Aldermaston Pottery was a

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 por ...

located in the

Berkshire Berkshire ( ; in the 17th century sometimes spelt phonetically as Barkeshire; abbreviated Berks.) is a historic county in South East England. One of the home counties, Berkshire was recognised by Queen Elizabeth II as the Royal County of Berk ...

village of

Aldermaston Aldermaston is a village and civil parish in Berkshire, England. In the 2011 Census, the parish had a population of 1015. The village is in the Kennet Valley and bounds Hampshire to the south. It is approximately from Newbury, Basingstoke ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It was founded in 1955 by

Alan Caiger-Smith Alan Caiger-Smith MBE (8 February 1930 – 21 February 2020) was a British ceramicist, studio potter and writer on pottery. Life and work Caiger-Smith was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He studied at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts a ...

and was known for its

tin-glaze Tin-glazing is the process of giving tin-glazed pottery items a ceramic glaze that is white, glossy and opaque, which is normally applied to red or buff earthenware. Tin-glaze is plain lead glaze with a small amount of tin oxide added.Caiger-Smith ...

pottery and particularly its lustre ware. His first assistant,

Geoffrey Eastop Geoffrey Eastop (16 January 1921 – 25 December 2014) was an English potter. Eastop was born in London, where he studied at the Croydon School of Art and Goldsmiths' College. He also studied at the Academie Ranson in Paris. During World Wa ...

, joined him in 1956, a year after the pottery started. They were joined in 1961 by David Tipler and Edgar Campden, who remained there until 1975 and 1993 respectively. Over a period of forty years, around sixty assistants worked at the pottery. In 1965, the pottery was the subject of a

television documentary Television documentaries are televised media productions that screen documentaries. Television documentaries exist either as a television documentary series or as a television documentary film. *Television documentary series, sometimes called d ...

produced by Michael Darlow. The pottery scaled back its production in June 1993 when Caiger-Smith partially retired and stopped hiring assistants. It continued to be operated commercially until it was sold in 2006, and the building has now been converted into a private dwelling.

Reading Museum Reading Museum (run by the Reading Museum Service) is a museum of the history of the town of Reading, in the English county of Berkshire, and the surrounding area. It is accommodated within Reading Town Hall, and contains galleries describing th ...

has an extensive collection of Aldermaston pottery displayed in its Atrium gallery. The pottery can also be seen on display at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.

Potters

* David Tipler * Julian Bellmont * Edgar Campden * Harriet Coleridge * Mohamed Hamid * Andrew Hazelden * Myra McDonnell * Laurence McGowan *

Simon Rich Simon Rich (born June 5, 1984) is an American humorist, novelist, and screenwriter. He has published two novels and six collections of humor pieces, several of which appeared in ''The New Yorker.'' His novels and short stories have been translat ...

Potters

References

Further reading