Denby Pottery Company Ltd is a British manufacturer of

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 ...

, named after the village of

Denby Denby is a village in the England, English county of Derbyshire that is notable as the birthplace of John Flamsteed, England's first Astronomer Royal, and the location of the Denby Pottery Company. The population at the 2001 Census was 1,827, in ...

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

where it is based. It primarily sells hand-crafted stoneware

tableware Tableware is any dish or dishware used for setting a table, serving food, and dining. It includes cutlery, List of glassware, glassware, serving dishes, and other items for practical as well as decorative purposes. The quality, nature, variet ...

kitchenware :'' For a record label, see Kitchenware Records'' Kitchenware are the tools, utensils, appliances, dishes, and cookware used in food preparation, or the serving of food. Kitchenware can also be used in order to hold or store food before or aft ...

and serveware products including dinner sets, mugs and serving dishes, as well as a variety of

glassware upTypical drinkware The list of glassware includes drinking vessels (drinkware) and tableware used to set a table for eating a meal, general glass items such as vases, and glasses used in the catering industry. It does not include laboratory glass ...

products and

cast-iron cookware Heavy-duty cookware made of cast iron is valued for its heat retention, durability, ability to maintain high temperatures for longer time duration, and non-stick cooking when properly seasoned. Seasoning is also used to protect bare cast iron fr ...

History

The pottery at Denby was founded on the estate of William Drury-Lowe in 1809 as a manufacturer of stoneware bottles. It was run by Joseph Jager in partnership with Robert Charles George Brohier; the partnership was dissolved in 1814.The notice of dissolution refers to "the Partnership hereforeto carried on by the undersigned, Robert Charles George Brohier, and Joseph Jager, as Stone Bottle-Manufacturers, and otherwise, at a place called Jagersburgh, in the Parish of Denby, in the County of Derby, under the stile or firm of Brohier & Jager..." By this time, clay from a deposit on the land was already in use at the Belper Pottery. At the beginning of 1815 William Bourne of the Belper Pottery and his sons William, John and Joseph took a 21-year lease on Brohier and Jager's factory. Joseph Bourne ran the works at Denby and

Belper Belper is a town and civil parish in the local government district of Amber Valley in Derbyshire, England, located about north of Derby on the River Derwent. As well as Belper itself, the parish also includes the village of Milford and the ha ...

in tandem until 1834, when he closed down the Belper pottery and moved its equipment and workforce to Denby. Bourne later took over the Codnor Park and Shipley Potteries, and merged them into the Denby works in a similar manner. Joseph Bourne took his son Joseph Harvey Bourne into partnership, and the company became known as Joseph Bourne and Son, a name it kept even after the death of Joseph Bourne in 1860. Using a new patent process for drying slip invented by Needham and Kite of

Vauxhall Vauxhall ( ) is a district in South West London, part of the London Borough of Lambeth, England. Vauxhall was part of Surrey until 1889 when the County of London was created. Named after a medieval manor, "Fox Hall", it became well known for ...

, the pottery produced at least 25 tons of workable clay each day. In the nineteenth century most of the ware produced was

salt-glazed Salt-glaze or salt glaze pottery is pottery, usually stoneware, with a glaze of glossy, translucent and slightly orange-peel-like texture which was formed by throwing common salt into the kiln during the higher temperature part of the firing pro ...

stoneware Stoneware is a rather broad term for pottery or other ceramics fired at a relatively high temperature. A modern technical definition is a Vitrification#Ceramics, vitreous or semi-vitreous ceramic made primarily from stoneware clay or non-refracto ...

. Bourne patented improved kilns for stoneware in 1823 and 1848. By the 1870s the pottery was producing a wide range of utilitarian stoneware products including

telegraph insulators Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

, ink bottles, pickle and marmalade jars, spirit and liquor bottles, foot warmers, churns, mortars and pestles, pipkins, feeding-bottles,

pork pie A pork pie is a traditional English meat pie, usually served either at room temperature or cold (although often served hot in Yorkshire). It consists of a filling of roughly chopped pork and pork fat, surrounded by a layer of jellied pork stock ...

moulds, druggists' shop-jars, snuff-jars, spirit-barrels, pudding-moulds, and water filters. They also made more decorative "hunting jugs" sprigged with moulded decorations of huntsmen, windmills, men smoking or beehives, sometimes with the handle in the form of a greyhound, and

terracotta Terracotta, terra cotta, or terra-cotta (; ; ), in its material sense as an earthenware substrate, is a clay-based ceramic glaze, unglazed or glazed ceramic where the pottery firing, fired body is porous. In applied art, craft, construction, a ...

goods, both practical and decorative. The company benefited greatly from its transport links into Derby and beyond, particularly when the

Midland Railway The Midland Railway (MR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom from 1844. The Midland was one of the largest railway companies in Britain in the early 20th century, and the largest employer in Derby, where it had its headquarters. It am ...

opened its Ripley Branch. It had a siding at Denby Wharf (the terminus of the

Little Eaton Gangway The Little Eaton Gangway, officially the Derby Canal Railway, was a narrow gauge industrial wagonway serving the Derby Canal, in England, at Little Eaton in Derbyshire. The Derby Canal In 1792, Benjamin Outram was asked to prepare plans for a ...

) approximately opposite to the factory. Each week around three or four vans would be dispatched to

Chaddesden Chaddesden, also known locally as Chadd, is a large residential suburb of Derby, United Kingdom. Historically a separate village centred on Chaddesden Hall and the 14th century St. Mary's Church, Chaddesden, St Mary's Church, the area was signif ...

sidings (near Derby station) where they would be connected to an express to St Pancras in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and the company's warehouse at the Granary. The company, whose name is now principally associated with

, initially produced bottles and jars, before specialising in kitchenware and, eventually, in tableware, for which it is best known today. In order to increase capacity the nearby

Langley Mill Pottery Langley Mill Pottery was located in Langley Mill, Derbyshire on the Derbyshire – Nottinghamshire border. From its establishment in 1865 to its final closure in 1982, the pottery went through five distinct periods of ownership, producing a wi ...

was acquired in October 1959. During the 1950s and 1960s a number of designers worked for Denby, including Gill Pemberton who designed the renowned and admired Denby Chevron, and Arabesque amongst others. In 1987 the company was taken over by the

Coloroll Group Coloroll is a United Kingdom wallpaper brand owned by CWV Ltd. Developed from a family-owned wallpaper company founded in the 1970s, during the 1980s Coloroll Group became a dominant publicly listed home furnishings business, which collapsed in ...

. After Coloroll went into

receivership In law, receivership is a situation in which an institution or enterprise is held by a receiver—a person "placed in the custodial responsibility for the property of others, including tangible and intangible assets and rights"—especially in ca ...

in 1990, Denby was subject to a

management buyout A management buyout (MBO) is a form of acquisition in which a company's existing managers acquire a large part, or all, of the company, whether from a parent company or individual. Management-, and/or leveraged buyout became noted phenomena of 1 ...

, and was floated in 1994. In the early twenty-first century Denby expanded its use of materials to include glass (wine glasses, tumblers and bowls) and metal (cutlery and cooking utensils). It also introduced fine dining ranges in porcelain and bone china. The company was subject to a £30 million management buyout in 2009, after suffering a decline in sales. The company had £72 million of debt written off at the time of the buyout. In 2010 Denby acquired

Burleigh Pottery Burleigh Pottery (also known as Burgess & Leigh) is the name of a pottery manufacturer in Middleport, Staffordshire, Middleport, Stoke-on-Trent. The business specialises in traditionally shaped and patterned domestic earthenware of high quality. ...

in Stoke-on-Trent. Shortly afterwards in 2012, the Denby Group acquired

Poole Pottery Poole Pottery is a British pottery brand, now based in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, England. As a company, it was founded in 1873 on Poole quayside in Dorset, where it continued to produce pottery by hand before moving its factory operations ...

. In February 2014, the company was put up for sale by its owner

Hilco Capital Hilco Capital is a British international company that specialises in restructuring and refinancing other companies. Notable projects Hilco has been involved with these companies, and in some cases owning and operating them for a period of tim ...

following expressions of interest from other companies. Hilco cancelled the sale in January 2015 due to improvements in the company's growth. As of 2021, one of the Board members of Denby Holdings Ltd was from Valco Capital Partners LP. In 2019, Denby launched the Conscious Choice campaign which focused on the versatile, sustainable and functional nature of Denby's stoneware products and aimed to inspire customers to try and live more sustainably by reusing their pottery around the home. In a departure from its tradition of stoneware production, in 2021 Denby launched a Porcelain collection. The venture into a new material saw Denby repurpose part of its existing factory, with additional staff taken on to produce the new lines. 4 ranges - Classic White, Arc (textured) White, Arc Blue and Modern Deco (a patterned range) make up the Porcelain collection, and use the same ceramics and glaze techniques practised for over 200 years at Denby. In 2021 the television programme ''

Inside the Factory ''Inside the Factory'' is a British television series produced by Voltage TV for the BBC. The first episode was broadcast on BBC Two in May 2015. Each episode explores how a specific product is made inside a factory. The series is presented by ...

'' visited the Denby factory to follow the journey of a Halo Heritage mug, broadcast on 2 February 2022.

References

Bibliography

Hopewood, Irene. Denby pottery, 1809-1997: dynasties and designers ()

External links

Denby Pottery (UK)Denby Pottery (US)
{{Authority control Ceramics manufacturers of England Manufacturing companies established in 1809 Companies based in Derbyshire 1809 establishments in England British companies established in 1809