Over the last century, individual potters and decorators have produced unique, sculptural ceramics that stand apart from mass-produced pieces.

The term ‘Art Pottery‘ has been used since the second half of the 19thC century, often interchangeably with the similar ‘studio pottery‘. Both refer to one-off, individually designed and decorated pieces produced in a workshop run by a craftsman or craft group. The term also encompasses the work of artists who finished individually signed pieces in studios set up by firms such as Doulton and Minton.

The First Studios

By the mid-19th century, almost all Britain‘s pottery and porcelain was industrially produced. In an effort to counter this, a number of small pottery workshops sprang up under the umbrella of the Art Pottery movement. They were inspired by John Ruskin’s call for a return to the crafts tradition of workers being allowed to express their creativity freely.

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The first products of these new potteries came in the 1860s when Doulton began a collaboration with students of the Lambeth School of Art in south London to produce salt-glazed stonewares. Some of the hand- thrown pieces produced at their Lambeth studio were decorated by leading artists of the day such as Hannah Barlow or George Tin- worth, and at auction today these sell for several hundred pounds or more apiece.

Individually signed articles were also produced by the four Martin brothers, whose imaginative animal forms were influenced both by natural history and by ancient grotesques. No two pieces produced at their Fulham and Southall workshops between 1873 and 1915 were the same. These too are highly collectable today; their vases fetch between £ 10o and £3000 and their distinctive bird tobacco jars from £4.00 to £40,000.

The influence of Japanese design on studio potters has been considerable, and can be seen in the work of the 19th-century makers associated with the Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts movements. Their work was designed as ‘art pottery‘ and intended to be beautiful rather than practical.

William de Morgan, who was closely associated with the Arts and Crafts movement, is best known for his blue-green so- called ‘Persian’ wares, based on Turkish Isnik designs of the 16th century. They range from large plaques to a variety of vases, and command very high prices today. Such was the success of these striking one-off pieces that other potters turned to studio work. Staffordshire potter William Moorcroft was responsible from 1898 for the art pottery department at J. Macintyre & Co, where he developed a range of art pottery vases and teawares known as Florian ware.

Other pieces much sought after today came from Pilkington’s Royal Lancastrian Pottery, and from the Della Robb ia Pottery established at Birkenhead in the 1890s.

Later Developments

In the l9th century new names came to be associated with art pottery. Bernard Leach, probably the best-known British potter of the century, established his own works at St Ives, in Cornwall, in 1919, and led a group known as the Craftsman Potters. Working with him were potters such as Shoj i Hamada, Michael Cardew and Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie.

Lucie Rie’s work is noted for its simple, lowing lines, and is much in demand today. She was born in Austria and her early work in earthenware was inspired by the simple forms of metalworker Josef Hoffmann (co-founder of the Wiener Werkstätte in Vienna in r903). After her move to London in 1938, she favoured porcelain and stoneware.

From 1947 to 1958, Rie shared a studio with Hans Coper, now widely regarded as the most influential European ( if not world) potter of this century. They made domestic wares together, as well as producing pieces of their own. Coper worked within a limited range of dramatic forms using subtle textures.

Artist Potters

When, about 1907, potter Andre Metthey opened his Asnieres studio, near Paris, to painters he had met through a dealer, Ambroise Vollard, he started a trend that continued throughout this century. Many distinguished painters of the time, including Edouard Vuillard, Maurice de Vlaminck, Andre Derain and Henri Matisse, experimented with ceramics under Metthey’s technical guidance. A similar collaboration existed from 1922 between Raoul Dufy, Joan Miró and Georges Braque and the Catalan potter Joseph Llorens Artigas.

But perhaps the most innovative ceramics to be produced by an artist this century are those by Pablo Picasso. In 5947 he started to work with Georges and Suzanne Ramie, who ran the Madoura pottery at Vallauris in the south of France, and set up a studio, where he worked regularly until 1966.

Prices for Picasso’s pottery are very high because he is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. As with the work of all great ceramicists, Picasso’s pottery designs fuse three-dimensional form with linear ornament and colour to create a coherent whole. He often left the clay unglazed in areas to accentuate details. In this way, he transformed a plate, pot or vase into a work of art without losing sight of the original object.

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