A.J. Wilkinson
A.J. Wilkinson (Arthur J. Wilkinson, Royal Staffordshire Pottery) was a pottery or potbank at Newport in Burslem, owned by the Shorter family since 1894. A sprawling complex of bottle ovens, kilns and production shops, it lay beside the Trent and Mersey Canal, the artery which provided it with coal and the raw materials for earthenware. In its heyday it employed 400 manual workers. History The pottery had formerly been operated in turn by Hopkin & Vernon, Hulme & Booth, Thomas Hulme, Burgess & Leigh, and Richard Alcock, who enlarged the works extensively. On Alcock's death in 1881, the owners became Wilkinson & Hulme and in 1885 to Arthur J. Wilkinson. The works at first produced earthenware for the home market, but later operations concentrated on white graniteware for the United States. Wilkinson introduced gold lustre on graniteware. In about 1896 A. J. Wilkinson took over the Royal Staffordshire Pottery in Burslem. The pottery was managed by Colley Shorter, an affluent V ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pottery
Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other ceramic materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. Major types include earthenware, stoneware and porcelain. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is also called a ''pottery'' (plural "potteries"). The definition of ''pottery'', used by the ASTM International, is "all fired ceramic wares that contain clay when formed, except technical, structural, and refractory products". In art history and archaeology, especially of ancient and prehistoric periods, "pottery" often means vessels only, and sculpted figurines of the same material are called "terracottas". Pottery is one of the oldest human inventions, originating before the Neolithic period, with ceramic objects like the Gravettian culture Venus of Dolní Věstonice figurine discovered in the Czech Republic dating back to 29,000–25,000 BC, and pottery vessels that were ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Burslem
Burslem ( ) is one of the six towns that along with Hanley, Tunstall, Fenton, Longton and Stoke-upon-Trent form part of the city of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire, England. It is often referred to as the "mother town" of Stoke on Trent. Topography Burslem is on the eastern ridge of the Fowlea Valley, the Fowlea being one of the main early tributaries of the River Trent. Burslem embraces the areas of Middleport, Dalehall, Longport, Westport, Trubshaw Cross, and Brownhills. The Trent & Mersey Canal cuts through, to the west and south of the town centre. A little further west, the West Coast Main Line railway and the A500 road run in parallel, forming a distinct boundary between Burslem and the abutting town of Newcastle-under-Lyme. To the south is Grange Park and Festival Park, reclaimed by the Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival. History The Domesday Book shows Burslem (listed as ''Bacardeslim'') as a small farming hamlet, strategically sited above a ford at Longport, part of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bottle Oven
A bottle oven or bottle kiln is a type of kiln. The word 'bottle' refers to the shape of the structure and not to the kiln's products, which are usually pottery, not glass. Bottle kilns were typical of the industrial landscape of Stoke-on-Trent, where nearly 50 are preserved as listed buildings. They were mostly built in the later 18th and the 19th centuries, although the surviving ones include examples from the 20th century. Their association with Stoke-on-Trent reflects the fact that the British ceramic industry was mainly based in that city. Bottle kilns are found in other locations in England; for example for Coalport porcelain, and the Fulham Pottery in London. Abroad they can be found at the Monastery of Santa Maria de las Cuevas. Despite being very inefficient (supposedly 70% of the energy of the fuel was wasted), bottle kilns were constructed until the mid-twentieth century, after which they were replaced by other types of kiln, as the industry ceased to be coal-fired. ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Trent And Mersey Canal
The Trent and Mersey Canal is a canal in Derbyshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire in north-central England. It is a "narrow canal" for the vast majority of its length, but at the extremities to the east of Burton upon Trent and north of Middlewich, it is a wide canal. The narrow locks and bridges are big enough for a single narrowboat wide by long, while the wide locks can accommodate boats wide, or two narrowboats next to each other. History The Trent and Mersey Canal (T&M) was built to link the River Trent at Derwent Mouth in Derbyshire to the River Mersey, and thereby provide an inland route between the major ports of Hull and Liverpool. The Mersey connection is made via the Bridgewater Canal, which it joins at Preston Brook in Cheshire. Although mileposts measure the distance to Preston Brook and Shardlow, Derwent Mouth is about beyond Shardlow. The plan of a canal connection from the Mersey to the Trent ("The Grand Trunk") came from canal engineer James Brindley ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Earthenware
Earthenware is glazed or unglazed nonvitreous pottery that has normally been fired below . Basic earthenware, often called terracotta, absorbs liquids such as water. However, earthenware can be made impervious to liquids by coating it with a ceramic glaze, which the great majority of modern domestic earthenware has. The main other important types of pottery are porcelain, bone china, and stoneware, all fired at high enough temperatures to vitrify. Earthenware comprises "most building bricks, nearly all European pottery up to the seventeenth century, most of the wares of Egypt, Persia and the near East; Greek, Roman and Mediterranean, and some of the Chinese; and the fine earthenware which forms the greater part of our tableware today" ("today" being 1962).Dora Billington, ''The Technique of Pottery'', London: B.T.Batsford, 1962 Pit fired earthenware dates back to as early as 29,000–25,000 BC, and for millennia, only earthenware pottery was made, with stoneware graduall ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Graniteware
Frederick Gottlieb Niedringhaus (October 21, 1837 – November 25, 1922) was a German-born American businessman and politician. He served as a U.S. Representative from Missouri. Early life Frederick Gottlieb Niedringhaus was born on October 21, 1837 in Lübbecke, Westphalia, North Germany. Niedringhaus attended the common schools there and learned the glazing, painting, and tinning trades. He emigrated to the United States in November 1855 and settled in St. Louis, Missouri. Career With his brother William, Niedringhaus started a tinware stamping company in the early 1860s, just as the Civil War fueled demand for tin products. The brothers' business boomed, and in 1866 they founded the St. Louis Stamping Company. An initial capitalization of $125,000 allowed them to open a factory. The brothers spent long hours at the factory, "engrossed in detail of production, or absorbed in plans to capture new markets, and sometimes even taking turns at the stamping machines when rush orders ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Victorian Era
In the history of the United Kingdom and the British Empire, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period, and its later half overlaps with the first part of the '' Belle Époque'' era of Continental Europe. There was a strong religious drive for higher moral standards led by the nonconformist churches, such as the Methodists and the evangelical wing of the established Church of England. Ideologically, the Victorian era witnessed resistance to the rationalism that defined the Georgian period, and an increasing turn towards romanticism and even mysticism in religion, social values, and arts. This era saw a staggering amount of technological innovations that proved key to Britain's power and prosperity. Doctors started moving away from tradition and mysticism towards a science-based approach; medicine advanced thanks to the adoption ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Clarice Cliff
Clarice Cliff (20 January 1899 – 23 October 1972) was an English ceramic artist and designer. Active from 1922 to 1963, Cliff became the head of the factory creative department. Early life Cliff's ancestors moved from the Eccleshall area to Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent, around 1725. Cliff was born on the terrace of a modest house in Meir Street. Her father, Harry Thomas Cliff, worked at an iron foundry in Tunstall. Her mother Ann (née Machin) took in washing to supplement the family income. They had seven children.Graves, A. (2004-09-23). Cliff, Clarice (1899–1972), ceramic designer and art director. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Retrieved 19 Jan. 2018, Selink/ref> Cliff was sent to a different school to her other siblings. After school, Cliff would visit her aunt, who was a hand painter. She made papier-mâché models at school for a local pottery company. At the age of 13, Cliff started working in the pottery industry as a gilder. She added gold lines on wa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Midwinter Pottery
The Midwinter Pottery was founded as W.R. Midwinter by William Robinson Midwinter in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent in 1910 and had become one of England's largest potteries by the late 1930s with more than 700 employees. Production of Midwinter pottery ceased in 1987. History In the 1950s, under the leadership of the director Roy Midwinter, the company became one of the leading innovators in British tableware production. A large part of this was due to the noted ceramicists and designers who worked for the pottery, including Jessie Tait, Terence Conran, Hugh Casson, David Douglas, John Russell and Peter Scott. The Midwinter Pottery was also an innovator in producing 'accessories' to their basic dinner services and tea sets. The Clayburn Pottery, a sister company to Midwinter, made pieces such as lamp bases that could be added to a Midwinter dinner service. In the 1960s, the Spanish Garden design, which was very successful on dinner ware and tea sets, adorned articles such as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |