Spode and Agate Ware

Cheese dish, Copeland & Garrett, solid agate 

I love agate ware. Pieces made by Spode in solid agate are not seen that often and are usually made in the Copeland & Garrett period of the factory (1833-1847). The solid agate pieces I have seen from the Spode factory have been kitchen wares such as the cheese dish here, or toilet wares such as toothbrush boxes and ewers. Also, although I have not made a study of agate wares of comparable manufacturers, there always seems to be a beautiful sky-blue clay in the wares from Spode. You can see this colour in the image of the backstamp.

Backstamp difficult to read
but it does say COPELAND & GARRETT

The piece shown here is of a Copeland & Garrett cheese dish which would have been used to hold a large cheese. It is difficult to mark pieces in agate ware as the backstamps can be hard to read. I have seen Copeland & Garrett pieces with printed marks but it is a challenge to find them amongst the swirling colours in the first place never mind actually decipher them! An alternative method is shown here as the backstamp on this cheese dish is made separately in white clay and applied to the piece by sprigging. (You can see examples of decorative sprigs on my Sprigged Stoneware page).

I remember seeing the potters experimenting with this technique, and also that for surface agate, when I worked at Gladstone Pottery Museum many years ago. You can see this technique, and others, by clicking HERE> for the V&A on YouTube where you can see films of Michelle Erickson in action at the V&A.  The kingmaker of the agate teapot is film number 6.

If you visit Michelle's website through the link above (on her full name) you can see some of her amazing ceramic work and other technique films. Her combination of strong traditional techniques with modern interpretation is something I love. It ties in with my interest in modern studio potters but also fits with Spode which, throughout its history, often seems to be a successful blend of traditional and modern.

Spode and Trade Winds

Soup Tureen, cover & stand, Trade Winds Red

Like Spode's famous Christmas Tree pattern, the very elegant Trade Winds pattern was designed for the American market. It was introduced by Spode in about 1959/60 and came from an idea by George Thompson, President of Copeland & Thompson in New York. Copeland & Thompson were the main agents for Spode in the USA and vital to the success of Spode in the UK.

George Thompson had researched the US market and decided there was a demand from customers for an historical pattern of this type. The idea was accepted by the Spode company and the project to develop a design was led by Robert Copeland, who I believe was Sales Director at the time. He was later to become well-known and revered as Historical Consultant to Spode and, later, to the Spode museum.

Trade Winds leaflet 1960s.
Careful research enabled the marketing team to provide appropriate text for this leaflet

In 1958/9 the team, including Harold Holdway, Design Director, started detailed research for the project. They studied historical sailing ships amongst specialist books and manuscripts as well as visiting the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich in order to get details exact. The ships chosen for the design were mostly American, with some British. The names of the ships were also to be added to the back or underside of the finished pieces. Spode artist Dennis Emery was allocated the job of drawing out the design. The design and development of Trade Winds took place at a period when great detail was put into the background of a new Spode design. This attention to detail is probably one of the reasons why Spode patterns of this type became so successful.

Company, pattern, ships' names & gilder's marks, c1960-1970

This is a transfer printed pattern so once the designs for the it were ready and approved, engravings had to be designed for the different pieces in a service and then hand engraved by the Spode engravers for production by printing. This also included the pattern name and details of the ships' names which would be part of the backstamps. You can see just how much thought and work went into the development of a design from concept to finished product.

The pattern was produced on Spode's Fine Stone body. This body was first developed by Josiah Spode II as Stone China in about 1812. Spode renamed Stone China to New Stone when the formula was changed in 1820; the name lasted 140 years only changing to Fine Stone in 1960 when another new formula was developed to combat some production faults known as 'spit-out'.

I think Spode's stone china is particularly beautiful in colour and feel. It gives a perfect 'crispness' to any moulded design and has always been of high quality.

Teapot, Lowestoft shape

Trade Winds was produced on Spode's Lowestoft shape which was designed to imitate Chinese Export porcelain of the 18th century. Robert Copeland records that in the mid-1920s the shape was introduced by Spode in collaboration with Sydney Thompson of Copeland & Thompson because, in the USA there was a growing interest in 'Oriental Lowestoft' - a name erroneously given to antique China Trade Porcelain or Chinese Export Porcelain.

There is a Chinese porcelain teapot in the Spode Museum collection which is of similar shape to Spode's Lowestoft. In the late 1920s Lowestoft shape was initially decorated with reintroduced antique patterns Spode had made in the late 1700s. These were a great success and the company produced a booklet in 1929 called Spode's Lowestoft to accompany the product.

Trade Winds with pattern number W128 was introduced in 1959/60 and printed in iron red with a gold edge. This later became known as Trade Winds Red after other colours were introduced. Each version of the pattern would have a unique pattern number allocated to it enabling accurate manufacture and reordering but the main name remained the same for whatever version except for this addition of the colour. The W prefix to the pattern number denotes a pattern produced on a stone china body. This range of pattern numbers with this prefix began in 1939; prior to that the stone china patterns were recorded amongst the other patterns. 

In 1970 two more versions of this pattern were produced: Trade Winds Black with pattern number W145 printed in black and Trade Winds Blue with pattern number W146 printed in blue. Both these pattern numbers had a gold edge. Other versions were printed in various colours with no gold edge. A full range of dinner, tea and coffee ware was produced.

Special backstamp for The Preservation Society of Newport

Trade Winds was chosen by The Preservation Society of Newport who commissioned a range from Spode of the tableware pattern with the addition of their own special backstamp for use in their historic buildings and for sale as souvenirs.

The engravings from this pattern also appear occasionally on 'fancies' - a term given to gift or ornamental ware - on bone china. The pattern was discontinued in about 1993. In 1998 a similar style pattern was produced for a short while on earthenware called Blue Clipper.

Trade Winds leaflet 1960s

1983 catalogue pages for Lowestoft shape,
Trade Winds Blue and Trade Winds Black

Spode and Michael Cardew

This blog was originally going to be entitled Spode and Artists in Residence. But then I found that there was too much to say! So the best way forward seems to be to consider artists and potters individually and I start with a favourite potter, Michael Cardew (1901-1983), perhaps unexpectedly connected with Spode in the late 1930s.

Spode in the 1930s

There is no easy definition or generalisation concerning outside artists and studio potters working with the pottery industry. Even with Spode each occasion was individual. The company might have contacted the artist. The artist may have approached the company. There may be a definite plan in place to come up with a collaboration for a commercial product. There may be a fee; there may be no fee at all. It may be a special commission by a third party who wishes to use a particular artist. The artist may simply work freely, with access to all areas, to come up with their own work, sometimes much to the bewilderment of Spode employees who might think it was all a bit weird.

Cardew at Spode, 1938

Whilst working as curator at the Spode museum several outside artists were involved with the company. I kept records in the Spode archive, accepted some of their work into the museum collection and worked closely with some who were interested in the Spode archive papers and objects in the museum collection, perhaps looking for inspiration for their work. It would seem that there are few records in the archive before this of these 'artists in residence'.

As I become more and more interested in studio pottery, finding that Michael Cardew had been associated with Spode in 1938, under the Copeland family ownership, was fascinating. And I wanted to know more and what might have been made. In the 1930s the Design Department at Spode was modernising. Young designers were flourishing; new ideas, shapes, patterns, and products were being tried. This can be seen as an overall impact when looking at archive material of the time. The Second World War, though, put an end to this but for a while Spode was going modern; and I would think that Cardew's input was perhaps part of this change.

A cup and saucer, an example of his work at Spode, is shown here. More illustrations can be found by clicking Staffordshire Past-Track. Similar pieces are illustrated in the booklet 'Michael Cardew Ceramics of the Winchcombe period 1926-39' (cover shown here) by Dr Kathy Haslam produced for an exhibition at Blackwell in 2008 (an excellent read and was still available in their shop at the time of writing).

I remember nothing in the Spode archive to shed any light on Cardew's time at Spode but it is great to be able to see some pieces he made during his time there, along with other pieces of his work, which are in the collection of the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery.

There are unidentified studio pottery style pieces in the Spode museum collection but whether Cardew's or not is impossible to say in the absence of records.

You can find plenty about Cardew on the web and this is not the place for his biography. Some useful websites are listed at the end of this blog. A recent bargain book find was 'Pioneer Potter' by Michael Cardew, 1969. A technical book, it is wonderfully dog-eared, much used and annotated by an anonymous student potter. The foreword by Bernard Leach is inspiring and includes this description of their first meeting:

'Just down from Oxford with good degrees...Cardew came to see for himself what two potters, one Japanese (Hamada) and the other English (Leach) were up to at St Ives. He strode in, nose and brow straight, handsome as a young Greek god, eyes flashing, blue, hair waving, gold, and within the hour announced this was where he wanted to work'. 

How can you not want to know more?

In Michael Cardew's own words in 'A Pioneer Potter, An Autobiography', Collins, 1988 he says: 'the main difference between the way of working at Copelands [Spode] and that of our little group in Winchcombe was not, essentially the difference between mechanization and handwork; it was rather the difference between a very large, sophisticated organisation and a very small primitive one'.

So yet again there is something unexpected from Spode. Two different pottery worlds mixing and coming up with a collaboration of sorts even though not something commercially successful. A chance for both parties though to learn from each other perhaps.
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Here are some websites for more on Michael Cardew and his beautiful pots:
Ceramic Collection & Archive, Aberystwyth University where there is an exhibition on Cardew until January 13th 2013
Potteries Museum & Art Gallery
Schein-Joseph International Museum of Ceramic Art scroll down the page after clicking link here for text and images of Cardew and his pots
V&A search the collections

Here is a film of Cardew on YouTube.

This is a completely different way of throwing from that which would have taken place at a factory like Spode; and it is certainly not fast enough to be commercial for a company like Spode!