Pilkington's Lancastrian Pottery & Tiles was a manufacturer of tiles, vases and bowls, based in
Clifton
Clifton may refer to:
People
*Clifton (surname)
*Clifton (given name)
Places
Australia
* Clifton, Queensland, a town
**Shire of Clifton
*Clifton, New South Wales, a suburb of Wollongong
*Clifton, Western Australia
Canada
*Clifton, Nova Scotia ...
near
Pendlebury
Pendlebury is a town in the City of Salford, Greater Manchester, England. The population at the 2011 Census was 13,069. It lies north-west of Manchester city centre, north-west of Salford and south-east of Bolton.
Historically in Lancash ...
,
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...
,
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 ...
. The company was established in 1892 at
Clifton Junction, alongside
Fletcher's Canal
Fletcher's Canal was a long canal in Greater Manchester, which connected the Wet Earth Colliery to the Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal at Clifton Aqueduct. The canal is now derelict and no longer used.
The canal was built on the south bank of ...
. The company employed talented designers, the most famous of whom was
Charles Voysey.
Production of
art pottery
Art pottery is a term for pottery with artistic aspirations, made in relatively small quantities, mostly between about 1870 and 1930. Typically, sets of the usual tableware items are excluded from the term; instead the objects produced are mostly ...
was stopped at the end of the 1930s, although tile production continued. Today the site is occupied by
Pilkington's Group Plc.
History
In 1889 the
Clifton and Kersley Coal Company
The Clifton and Kersley Coal Company or Clifton and Kearsley Coal Company was a coal mining company that operated in Clifton and Kearsley on the south side of the Irwell Valley, then in the historic county of Lancashire, England. Its collieries ex ...
sank a pair of pit shafts with the intention of working the coal seams lying adjacent to the geological feature known as the
Pendleton Fault
The Pendleton Fault, sometimes called the Irwell Valley Fault, stretches for about from Bolton in Greater Manchester along the Irwell Valley through Pendleton to Poynton in Cheshire, running northwest–southeast. The fault throws the beds o ...
. However, the work became increasingly difficult due to the excessive quantity of water that was encountered. When it became clear that the work would not produce coal, the four Pilkington brothers decided to use the
marl
Marl is an earthy material rich in carbonate minerals, clays, and silt. When hardened into rock, this becomes marlstone. It is formed in marine or freshwater environments, often through the activities of algae.
Marl makes up the lower part o ...
that had been encountered to make glazed bricks,
however, the marl was found to be unsuitable for this purpose.
By chance, the secretary of the coal company knew William Burton, a chemist working for
Josiah Wedgwood and Sons. Burton tested the marl and suggested that a more commercial venture would be to make tiles. Decorative tiles were at that time becoming quite fashionable and they were in high demand. The site of the proposed factory had many advantages—it was close to
Clifton Junction railway station, it was adjacent to
Fletcher's Canal
Fletcher's Canal was a long canal in Greater Manchester, which connected the Wet Earth Colliery to the Manchester, Bolton & Bury Canal at Clifton Aqueduct. The canal is now derelict and no longer used.
The canal was built on the south bank of ...
and there was abundant coal nearby in the local
Wet Earth Colliery
Wet Earth Colliery was a coal mine located on the Manchester Coalfield, in Clifton, Greater Manchester. The colliery site is now the location of Clifton Country Park. The colliery has a unique place in British coal mining history; apart from bei ...
, a short distance away along the same canal. William Burton joined them as Manager, and his brother Joseph as Assistant Manager. Production began in January 1893.
By 1903 the factory had developed an opalescent
ceramic glaze
Ceramic glaze is an impervious layer or coating of a vitreous substance which has been fused to a pottery body through firing. Glaze can serve to color, decorate or waterproof an item. Glazing renders earthenware vessels suitable for holding ...
called Lancastrian, named after the county of
Lancashire
Lancashire ( , ; abbreviated Lancs) is the name of a historic county, ceremonial county, and non-metropolitan county in North West England. The boundaries of these three areas differ significantly.
The non-metropolitan county of Lancashi ...
where the factory was sited. It became popular in Pilkington's Lancastrian line of pottery. A later glaze took its name from
Manchester
Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...
, the Cunian glaze.
Other famous glazes were used, e.g. sunstone, eggshell, fiery crystalline, aventurine, merged and curdled glazes. Glazes of different textures were also produced. These "fruit skin" glazes had surfaces like orange peel or apricot.
The pottery's work was exhibited at the
Franco-British Exhibition of 1908 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 ...
.
William Burton (1863–1941)
William Burton was a chemist with the Wedgwood Company at the Etruria Works in Stoke-on-Trent, with an extensive knowledge of the ceramics industry. It was he who suggested that the red clay and marl found at Clifton was suitable for production of ceramic tiles. Decorative tiling was becoming a popular trend at the time, and represented a long term commercial proposition. Burton oversaw the production of fine pottery in the style of ancient
Persia
Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...
n and
Chinese
Chinese can refer to:
* Something related to China
* Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity
**''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation
** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...
potters, employing fine artists and commissioning work from some of the top designers of the time. Burton was a friend of H. G. Wells and was inspired by the
Arts & Crafts Movement, and in particular, the workings of
William Morris
William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) was a British textile designer, poet, artist, novelist, architectural conservationist, printer, translator and socialist activist associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement. He ...
and
John Ruskin
John Ruskin (8 February 1819 20 January 1900) was an English writer, philosopher, art critic and polymath of the Victorian era. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and politi ...
. He chose artists and designers that shared this inspiration, and Lancastrian Pottery works became high quality examples of the
art pottery
Art pottery is a term for pottery with artistic aspirations, made in relatively small quantities, mostly between about 1870 and 1930. Typically, sets of the usual tableware items are excluded from the term; instead the objects produced are mostly ...
that was part of the wider Arts & Crafts Movement.
John Chambers (1869–1945)
Burton invited John Chambers to join him in the running of the Pilkington's Tile & Pottery Company. Chambers was often responsible for designs produced in what became known as the 'Persian style', and was head of the architectural pottery department throughout his time with the company.
Royal Lancastrian Glazes
High
lustre glaze finishes were produced from 1906, and are particularly associated with the designer
Gordon Forsyth, who joined the company in the same year.
''Examples of Gordon Forsyth's works at the Victoria & Albert Museum''
/ref> The name 'Lancastrian' was used for the new ware due to the location in the county of Lancashire. Later on, 'Cunian' glazes were named after the site's close proximity to Manchester. Glazes of different textures were used. Some of the more famous glazes used by the Royal Lancastrian Pottery Company included sunstone, eggshell, crystalline and aventurine. One of the most notable, Lancastrian Lustre, was exhibited at the Franco-British Exhibition of 1908.
In 1913 King George V
George V (George Frederick Ernest Albert; 3 June 1865 – 20 January 1936) was King of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, and Emperor of India, from 6 May 1910 until his death in 1936.
Born during the reign of his grandmother Que ...
and Queen Mary visited Lord Derby
Edward George Geoffrey Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby, (29 March 1799 – 23 October 1869, known before 1834 as Edward Stanley, and from 1834 to 1851 as Lord Stanley) was a British statesman, three-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom ...
, in whose home several Lancastrian vases were proudly displayed. It was then that permission was granted for the royal warrant to be used and the firm became Pilkington's Royal Lancastrian Pottery Company.
After the First World War
The First World War was a difficult time for all ceramic companies, and Forsyth, who had left to fight, only returned briefly after the war. Increasingly, the tile side of production dominated. "Lapis Ware", with special underglaze
Underglaze is a method of decorating pottery in which painted decoration is applied to the surface before it is covered with a transparent ceramic glaze and fired in a kiln. Because the glaze subsequently covers it, such decoration is completely ...
colours, was introduced in 1928. But production of pottery (as opposed to tiles) ceased in 1938. A distinctive type of ware produced in the last years were glazed with a formula including uranium
Uranium is a chemical element with the symbol U and atomic number 92. It is a silvery-grey metal in the actinide series of the periodic table. A uranium atom has 92 protons and 92 electrons, of which 6 are valence electrons. Uranium is weak ...
compounds, which gave a bright orange colour, but have the disadvantage of being slightly radioactive
Radioactive decay (also known as nuclear decay, radioactivity, radioactive disintegration, or nuclear disintegration) is the process by which an unstable atomic nucleus loses energy by radiation. A material containing unstable nuclei is consid ...
; "it has been suggested by experts that one should not store a large number of such pieces in a closed cabinet. Opening the door after a prolonged period could be equivalent to receiving an X-ray".
A pottery studio was opened in 1948, making "attractive decorative wares in the Contemporary style of the 1950s". It closed in 1957, but there was another period in 1972–75.
In 1971 the Tilling Group
The Tilling Group was one of two conglomerates that controlled almost all of the major bus operators in the United Kingdom between World Wars I and II and until nationalisation in 1948.
Tilling, together with the other conglomerate, British El ...
took the company over; it was in turn bought by British Tyre and Rubber in 1983.
Notes
References
*
*Pottery productions from 1900 to 1975
*
*
*
External links
Pilkington's Tiles Group PLC Website
Pilkingtons Lancastrian Pottery Society Website
Tile and Architectural Ceramic Links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pilkington's Lancastrian Pottery and Tiles
English pottery
Design companies established in 1892
Manufacturing companies established in 1892
1892 establishments in England
Irwell Valley
British companies established in 1892
Art pottery