, will soon be raised to the ground.

People present at the last firing were Andrew Forrester, Jack Cooksey, Phillip Atherely, Florence and William Howson Taylor. Jack Cooksey placed a disc into the kiln, written on it was ‘J Cooksey 1903-1935’ Ruskin in red highfire.

By 1933 Howson Taylor had acquired a car, gone were the days of riding his bike to work and home. It was on a motor tour of Devon in March that he and Florence found a

house in the hamlet of Tuckenhay near Ashprington which was purchased on 12th July 1935 for £1,600, named Spring Bank. In a letter to a friend, Mrs King, Taylor writes:

I have found my dream home in Devon, miles away from anybody in a village a few houses, hills both sides and streams, but the house is up about 200ft. A perfect garden, peaches on the walls and a lovely rockery. We have electric lights and water and sewerage. We only saw it on Friday and we purchased it today. We could not have found a more beautiful spot in England. You must come and see us when we get settled, that is, if you will ever find us, as it is so difficult to get at…

There is some doubt whether Taylor was present to pack his show room collection and stock and move it down to Tuckenhay with him. The houses 171-172 were sold to his brother-in-law Harold Richard Tilley on 25 July 1935 for £1000 with the intention of Taylor to have Harold look over the factory and showroom until further notice. (The factory would be sold by Florence five months after Taylor’s death.)It is speculated that Taylor may not have been in the right frame of mind to decide where his collection would go. Having lived in Birmingham since he was eleven and his father being at the forefront of the Arts and Crafts movement in Birmingham, one would assume that was the only place for his collection to be.

Taylor’s life in his new house of his dreams was unfortunately short. By 22nd September at the cottage hospital in Totnes he died of prostate cancer. By his bedside were Florence and her son Phillip. With the passing of Howson Taylor his whole estate passed onto Florence. Phillip Atherely reported the death to the Taylor family, friends and colleagues. Howson Taylor’s will was proved on 3rd February 1936 at £13,622 gross, £10,916 net of duty. On the 27th February the factory was sold to C.H White Ltd Chemist for £900. C.H. White would go on to purchase 171-172 Oldbury Rd from Harold Richard Tilley in December 1939 for £1,150.

For the sale to go ahead, a clause in the will had to be administered: the burning of the secret formula, smashing of the machinery and burning of papers. The manager of Lloyds Bank was summoned to the factory with Howson Taylor’s “Book of Secrets” to carry out the releasing of the will.

The following letter was the extraordinary stage of the burning of the book, smashing of the machinery and the removal of the collection and pots. It was told in a letter by R.G. Westwood to the editor of the Smethwick News Telephone 16 October 1975, on people writing in to remember the pottery in their town:

The other day a friend of mine told me that there had been published a book on Ruskin Pottery and its connections with Oldbury. He did not know the name of this book but I would like to know it, as I have a little first-hand knowledge of this subject. About 1935 or 1936 I was involved with the removal of Mr Taylor from Oldbury Road to the Mill at Totnes

in Devon. I was then a driver for the Lewis’s Removal Department and I was sent to the factory (the house was at the side to pack up some valuable china.)

I remember Mr P. Atherely asking me to be very careful with it as it consisted of a copy of every piece of Ruskin china ever made and that he had rented an old mill in Totnes and was going to display it on showcases to the public. The Mill itself was very interesting as at this mill was made the paper for the first British bank notes. As I say, the display cases were made at a firm in Constitution Hill, Birmingham- I believe it was called Edmonds.

After all had been packed, Mr Atherely asked me to stay after all the vans had left as he wanted to have my assistance in smashing up all the machinery and to witness the burning of the formula. This I did and signed an affidavit to the effect of what I had witnessed. He also told me of the family history as regards to the china.

Apparently he was not one the immediate family being the stepson of the previous Taylor but was allowed under the terms of the will to take the name on his mother’s marriage to Mr Taylor. The will stated that on the retirement or death of the last Taylor in the family line, all the papers and machinery involved in the making of Ruskin china was to be destroyed and this was what I witnessed. I hope this letter will be of some interest to your readers and to any devotee of Ruskin china. RG Westwood 79 Grafton Rd Oldbury

Mr Westwood did later say when interviewed he was paid £5 for his services by P. Atherely and that he never met any employees of the factory. Six removal lorries took off from the Ruskin Pottery to Tuckenhay, from there to the Mill and Florence’s house. The proprietor of the paper mill was Arthur Millbourn. It is thought that Mrs Henrietta Ellen Dodsworth who Howson Taylor bought Spring Banks from was his sister. Mr Westwood had also stated that they took the wrong road at Bows Bridge and had to reverse back for two miles as the roads were so narrow.

The village of Tuckenhay rambles beside Bow Creek, an inlet of the River Dart in a secluded South Devon Valley. The Mill is a substantial industrial building, now listed as being of historical and architectural interest. The factory contents were to be stored there on a rental basis. In November of 1936, two months after the death of Howson, Florence purchased a large guest house with a restaurant, garages and petrol pumps known as “Hutcomb Bunny” at Stone Gallows on the A38 near Taunton for £3,450. Spring Banks had rented out to Mr James E. Lee.

The following summer Ernest Porter, a ruskin pottery employee, was touring Devon to visit William Howson Taylor’s grave in Ashprington church, found to his surprise the Tilley sisters, Florence and Beatrice and Andrew Forrester running Hutcomb Bunny. Ernest Porter also noticed that upstairs in a number of guest rooms the ruskin pottery stocks that came down to the Mill in 1935. By 14 October 1938 the guest house was sold for $3150, with a loss of £300.

We believe at this time the Howson Taylor collections and pots were now back in Birmingham at the rear of a painter and decorator shop owned by James A Fernyhough, on 29 Anderson Rd. Fernyhough lived around the corner on Poplar Rd. The Forresters and the Fernyhoughs were well acquainted with each other, James and Robert Fernyhough were presumably one of the children mentioned in the notes of the closure of the Pottery by Mr Westwood.

James and Robert were photographed at the holiday home of Andrew and Beatrice Forrester in 1929. The holiday home was a timber framed building not much more than a shack on a brick foundation with a fireplace and chimney, large lawns and orchards. The house was called “The Red Roof” on Sheepwash Lane, Wolverley. The land where the house sat was sold by Mr Lycett who sold many plots to people who wished to have a bit of the country lifestyle. The area was scattered with caravans, sheds and old Birmingham trams. Andrew and Beatrice Forrester moved into the property in 1939 after the ordeal at Hutcomb Bunny and just before the outbreak of the War. This is the property that the Forresters buried their Ruskin pottery in fear of them being destroyed in the war.

Florence went to live in an apartment near her sister Beatrice in Stourbridge. In 1939 Robert Fernyhough inherited his father’s business. During the war on 15 March 1943, Florence sold Spring Banks back to the person Howson Taylor bought it from, Henrietta Bodsworth for £1700. When the war was over in 1945, Florence travelled to America in December to reunite with Harold and contributed to a flat for him for £3800 in San Francisco. At the James A Fernyhough business the young Robert, 19 years old at the time, would start selling Ruskin Pottery in the shop front alongside antique furniture. He would later take charge in the sale of Florence Taylor’s pieces, selling them as her agent. Florence travelled to England in March 1947. Her visiting purpose was to sell an exhibition of Ruskin Pottery at Frederick Restall Ltd who were house furnishers and interior decorators on Great Hampton Street in Birmingham. It was organised by Robert Fernyhough on 10 July 1947.

The newspaper report of the exhibition stated that ‘the purpose was to display some of this masterly pottery, before the collection owned by Mrs Taylor’s widow goes to America where it will be on view as an example of British craftsmanship.’ More than 300 pieces were on display. The total value was indicated by the fact that individual pieces were priced from about 3-90 guineas.

The exhibition included some choice pieces from the collection of Robert Fernyhough. Fernyhough continued to sell the stock on behalf of Florence. The showroom pieces however were not for sale. Florence did take a few pieces to America with her on visits to her sons, but these were generally small scent bottles and vases. The bulk of the pottery resided with Fernyhough, who in 1959 moved to Bookhouse, Beaudesert near Henley in Arden.

In 1960 Nelly Howson Taylor died. She would be the last sister resident at Highfield Rd (Etty had died in 1957). Robert Fernyhough who remained in contact with the Taylors was present when the house was cleared and renovated. At this time Florence lived two doors away from her sister Beatrice, with her housekeeper Vera Ferguson. She had made a will and left it with Ferguson. Florence died on 6th January 1973, with only one selling exhibition in her lifetime. Her will was never found.

Gallery

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marks-and-labels

Designs from 'The Forms in Pottery' pamphlet.

Shape plate for pottery vases taken from the book Elementary Art Teaching by E.R. Taylor, 1890.

Design plate taken from the Elementary Art Teaching by E.R. Taylor, 1890.

Lily vase with wisteria design.

1927 circa high-fired vase, with moulded decoration.

Early shape number 38 (140 in 1905 catalogue), a honeypot.

factory-catalogues

top-of-the-pots

celebrities

scent-for-a-woman

it-takes-two

let-there-be-light

anyone-for-tea

birth-of-stands

jewellery-and-buttons

the-lost-catalogue

Pages from the A. E. Jones catalogue circa 1905, with illustrations of Ruskin enamels applied to the silver-work.

A. E. Jones cruet set with Ruskin liners.

Liberty and Co 'cymric' range of smalls, incorporating Ruskin bodies circa 1900/1.

Faulkner bronze & Co. ink stand with Ruskin liner.

Ruskin pottery jug with strap-work by Jesson and Birkett circa 1904/5, scissor mark to base.

Jesson and Birkett candlestick holder with applied Ruskin roundels circa 1904/5

High-fired lamp with factory metal fittings.

Successful combination glazed lamp.

Blue crystalline lamp.

Moulded circa 1930s lamp.

Hexagonal crystalline lamp.

Matte glaze, three-handled lamp.

Yellow crystalline lamp.

Lamp cover

Various scent bottles.

Large crystalline scent bottle with a drop-in lid.

Pair of lustre scents and high fire with ivory tops.

William Houson Taylor's showroom high fired scent bottle on stand.

Scent cover

Ruskin's Art Craft 'A' Shape publicity folder circa 1928.

Various vases showcasing crystalline glazes.

Biscuit and puff boxes.

Experimental bowl with trial number.

A page from 'The Arts and Crafts of Ancient Egypt' by W.M.F. Petrie

out-with-the-old

Early coffee can in the 'Chrome 11' glaze.

1921 Ruskin jam pot in the popular 'Chrome 11' glaze with A. E. Jones mounts.

Early tea set in a two-way soufflé glaze.

Tea set in pink lustre glaze.

Early egg cups in a soufflé yellow glaze.

Tea cover

1920s Ruskin cups and saucers in the harlequin glazes.

"This stand is modelled by hand & no two are alike in design or colour" - W. Howson Taylor

1928 Studio page, vases on stand

Ruskin Galleries at Chamberlain Square (right)

Gift to museum by W.H. Taylor

'New high temperature flambé ware' Studio November 1925

Earliest known stand 1912

1925 Paris Exhibition

Silver necklace with Ruskin enamels, circa 1905.

Advertisement from Keswick magazine.

Former Jesson & Birkett design casket made by A. E. Jones.

A. E. Jones copper casket with Ruskin enamel.

1917 Ruskin publicity brochure.

Variety of desirable glazes, aventurine, high-fired and kingfisher.

A. E. Jones brooches with Ruskin enamels.

Cottage industry pewter brooches.

High end Ruskin gold and silver bracelets.

Ruskin brooches, hatpins and cufflinks.

Ruskin enamel buttons, various shapes.

The Guild Buttons accessories.

Early Ruskin heart enamels, unmounted.

Ruskin buttons on factory cards.

A. E. Jones buckle and buttons set with Ruskin enamels.

E. R. Taylor, Headmaster of The Birmingham School of Arts and William Howson Taylor, the potter.

House fittings under the name of Taylor Brothers, circa 1901.

Two sample pages of the 1913 catalogue.

Forms in Pottery pamphlet, circa 1900.

Howson Taylor Master Potter

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A Memoir with an appreciation of Ruskin Pottery
By L. B. Powell

City of Birmingham School of Printing
Central School of Arts & Crafts
Margaret Street
1936

FOREWORD BY THOMAS BIRKETT

To all who appreciate fine craftsmanship, this little book is dedicated. William Howson Taylor was a great craftsman; his medium was the potter’s clay, and the glazes applied to it: his tools were the potter’s wheel and the firing kiln. With these he produced some of the finest pottery the world has seen: fine in shape and colour; some rich, some delicate, some subtle. Therefore he should not lightly be forgotten

William Howson Taylor is dead: his works will be joy to future generations, and it is the purpose of these pages to put upon record such facts as can be ascertained of the history of the pottery, which in 37 years, from 1898 to 1935, became world famous; so that the collector of the future may know something of the circumstances which attended its production. Like all honest craftsmen, he was man of great simplicity, shy and modest, with a very lovable character; inarticulate about his work but a cheerful companion, loved and admired by all his work people and all who came into personal relationship with him. But there was no false modesty: he had full knowledge that he was producing good work and was proud of it.

In July, 1935, the pottery was finally closed and Mr. Taylor and his wife went to live in a cottage at Tuckenhay, near Totnes, South Devon. It was hoped to enjoy many years of well earned retirement practising his one other hobby- gardening. He had been unwell for some time and died in a local hospital on Sunday evening, September 22nd, 1935, and was buried in the churchyard of Ashprington.

To assist the collector, all the known ‘marks’ used by Taylor are reproduced. Some pieces were left entirely unmarked.

Thanks are due to Mrs. Howson Taylor, and the Misses Taylor, his sisters, for much useful Information about Mr. Howson Taylor; to Mr. H. Percy Marshall, the Borough Librarian of Smethwick, for reading the proof; to the Sun Engraving Co. Ltd., Watford, for the colour blocks used in the illustration; and to Mr. Leonard Jay, Head of the Birmingham School of Printing, for his generous helpfulness.

HOWSON TAYLOR MASTER POTTER 1876-1935

Ceramic art provides one of the most outstanding examples in the whole realm of artistic activity where the application of aesthetic sense elevates things of common use to the point of enshrining, for its own sake, the appeal of beauty. And its beauty comes surprisingly, if for moment we can think of the matter primitively. For what can seem less likely to possess beauty enduringly than pot, the very name of which, brief, and blunt, wholly lacks grace? Yet what is lovelier when clay, meanest of earth’s substances, has known the cunning of an artist’s hand, an alchemy of mind as well as of the furnace? Shakespeare, seeking analogy for loss of spotless reputation, turned to ‘gilded loam and painted clay.’ Yet muddy reputation bears no comparison with the well-finished product of the potter’s art: Shakespeare was thinking of the baseness of the material, and base enough it is, lowly enough in place and estimation, until metamorphosed by the artistic spirit.

It is probably the oldest of the arts: can be looked upon as having given primitive man, who sought and moulded the clay of alluvial plains and river beds, his earliest impulse towards the intelligent appreciation of form, this form being something apart from the creations of nature’s own inexhaustible invention. When to form was added colour, and to colour the subtleties of glazing, fine pottery came to be numbered among the prized possessions of men, and has so remained, for thousands of years.

It has a background historically, and in sociological interest as well as aesthetic value, as fascinating as that of any other art, and one just as changeful. In the old dynasties and autocracies of the East, the master potter enjoyed Royal indulgence which went to the length of ensuring complete freedom from economic uncertainty; in the new democracies of the West (the few that are left), he struggles to make a desperate living by his art. But the love of fine pottery persists. It survives ages of degeneracy in artistic taste because it is not an exclusive art—is indeed anything but esoteric in appeal; and because the desire to see beauty of form and loveliness of colour, even in the common objects that surround us, is the expression of a human need which will not be extinguished easily. Those who are wise, therefore, are grateful when a master potter rises in their midst whose approach to the art has the same insight and is similar in technical skill when compared with that of the illustrious potters of the ancient world.

Such a man was William Howson Taylor, and the fact is reason enough for the production of this small volume, which seeks to record while the memory of him is fresh an career, and an appreciation of Ruskin pottery, made under estimate of his qualities as an artist, a brief outline of his the ceaseless inspiration of his skill, which has enriched public and private collections everywhere.

Heredity took a larger share in the shaping of Howson Taylor’s career than is the case with many artist-craftsmen. The potter’s furnace looms like a symbol of destiny in the background of his family history for generations. His father, Edward Richard, a former head of Birmingham Central School of Art, was a native of Hanley and came of a long line of potters. Born in 1876, William Howson grew up from infancy with the feel of the potter’s clay known to his hands, the love of form instinctive in his heart, and the fascination of colour ever present to him. But he knew the early sharpness of economic necessity which fate seems to decree shall be the lot of most artists labouring to give new beauty to the world and nothing less than this was the aim of father and son, for both were wholly uncommercial, and sensitive only to art. Three years of experimenting on his own account with clays and glazes and colours had seen Edward Taylor’s savings diminish almost to vanishing point, for the hobby was an expensive one: and Howson was in his middle twenties, eager for a potter’s career, when his father called together the family (three daughters and two sons), acquainted them with the slenderness of his resources, and sought their advice whether to stop or go on. Unanimously they agreed to go on, and Howson Taylor must have rejoiced that the enthusiasm of his schooldays (he had spent his youthful leisure experimenting with a kiln at home) was not prematurely to be extinguished.

For a few more years, Edward Taylor, with the assistance of his son, struggled against the obstinate refusal of the world to admit the excellence of his pottery. At length the tide turned. The pottery gained a notable award at an International Exhibition at St. Louis in 1904. It won great distinction two years later in Milan, where it had to contend with the best modern ceramic art of Italy. It was then that a Japanese expert affirmed Ruskin pottery to be worthy of comparison with the finest of the Ming period. London’s recognition came at an exhibition in 1908, and Brussels, in 1910, added one more to these early distinctions.

In 1912 Edward Richard Taylor died. He had lived long enough to see his pottery acknowledged in important places and by important people: had seen in the son, who now assumed complete control of the business, the awakening of a genius which was to place Ruskin pottery yet more securely among the finest pottery of any time.

During the ensuing years many thousands of pieces were sent to America at rising prices. A firm place was found even in the markets of the Far East. One by one the European galleries, and others elsewhere, acquired specimens, and there are now few important galleries where the products of the little factory at Smethwick are not represented. Royal families, including our own, purchased examples for their own collections.

With these bright auspices attending it, the manufacture of Ruskin pottery for a few years enjoyed financial success. Then came the Great War, and with it neglect of the arts which persisted, with occasional signs of recovery, throughout the post-war years. Thenceforward the tale of Ruskin pottery, in the purely commercial sense, is briefly told.

For some years, though its beauty and variety continually increased under the influence of Howson Taylor’s fertile skill, the undertaking existed on a falling turnover. Eventually he faced a prospect bitter for any man wedded to art—the need for commercialising his production by turning out inexpensive examples which in this case would be cast in moulds instead of thrown on the potter’s wheel. This he did in a final attempt to keep his workers together, but it met with only temporary success. In 1934 Mr. Taylor accepted what he then regarded as almost inevitable, and decided to close the factory and discharge the people with whom he had been one since earliest days, working among them with his own hands, supervising their efforts with the closest personal attention, imparting to them his own enthusiasm. For the better part of a lifetime his imagina tion had been spent in evolving form from formless clay, giving it an exquisite beauty, rivalling in its surface treat ment the lustre of gems and embodying rich or subtle harmonies of colour inspired, very often, by the variety to be found in nature, as in the wonders of mingled colour in shallow rocky pools left by receding tides, or in the bloom wrought by sunshine and gentle airs on a fully ripened peach.

For 35 years Howson Taylor lived for his pottery, and took not a single long holiday, but spent many of his Saturday afternoons in the country in the company of his workers, finding vastly more in common than is usual between employer and employed. His story is one of single minded devotion to an art rare in modern days. In spirit he belonged more to medieval times than to the twentieth century. Modest to a degree which sometimes daunted his friends for he would rarely speak and rarely wrote of his craft-his retiring disposition kept his name in the background while the fame of the ware he produced grew everywhere. To meet and converse with him was to be dissolved one gained the conviction that he was a man in conscious of immense reserve, but when his diffidence was whom the ceramic art had been a sustained—and sustaining-passion, and whose completeness of expression in it was preordained. In humility and gentleness of mind, in the excellence of his skill and wholehearted absorption in it, he was a modern Fra Angelico, translating his gifts into clay.

In the period—roughly a year—which followed the announcement of the closing of the factory, Howson Taylor coloured, glazed and fired a large number of pieces remaining in stock in biscuit form—i.e., the clay having undergone its first process of baking. It is no secret among those who knew him well that in this valedictory period some of the finest of his work was produced, and it was characteristic of him that, freed finally of all commercial considerations, he should devote to these pieces a more intensive degree of skill than ever before. He had, on his own confession, never worked for financial profit. His driving force had been from youth onwards the artistic impulse born in him. That impulse had come to him from ancestors whose lives had been spent in the Five Towns, but its roots ran far deeper, penetrating, indeed, almost as deeply into the past as the art of pottery itself. Probably no modern potter knew more than he the ancient processes of his craft. He was near to the masters of the past alike in mental approach and technical method. He stood at the end of a long line of potters, direct in descent, and was the epitome of all they knew, exceeding them in the excellence of his skill, the depth of his knowledge, and the prescience with which he could assimilate and exemplify the oldest traditions of the art. It has been said that his ‘secrets’ died with him, and it is true that, before his retirement in 1935, he did destroy with his own hands many papers relating to technical matters such as body mixtures and glazes. But to speak of jealously guarded formulae and to regard the matter as being one of rule and precedent, all of which could be set down on paper, is to under-estimate sadly the personal inspiration and skill of the potter’s craft. His mastery over material is no less a personal art than that of the painter and sculptor, and what died with Howson Taylor was that which dies with every artist - dies with him, but lives on in his work.

We cannot consider the qualities which give Ruskin ware its assured place among the finest pottery of any time without also considering what the essential characteristics are which give pottery its validity as an art-form. Like every other art, it possesses qualities, inherent in its nature, the complete realisation of which gives perfection. But it is also, again like every other art, amenable to other qualities, not essen tial to its nature, which are borrowed for the sake of the adornment they are considered to yield. All the arts are addicted to this borrowing from each other: in periods of artistic decadence the borrowing is widespread and inten sive, a habit which becomes a vice, tending to obscure the real nature of the art concerned, until it may become diffi cult to perceive what are the authentic qualities of any given form of art. In England, for example, the anecdotal pictures of Victorian painters deadened perception of the intrinsic qualities of painting as an expression of the aesthetic spirit. Music, when descriptive,’ is less than itself, sculpture is weakened by the extent to which its purpose is conceived as the literal representation of the human form.

We can, of course, admire such technical skill as may be exhibited in an art-form in which the borrowing has been great, but unless the right of form to exist independently in its own free world be recognised, the re-assertion of that right is bound to seem strange, ill-mannered, perverse;
and will evoke vague sensations of unrest in us.

Pottery, as much as music, sculpture, and painting, possesses its own exclusive nature of appeal. If it does frequently go to external sources for inspiration, this in spiration is not concerned with the fundamental quality of pottery, which is form. Within the world of form the artist is free imaginatively, and restricted literally only by the nature of his medium, and the purpose the result may be expected to serve.

Colour obviously ranks next to form, and must be considered as a primary quality. Glazing, and other methods of surface treatment, linear and plastic forms of decoration, are secondary considerations, like musical variations adorning a main theme. Pottery is therefore like sculpture, obeying the same necessity for an aesthetic evolution of form, and as with sculpture, pottery has to be thought of, and mentally felt ‘in the round,’ as thing existing in space and presenting a similar artistic appeal from whatever angle it is regarded. It is near paint ing when the use of colour is decorative, and when these two qualities, aesthetic form and decorative colour, are combined aptly, pottery attains its highest degree of ex pression, becomes a work of art, yielding an extraordinary feeling of calmness and repose. And unlike all other arts, it tempts the sense of touch as an exercise of the aesthetic spirit. Thus when we see a finely made example of the potter’s art, we feel impelled not only to enjoy the appeal of its colour, but to handle it as well, to let our fingers run over its surface, to appreciate by touch its volume and shape, its lightness or perhaps its weight. In so doing we experience an extension of the purely mental apprecia tion of the beauty of form, and are near, if indeed we are not actually exercising in a slighter degree, the primitive impulse, the source of aesthetic emotion, which in pottery been known to men irrespective of race or climate. For has been a sustained passion through the ages, and has thousands of years the Chinese have believed that constant loving handling and contemplation of their little carvings inspire us too when we have in our hands a beautiful piece of ceramic art. This blending of the physical with the of jade brought suavity and composure to the owner and kept depravity from the heart, and such a feeling may intellectual appreciation is worth pondering.

Walter Pater was right when suggesting that the touchstone of value in art is sensation, but the sensation is fuller and likely to yield deeper rhythmic significance, when visual awareness is heightened by the sense of touch.

The impulse which inspired Howson Taylor in his Smethwick factory was one and the same with that which stirred men who made their bronzes and pottery in the valleys of the Yangtze and the Yellow River ages before the Christian era began. Neither in method nor in spirit did he differ from the potters of ancient times in Old Cairo, Alexandria, Damascus. He was a great potter because of this identity of spirit with them.

But if pottery is like sculpture in one thing, near paint ing in another, we shall see how it is freer than either in one important direction. Between the idea or the vision, and its complete realisation externally, the sculptor and the in the course of which the initial conception may be painter contend with the long physical labour of creation weakened. What the painter and the sculptor see and feel in a visionary sense may diminish in intensity as a driving force or disappear completely before the act is finished, unless he has the skill of genius to retain the impulse un impaired. But the potter sitting at his wheel, swiftly controlling with sensitive thumbs and fingertips and palms what was a minute ago an amorphous lump of clay, is in a better position than either, his artistic impulse grow ing, assuming reality as the material in his hands comes to shape. It may be said, with very near approximation to the truth, that thought and the form become one in his hands: his impulse springs swiftly to aesthetic life, gains at once in significance. In all art this sense of immediacy is inherent.

In Howson Taylor it was ever present, and is the quality of which we are aware, at first subtly perhaps, and then with increasing conviction, every time we regard the assembled examples of his art. It is the more remarkable that this should be so when we consider the fascinating variety of forms his pottery assumed. The variety indeed seemed endless, yet there were very few occasions in the whole of the great output from the Ruskin works when it could be said that the aesthetic conception of form, as thing pure and satisfying in itself, had been violated, or that instinct for the right thing was lacking. The fact offers impressive proof of the depth to which this master potter’s instincts were rooted in the past, and even when his wonderful achievements in colour and glazing are duly considered, I am disposed to think that this one quality, the directness with which artistic thought was realised in satisfying form, must remain the outstanding character istic in Howson Taylor’s art.

The glorious range of colours he achieved, the almost infinite subtleties of tone, the rich ness of glazes and variety of surface finishes, tend naturally to obscure this simple truth. These were the refinements of his art, and they called for an intensity of research, depth of insight, a patience and skill which have not been equalled in the ceramic art of our own time: but he was first and foremost a creator of form in thrown clay, excel ling in this before excelling in his command over the mysterious and captivating resources of high temperature firings. We cannot assess accurately his place among the great ceramists without first considering the sources of his inspiration to create pure form.

If we accept the view that art is a lowly but marvellous symbol of the cosmic order itself, it becomes easy to regard its humblest manifestations as having universal significance. The well-shaped vase, so well balanced that we cannot speak of its ‘proportions,’assumes as it were an eloquence as complete in its way as any expression of the sculptor’s art. Its maker has evolved order out of chaos, given meaning to shapeless clay. And dealing with such material, he works in a very wide field of ästhetic emotion and activity. Within it, he arrives at form by a process of mystical intuition. Confronted with the plasticity of clay and the equilibrium of the wheel on which it is thrown, he may build up a structure in perfect harmony with thought: and its form is the fruit of a rhythmic gesture, owing nothing to narrow naturalism, but possessing its own logic, from beginning to end. In such manner, it is clear, Howson Taylor worked.

With remarkably few exceptions, his shapes were in the artistic sense of the word powerful, possessed of a dynamic symmetry which was the result of vision and energy fused into one, and they gained elegance without any indulgence in ostentatious virtuosity. In this imaginative apprehension of form he was much nearer to the Oriental than the Hellenic spirit.

He had a breadth and power and restraint in form which may be compared worthily with the best examples of The Sung Dynasty, the classic age in China’s ceramic art. While the Greek potter, and even the Chinese potter during certain dynasties, were influenced by painting and metallurgy and resorted to archaic and naturalistic conceptions of form and decoration, this modern English potter expressed his artistic faith in pure form, and was content to leave to others the representational antics which have debased ceramic art at many times, and in many places. Nymphs and shepherdesses, character-groups and Toby jugs, made no appeal to his sense of the significant. These and many an allegorical fancy expressed in pottery had done for the art what the Georgian periwig and the Roman toga had done for eighteenth century English sculpture, and he left them severely alone.

If I have emphasised in the foregoing Howson Taylor’s claim to distinction as the creator of pottery fine in form, that has been because his success in the realm of colour was such that it might, in some minds, obscure his great sense of plastic values. In form he used the clay to demonstrate laws known with a certitude borne of the generations of potters preceeding him. In colour, by the nature of things, he was less guided by certainties of intuition, and was from first to last an experimentalist, seeking from natural substances the inspiration for his brilliant hues, the subtlety and richness of his harmonies of colour, and the depth of tone he so often achieved. He laboured to win for the fired clay some of the most beautiful of natural effects. The bloom of the peach has been mentioned, and it was characteristic of his zeal that he should seek, like the Chinese, to perpetuate so transient a charm, and succeeded with soft rose-coloured glazes, delicately flecked with the colour of peach, which permitted the fine underground to shine through.

But any general consideration of colour in Ruskin pottery must be preceeded by a brief outline of the materials and methods used, inevitably brief, for the melancholy reason that so little is known definitely, and we can only speculate upon the formula and processes by which some of his most wonderful results were achieved. In the earliest days of the kilns at Smethwick a local clay was used, from pit not many yards away, and it was characteristic of the farther than this for material. It was used at first princi founder of Ruskin works that, at first, he should go no pally for tiles. They were the humble beginnings of an art soon to enrich salons and Royal drawing rooms and private and public collections of ceramics everywhere. This local clay was soon found to be unsuitable for the finer work Howson Taylor longed to produce, and it was abandoned for a mixture in which the essential ingredients were ball clay and china clay, stone and calcined flint. These gave fine white body, which was used thereafter for all Ruskin products.

Lead, which had been used for so long in the coarser glazes of cheap pottery, was eschewed at the outset, and for the fine art productions of the factory no moulding, cast ing, or machine processes were employed in the potting, nor were printing, lithography or gilding used in the decoration. The latter was always hand-painted, or em bossed or impressed upon the clay. In short, the true artist’s respect for his material was a characteristic ever present, and contributed largely to the purity of form, the richness of glaze, the delicacy of tone or sheer joy of colour which are the outstanding qualities of Ruskin ware. And as the colours used were nearly always incorporated with the glaze, they were obtained in the main from the few oxides which offer the necessary degree of resistance to the great heat of the potter’s furnace.

Even so, we know that the of colour treatment and glazing.The first were the soufflé colour effects obtainable were almost unlimited. Broadly speaking, Ruskin ware is divided into three main groups wares, with or without hand-painted patterns, in which single dominant colour is present, varied often by mottlings, cloudings and gradations of tone. In this group the colours range from deep blues and greens to turquoise and apple-green, purple to mauve and warm pink, soft greys and celadons. Particularly beautiful is the celadon ware, which, in refinement of colour and elegance of form, offers evidence of the admiration the Smethwick potter felt for the work of the Chinese masters. The ware to which the name celadon is given existed in the T’ang period (A.D. 618-907) and became one of the glories of ceramic art during the Sung Dynasty (A.D. 960-1279). It may have been named after the Sultan Saladin(1138-1193); though a much later theory assigns the origin of the name to the green dress of the shepherd Céladon in D’Urfé’s pastoral play ‘L’Astrée’ of the early seventeenth century.

In the Ruskin soufflé group, many examples were decor ated with hand-painted patterns in one flat colour. If Howson Taylor’s career had been prolonged, it is reason ably certain that he would have turned again and again to the task of endeavouring to recapture the beautiful waxy surface quality, the bewitching colour-tone of green and the wide brown crackles of the Sung celadons such as were seen in the Chinese Art Exhibition at Burlington House.

The second group comprised a wide range of examples incorporating a new treatment of lustres, developed by much patient research, and yielding many beautiful decor ative effects. Colours in the lustres included lemon-yellow and orange, sometimes with an under-glaze pattern in green or bronze, delphinium blue and kingfisher blue, pinks, purples, turquoise, light and grey greens and browns, and in every case the lustres, like those of the best periods of ceramic art, served to enhance the distinctive pottery character of the form by giving it depth.

But exceptional though Howson Taylor’s achievements more he would still have been a great potter—the full were in these two groups and if he had done nothing In the soufflé and lustre groups, monochromes and colour glory of his art is not seen till we come to the flambé ware. schemes could be repeated at will: correct mixtures in glazing combined with certain temperatures and careful timing could be relied upon to produce results which would show little variation. Much higher temperatures were used in the firing of flambé pieces, the precise result in colour could not be foretold, and each left the furnace as a unique and unrepeatable example. The great heat to which they were subjected produced interpenetrating and palpitating colour effects of astonishing range and beauty, and we can well imagine the fascination with which the completion of a firing must have been watched, and the hope perpetually attending it that by some subtle factor due to the mixing of the colours, the heat, the position of the clay in the furnace, or to all three, there would be produced a new masterpiece of undreamt of beauty, worthy to stand alongside the world’s finest examples of ceramic art. Uncertainty may have filled the potter’s mind on such occasions, but it was a glorious uncertainty.

Just as in form there had been no manipulation, no slight pressure or relaxation of the potter’s thumb that had not its meaning, so in colour there was no applica tion, no touch of oxides here or there, no scrupulous regulation of the heat of the furnace or duration of the firing which it was not expected, or hoped, would yield beautiful result. It was an art in which too much thought could not be taken, nor too much care exercised, and if beauty came by chance, it was not until after much diligent labour had been expended to make it so. The wide range of exquisite purples, rose-purples, mauves suffused with crim sons, and ivories with that strange greyish crimson known as pigeon’s blood, above all, the glorious sang de boeuf examples, all are a tribute to Howson Taylor’s unceasing determination to make his clay bloom with a richness or delicacy of colour which could be compared with little if any loss of distinction to the finest achievement of Chinese ceramic art.

The comparison of his work with that of the Ming period—a comparison made early in his career was recalled at the outset of these comments on Ruskin pottery. But I think a more just comparison may be made with some of the best examples of the Sung period. The maker of Ruskin ware was nearer in spirit and in craftsmanship to the masters of the Sung Dynasty than to those of any other period; and as it was they who brought the world’s greatest ceramic art to its most wonderful efflorescence, it is measure of his excellence that he invites comparison with them. He had much of the classic dignity, the breadth and power of form which characterized Sung work, and his colours and glazing, if they were not absolutely the equal of Sung ware, came as near to it as any ceramic art since created.

It becomes indeed a fascinating exercise of one’s aesthetic sense to make a direct comparison between, for example, one of the rich rose-purple pieces of Sung Chün and a similar piece of Ruskin. Taylor followed one of the main tendencies of the Sung period in the preference he showed for monochromes, and again in his insistence upon the use of one dominant colour in polychromatic pieces. The minor, or subordinate, hues in his colour schemes were suffused with the others with hardly less subtlety than that which characterized Sung art, and his sang de boeuf pieces have a brilliance of colour and warm depth of glazing which combine to yield a decorative richness capable of holding its own beside the best Chinese examples. If he did not explore the mysteries of colour quite so deeply as the of tone and surface texture in the celadons, or achieve quite Chinese, or capture so completely their indescribable beauty the same warm life in the glazing which makes the experi ence of looking at a fine Sung example an annihilation the same high category of technical accomplishment, un of space and time, nevertheless he stands with them in equalled in his own day.

It is fairer, I maintain, to compare him with the Sung potters rather than with those of the Ming epoch, not least because Ming ware, though it remained considerably monochromatic, saw the develop ment of decoration to an extent which Howson Taylor never aspired to emulate. It is true that he often applied decoration in hand-painted patterns, or in the form of the clay by slightly raised under-glaze designs, but his restraint in these directions is a marked point of departure from later Ming ware. Purity of the shape, beauty of the colour, and life of the glaze were his absorbing aims. He never ceased experimenting in colour and glazing, continually going to nature for inspiration, deriving it from a wide maidenhair fern against a grey background. To achieve delphinium, perhaps from the colour and form of variety of sources, a leopard’s skin, the particular tone of
some of his most charming effects in suffused colour, he would often give an example more than one firing, till an early colour had been burned away and only the merest hint remained, to fade almost imperceptibly into the new one.

It was experiments such as this which engaged him to the last, and made him yet more eager towards the end of his life than he was at the beginning to win new beauty from his craft; and it was by efforts such as these that he gave to some of his latest examples a surpassing loveliness of colour and surface quality in dappled greys and greens and rich purples and crimsons.

Throughout his career, Howson Taylor’s research in colour and glazing was progressive, and yielded an increasing mastery of his craft, which brought him constantly nearer to the consummate excellence of the ancient Chinese. The abandonment of the local clay in his young days was dictated by the desire for a whiter and purer ‘body’ which would yield greater luminosity in colour. During the early period, his most successful pieces were the translucent greens and blues, especially the lapis lazuli shades. Later, he devoted a great deal of attention to the blood reds and greys, and his grey pieces with a slight blush of red are highly prized by collectors who appreciate the real difficulties of potting.

These in the *flambé *pieces, which included a very wide range of copper reds and greys and greens, were fired at a temperature of about 1600° centigrade, where control is very limited and minute differences accounted for big changes in colour. For the mingling and gradations of colour, and the intensity of application of the various metal oxides, but upon the quan perature and the chemical composition of the glazes and the colour itself, were dependent not only upon the tem tity of sulphur present in the kiln, and the position of the pieces. Thus, of two pieces of ware, each given a coating of the same glaze and each treated in exactly similar fashion. one might come out pale blue and grey, another blood red and grey. It will be apparent, therefore, with what intense interest the opening of a large kiln, containing perhaps £1,000 worth of ware, would be watched, and how, in the early days, there were many painstaking attempts to decide and record precisely what factors had gone to deter mining the result, so that in future it might be repeated.

In this manner a great amount of knowledge accumulated gradually, and from what was in the first place largely speculative art, the results of which could be foreseen only vaguely, there was developed, by empiric methods, something approaching a scientific degree of control. Yet the possibilities in colour and tone and surface treatment remained inexhaustible: the more certain knowledge be came, the more apparent did it become that mixtures and glazing and temperatures, to mention only the main factors, held many secrets, the discovery of which was the reward of endless patience and intuition. During the last four or five years much attention was devoted at Ruskin Works to the production of crystalline and matt glazed wares, and their maker often spoke with pride of the suc cess which attended his research into the production of these glazes.

The highest technical achievement of the in recapturing something like the Chinese depth and Smethwick potter, however, was beyond question his success in recapturing something like the Chinese depth and brilliance of glazing and colour in the wonderful sang de boeuf. His greys, greens, blues and yellows were distinctive and full of charm, but the sheer joy of colour in the Ruskin sang de boeuf remains one of the glories of modern ceramic art, and it may be predicted confidently that, just as the have been treasured for centuries, losing nothing of the well-nigh priceless examples of the Sung and Ming periods beauty with which they came fresh from the kilns, so these Ruskin examples will be prized for many generations.

The underglaze red was an invention of the Chinese, and has been at all times one of the most difficult of all ceramic colours to control. The softening and deepening of the colour by the high temperature at which the glaze was melted, and its infinite gradations through purples to smoky greys and lavenders, yield the richest artistic results, perhaps the equal, in quality, of the indescribable depth and softness of the Sung celadons. The most refractory of glazes proved only a temptation to Howson Taylor to experiment further, continually searching for true pottery colour, and always insisting on underglaze painting, method vastly differing from on-glaze painting, which in the Ming period opened the way to the decadence of naturalistic realism in decoration. Underglaze painting freedom and fidelity to pottery as an art form which characterized the best Chinese work could be recovered: and this singleness of purpose dominated the whole of his was to him the only method by which the richness and artistic life.

Though a man of such humility and modesty when it came to discussing his work in terms of commercial value, Howson Taylor by no means underestimated the worth of his finer pieces, a fact which may be judged from the knowledge that he insured one for £850.

In the matter of marking his ware, he was so wayward that the determination of a chronological table of marks seems well-nigh impossible. The earliest ware was known as Taylor pottery, and the first mark used apart from the name was a rough approximation of a pair of scissors treated in the same way as the old Dresden mark of the crossed swords. During this early period the ware was also identified by the initial letters of his name in the form of monogram. The name of Taylor was dropped when the early international successes were achieved. At that time Ruskin’s influence upon the arts and crafts of England was at its height, and both Edward Richard and Howson Taylor were earnest disciples of his gospel of honesty in art of all kinds. Ruskin’s permission to use his name on the pottery was sought, and it was used as early as 1904. Not for some years, however, was the registering of the name Ruskin pottery considered, and the letter from Mrs.Severn which made this possible is appended, together with a list of the marks used.

In 1926 Howson Taylor presented to the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, in memory of his father, an excellent collection of his work, in which are to be seen some of the most beautiful sang de boeuf specimens. The South Kensington Museum, the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, the Leeds, Nottingham, and Stoke-on-Trent Galleries have notable collections, and many important galleries throughout the world possess examples. It was character istic of Mr. Taylor that he presented, shortly before his retirement, a collection to the Public Library at Smeth wick. It includes several examples brought from the kilns in the last year of his activity as a potter, when he was thinking of his retirement. True to the undertaking it has been understood he gave to his father not to sell what knowledge he could impart, he declined several offers for the acquisition of the factory, and with his departure from had been in one man’s lifetime a substantial pageant, in Smethwick the production of Ruskin pottery ceased. It which beauty succeeded beauty and ceramic art experienced once more a rebirth of the technical mastery and pure aesthetic sense of old. Artistic passion sustained all he did, and if the making of Ruskin pottery enjoyed only a brief glory in years, its examples remain, to be treasured, beyond doubt, for centuries.

The letter from Mrs. Severn giving Howson Taylor permission to use the name of Ruskin is as follows:
Brantwood, Coniston Lake, 6th August, 1909.
‘Dear Sir, We got back from the opening of the Ruskin Exhibition at
Keswick yesterday evening too late to catch post or even to unpack until this morning the pottery you have so kindly sent, as specimens of your work. It has greatly interested my husband and myself and we think it more than kind that you should wish us to accept as a gift, the specimens—some of which we greatly admire, and feel sure Mr. Ruskin himself would also especially those with the beautiful opalescent colouring and the more joyous blues, greens and golds, rather than the dull, sombre deep reds and browns. There is an exquisite green bowl that every colour goes well with. We have tried red currants, grapes, etc., and they all look lovely on it, and there is a vase of the same into which I have put my best roses, pink and deep red. It now stands in Ruskin’s study in front of his portrait, and I feel we can now, gladly, give you permission to patent his name for your pottery. green leaves round are very lovely and delicate and so The opalescent golden yellow bowls with wreath of light to hold in the hand. The coppery one, though so rich, looks almost as if it were metal. The turquoise candle-sticks are charming and stand solidly, though having no rim, will need glasses and I am not sure whether the little saucer is to hold the thing of same hue as our egg-cup, or extinguisher.

The deep lapis lazuli blue is very fine-though I almost wish the inner side of the wretched little bowl were blue also, instead of purple. Then even on the dark ones there is a wonderful bloom, almost like that on a ripe plum. The greyish vase is not so interesting in colour—though useful in form—but it is delightful the variety and unexpected colouring that comes in varied light. Please kindly send us your coloured illustration’ circular, that we may show it here to friends who may wish to get some.
Believe me, dear Sir, faithfully yours,
(Signed) Joan Ruskin Severn.

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Sat, 06 Feb 2021 13:11:44 +0000

Newspaper articles about Ruskin Pottery and the Taylors

Fifty odd years ago I entered upon my chosen vocation by becoming the first student in the old School of Art at Burslem- a fact which I recalled two months ago in a connection with the opening of the new Wedgwood School of Art. The Burslem School was in those days held in a low room, about the size of an ordinary dining-room, situate in the yard of the Legs of Man Inn, and the late Mr. J. Muckley, an old Birmingham student, was the art master. Burslem wore in my early rememberance a very aspect to that which it presents to-day. It was a comely town, with green fields and pleasant gardens within a “few minutes” walk from any part of it, and there was a beautiful stretch of country between Goldenhill and Lane End and between, Hanley and Silverdale. From the Burslem school, I passed on as a student in training at South Kensington, I have a memory of seeing both the Great Exhibition of 1851 and that of 1852. Of the former what I most visibly remember was the glass fountain made by Messrs, Osler and that forest trees were inside a building, and by ascending to the galleries one could get among the upper branches with the sparrows flying about. At the latter, among other work, I made a water colour drawing of Messrs. Hardman’s exhibit of ecclesiastical metalwork of Waring’s “Art Treasures”. In the latter year I obtained the appointment of headmaster of the newly provided School of Art at Lincoln, and at the beautiful cathedral city in the Fens I remained for thirteen years or so.

Gift from the students of Lincoln School of Arts

When I went to Lincoln I thought of being an art teacher only, but a mere incident led me to work of a more individual nature. The honorary secretary of the Art School was a cathedral canon, and also an amateur painter. I was out with him one day when I happened to notice a fine old man, and at once exclaimed that I should like to paint him. “Well,” said the canon, “he is one of my parishioners and I’ll get him to sit for you.” I finished the picture and when May came round I sent it to the Royal Academy direct, instead of to a packing agent. In those days no notice was sent out to exhibitors as to whether they had secured a place or not, and a fortnight passed before I ventured to send for a catalogue. Imagine my delight to find that the picture was “in” and not only accepted but well(*) hung. How long ago this was may be realised when I mention that this was in the day of the old rooms now occupied by the National Gallery. In the following year a portrait of my mother, entitled “Knitting,” also found place on the Royal Academy walls.

At Burlington House

On removing to Burlington House, the Royal Academy attempted to secure the better hanging of pictures by not overcrowding, and this first year in the new rooms I had a large picture on the line with plenty of wall space all around it; but the overcrowding soon began again. I think artists would prefer that their pictures should not be hing tha badly hung. Other pictures which I have exhibited at the Royal Academy were “Nearing Home.” a life-size picture of sailors looking out of the porthole of a man-of-war, which was engraved in “The Graphic,” with an extract from a very favourable Press notice of the picture by W.M Rossetti; “The Cloister Well,” a large picture of Lincoln Cathedral; “Twas a Famous Victory,” painted in the Midland Institute from a few hours sketch in the National Gallery, the caretaker of the Institute sitting for the veteran; and several landscapes. While sculpture has greatly improved, painting is, with one or two notable exceptions, in an ebb tide as compared with the sixties, when an Academy exhibition would contain several pictures by Millais, and pictures by Watts, Mason, Walker, Hook, Whistler, Orchardson, Linnell, Alma Tadema, and others of high standing, while outside was the work of Holman Hunt, Ford Madox Brown, Rossetti, and Burne-Jones.

Nearing Home, etching from The Graphic

While at Lincoln I remember Chancellor Benson relating a story of how the only art education he received was from the famous headmaster of King Edward’s School in Birmingham, Dr. Prince Lee, who told him to go to the Round room of the School of Art, now the Royal Society of Artists, and to gaze at the bust of Venus de Milo for half an hour. The only evening students at Lincoln were people mainly engaged in agricultural implement-making, and they took to art as well as to geometry and machine drawing.

My subsequent associations with art work in Birmingham had quite an accidental beginning. I was in those early days a member of the Hogarth Club and while there was one evening Wilmot Pilsbury, the well-known member of the Royal Water-Colour Society, himself a Birmingham man, asked if I was not going in for the art headmastership in Birmingham, which had been vacant for a year, but of which I had not heard. I did so and received the appointment in 1876. On my way back from Birmingham to take up my new work in what was, I think, the oldest school of art in the country I never suspected but that the school was accommodated in a good building. Instead I found it housed in the top room of the old Midland Institute. To reach it was an awful climb up four or five flights of stairs, and the place itself was ill-lighted. I told the late John Henry Chamberlain, who was then chairman, that we must get a new school, but his reply was that so little was the interest locally taken in art education that we should not get five pounds towards the cost of providing a new school. Then there came a period of enlargements at the Institute, and the School of Art, being something of a Cinderella in those days, we had to make the best of temporary quarters in the top rooms of the Council House, and even about the corridors.

The School of Art

When we went back to Institute we had little more room, and the place as still dreadfully crowded and inadequate. Then I met by appointment the late Sir Richard Tangye at a memorable conversazione of the Royal Society of Artists, and had a long conversation with him. All my friends thought that I was selling him pictures, but we were discussing something of much more importance. He asked me at the time not to mention anything of what he had said, as he and his brother, Mr George Tangye, promised first to do something for the Art Gallery. It was sometime later when Sir Richard announced his proposals relative to the School of Art. Thus came about the building of the present school, or, at any rate, the first portion comprising the south and front, Mr Cregoe Colmore giving the land. Mr John Henry Chamberlain, the then chairman, estimated that there was nine times more space than was provided in the old building, but progress was made nevertheless. The number of students increased, additions to the Art School had to be made, and the rest is the story of the continued and gratifying success of the Birmingham School of Art. Among its early students, as everybody knows, were Walter Langley and W.F. Wainwright, and many others who have since obtained distinction.

When I had reached the age of sixty-five my time for retirement came, and the last day of my head mastership, with all its happy surprises and warmth of good wishes from masters and students, is among the best of my memories…

Retirement present given by W.F. Wainwright to E.R. Taylor

Since my retirement I have acted as art examiner for South Kensington, one of my colleagues being the veteran pre-Raphaelite painters, Arthur Hughes, bright and competent as ever; the Society of Art Masters, of which I was, by the way the first chairman; and the Central Welsh Board; and for the Cambridge Locals. I was also the art and technological expert, in conjunction with Mr. Llewellyn Smith as general expert, engaged on the draft of the London County Council scheme for art education, and in that connection I have visited nearly all the art institutions, technical, and many of the secondary, and elementary schools of the Metropolis. In my later days I have turned, with my son, attention to the making of The Ruskin pottery. My father was an earthenware manufacturer at Hanley, and in my youth, therefore, I had seen something of the potter’s craft. The Hanley productions were plain white ware exported largely to the United States. In developing this Ruskin pottery the commercial conditions, so much worse than fifty years ago, were the principal difficulty. The shapes are all made on the potter’s wheel, all decorated by hand, and the painting is all in and under the glaze except the lustre, while only leadless glazes are used.

William Taylor 'pearlware'

Factory stamp

In memory of E.R. Taylor, by Kate Hall 1913

Glaze Types

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In the introduction to the Ruskin Pottery 1905 catalogue Howson Taylor noted the colours and glazes then available. ‘The colourings range from slightly broken single colours, to combinations of colours. The colours used are incorporated with the glazes and are therefore limited to the few oxides and colours, which will resist the great heat of the potters oven, but the colour effects are almost unlimited.’

These were the glazes Howson Taylor called soufflé wares. At that time Taylor could list blues, greens, purples, clair-de-lune, pink, crushed strawberry, yellow, turquoise and other combinations of these colours. These are the standard colours seen on pots of the period. In addition there were colours more difficult to reproduce such as special blues, robins egg blue, sang-de-boeuf, peach bloom and shagreen. Lustres were also listed including the yellow and orange ones recently developed and crystalline, which was likely a brown aventurine glaze. By the time of the 1923 catalogue mauve, greys and celadons had been added.

In the 1912 catalogue Howson Taylor claimed a new treatment of lustres; the lemon yellow and orange lustres being quite new in methods. Kingfisher blue and pearl blister lustres were further mentioned. The catalogue featured real Flambé ware, each piece being unique and unrepeatable. The colourings, textures and patternings were as varied as the number of individual pieces.

From the early 1920s two new colours, bronze and ochre-blue, began to appear as both souffles and lustres. In 1927 Howson Taylor developed a wide range of matte and crystalline glazes which were often combined with pale green, cream or dark and light blue soufflé glazes. Grey high fired glazes were produced in greater numbers in the late 1920s.

Marks And Labels

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1898-1900

Early marks mainly scissors or Taylor stamp on all ‘tocky’ body. WHT stamp mark introduced towards the end of 1900.

1901-1904

White body introduced with marks as above.

1905-1919

White body with exceptions from 1905 and the war period. Oval mark was dropped in 1909 due to imitation by competitors.

1920-1927

Probably the best period of potting. Ruskin England and date was the combination.

1928-1933

Ruskin England and no date used between 1928 to 1929. From 1930 to 1933 date included. WHT signature was frequently used in this period.

Labels

A variety of labels that can be found on Ruskin Pottery.

Designs and Shapes

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Designs

Some of the earliest Ruskin Pottery souffle glazed items have decoration. Several of the pieces submitted to the V&A museum in 1901 are decorated. The firm’s 1905 catalogue stated that when pattern was used it was hand painted and kept subordinate, no attempt being made to be painted realistically, flowers, landscapes or figures. The standard early vase shape 101 often has a circling band of tall Colts foot stems and other small items, vases, ink pots and scent bottles have designs of water Lily pads, Lily of the Valley, fruiting vine or trailing vine, Wisteria, Devil’s ivy and berried ivy. Table wares have rims decorated with bands of leaves with small flowers or berries. There are many variations on the theme of leaf garlands or interlocking leaves and one design has a circle of such leaves with tall plant stems growing from them bearing small bell-like flowers.

Most of the souffle designs were not carried forward to the lustre wares which began to appear in 1906. Many of the yellow and orange lustres of the period are decorated, most often with the fruiting or trailing vine designs. Few new designs appear until two elaborate schemes were introduced, thistle and flowering grasses, beginning in the 1910-1912 period. Decoration on lustres was discontinued in 1921.

There were problems in applying the design to specific coloured glazed backgrounds; over firing would cause the design to slip. The yellow and orange glazes seemed to develop well because the design was put onto a white slip before the colour was applied. Orange, yellow and rarer green were all prone to rubbing.
William Howson Taylor tried many ways of working around this problem of ‘design slip’. One way was to cut out the design in the clay state and then fill it in with glaze. Applying the design over the glazed vase or scratching the design before glossing were also attempted, but these are rare.

As part of the new style Howson Taylor began to develop from 1926 some new decorative ideas were tried; moulded Tudor roses or Celtic-style knots were attached to vases, tube-lined stems with moulded flowers encircle some larger shapes and on a few vases and bowls incised decoration was tried. In the 1928-29 period a distinctive scheme of tube-lined foliage in purple enamel on a turquoise souffle ground was new as was a band of moulded small six petal flowers.

Lily vase with wisteria design.

Early shape number 38 (140 in 1905 catalogue), a honeypot.

1927 circa high-fired vase, with moulded decoration.

Design plate taken from the Elementary Art Teaching by E.R. Taylor, 1890.

Shapes

The shapes of Ruskin Pottery are well represented in the series of catalogues and postcards issued over it’s lifestime. There is some evidence that it was Edward Taylor who was responsible for desgining and developing the early shapes. In his 1890 book ‘Elementary Art Teaching’, he considered the question of proportion in relation to pots and as illustration he selected some vase forms, several of which became the basis of shaped introduced by the pottery. Similar simple but well-proportioned examples are shown in Ruskin’s early ‘Forms in Pottery’ pamphlet where it is stated that they were handmade on the potter’s wheel under Mr. Taylor’s supervision. Twenty-two vase and bowl shapes were illustrated designed by Edward Taylor and they form the basis for the production of the 1900-1904 period. By the time of the catalogue issued in 1905, the number had increased to 255 and the range was further extended in about 1906 to 326, though some thinning out was already beginning and a lot of the shapes are not known in an example. Further additions in a catalogue of about 1909 take the number up to 353, though many more had been deleted. After Edward Taylor’s death in 1912, W. Howson Taylor issued a new catalogue with two colour plates and thirty black and white plates, which showed a selection of vases, bowls and caddies taking the number up to 440. These became the standard items of production for a decade.

Ruskin developed a new range of footed shapes to go with the new lustre glazes of the 1920s and issued a set of post cards illustrating the designs. The next change in style resulted in the production of a promotional folder showing the new Art Craft “A” shapes issued in 1928 followed by a number of coloured postcards at the end of the decade which featured the moulded geometric pieces being introduced. No more promotional material was produced before the closure of the pottery in 1933 so nothing is known relating to the range of lamp bases or the late decorative jugs. The Ruskin shapes of the pre-war period are often said to be Chinese in their inspiration but in fact only twelve of the 255 in the 1905 catalogue relate to Chinese examples though many share the style and proportion of the Chinese classic wares. Like the Chinese, the Ruskin are not subject to the vagaries of fashion and a century on appear timeless. The Art wares adopt, but do not copy, the style of Ancient Egypt and it is only the moulded geometric pieces of the late 1920s which now seem dated.

Designs from 'The Forms in Pottery' pamphlet.

Shape plate for pottery vases taken from the book Elementary Art Teaching by E.R. Taylor, 1890.

Factory Catalogues

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