The Leeds Pottery
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The north wing of Temple Newsam House, home to large part of Leeds’ museum collections. The Leeds Pottery The rise and fall of Leeds Pottery followed the same script as so many localised manufacturing industries in the nineteenth century. Ivor Hughes visited Temple Newsam House to look at Leeds City Council’s own collection. by Ivor Hughes The wider picture creamware, with a translucent lead glaze and hardly ever Leeds Pottery is inextricably associated with its pierced decorated. But they also made highly decorative examples of what creamware, made from white Cornish clay and local flint. So might today be called folk art, not the finest bone china, but honest much so that few people are aware of the fact that anything else and expressive everyday pieces of art pottery. Like French faience, was ever made there, and so universally that just about any pierced it was the poor man’s porcelain of the time. And, like its French creamware turning up at fairs or auction is automatically desig- counterpart, it is highly prized today. nated ‘Leeds’. Today, ‘Leeds’ ware is still being made in quantity Leeds Pottery also produced stoneware (similar to Doulton in Staffordshire, some 120 miles to the south. But Leeds Pottery’s Lambeth), blackware (rivalling Wedgwood) and transfer ware own production wasn’t confined to Leeds ware. Far from it. (similar to Sunderland and Derby). The fact that there is still debate on the question of whether porcelain was ever manufac- Leeds tured on a commercial basis means that it probably never was. It Today, Leeds is the country’s second largest metropolitan district appears that Leeds Pottery’s diversions from Leedsware and other and third most populous. But it was a late developer. The creamware were speculative rather than sustained. population of eleventh century Leeds was 200, compared with London’s 18,000 and Oxford’s 5,000. It became a town only in The writing on the wall 1207. It didn’t get a mayor until 1656, by which time the farming Leeds Pottery had financial problems from early on, notably a community was benefiting from the boom in the wool trade. Leeds closure in 1806 following a five-year partnership with Swinton also had quarries, water, timber and coal. It already had brick- Pottery (see ‘Publications’ below) and in 1830 the sale of the works. In the mid-eighteenth century it was a prime candidate for factory and stock to creditors. They bounced back again and again, a pottery, when streamlined and simplified production techniques though later in the nineteenth century they were to become victims from France began to spread across England. of the very factors that had made the town so successful. The Industrial Revolution had caused the population to explode. In Leeds Pottery 1840 it exceeded 150,000. The Leeds Liverpool Canal, the Leeds Pottery was founded in 1770 by Richard Humble and the Industrial Revolution’s most important artery, had been completed brothers John and Joshua Green. The Greens’ cousin Savile Green in 1816. Comprehensive rail connections started appearing in the and an entrepreneur William Hartley joined soon after. It was as 1830s and were completed by the 1840s. Leeds not only retained Humble, Hartley, Greens & Company that they were to become its importance in farming and wool, but also developed heavy and known for decorative table ware. Their best years for art pottery light industries, notably becoming an important centre for clothing started around 1780, and then spanning barely half a century. The manufacture. But where the Leeds woollen garment industry was ongoing series of mergers, closures and bankruptcies continued a winner, pottery was to be a loser. The barges and trains that until the company closed for good in 1881. By that time they had carried Leeds goods all over the country weren’t going to come become focused on producing less decorative utilitarian ware. back empty. Pottery was a prime candidate for the return trip. They were by far the largest of the thirty-five potteries in Leeds, The undisputed centre of UK pottery production at that time, and with only five of those recorded as having produced similar wares. today, was the area around Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire. Stoke had The bulk of Leeds Pottery’s production was and remained already been producing industrial quantities of ceramics for two ANTIQUES INFO - September/October 08 LPC’s trademark piercing made this an unusual and attractive slotted spoon … Four of the eight Leeds Pottery wine bin labels stored away at Temple Newsam House. Leeds Pottery production such as this is prized more highly for scarcity than quality, these just don’t bear comparison with the output of Wedgwood or Minton. LPC exported worldwide in its heyday, though this oil and vinegar never made it … but the jury must still be to Holland .… All images with permission of Leeds City Council Art Gallery. out on the practicality of this jelly mould. .… nor this cruet to Germany. This 22cm puzzle jug is a fine These two figurines are example of the genre. among the 400 pieces of Transferware was popular Leeds Pottery held in the city’s among all towns’ production collection. But moulds and ‘perhaps Leeds 1780s’. ‘Probably Yorkshire 1820s’, the talent was there, but not patterns often changed hands the demand. between factories, so don’t just accept a dealer’s word if the piece isn’t marked. In 1802 the butcher James Ibbotson would ‘lay 18 to a Attribution can be difficult. Guinea this is Best Beef in Botanical decoration such Although the decoration is Some of the City’s collection OTLEY MARKET’. Leeds as this (c1800) is among known to have been done in is openly displayed, here one Pottery was poor man’s Leeds’ finest, but indistin- Leeds in the 1770s, the jug of a pair of fountains in the porcelain at the time, but guishable from the work at itself might have been made dining room. original folk art has never Swinton pottery. in Derbyshire. been more popular. ANTIQUES INFO - September/October 08 Selection of Leeds Pottery from our centuries. Its potters had adopted new pottery firing techniques in the 1750s database at www.antiques-info.co.uk and are credited with introducing creamware at that time. Although Stoke had its own supply of coal and clay, it too relied on Cornish clay for the manufacture of creamware. But Stoke is 120 miles closer to 1 Cornwall. The canals and railways brought them even closer to the clay 5 supplies, and easily in touch with the rest of the country when it came to the shipping out of finished goods. Why should the town of Leeds receive barges full of Cornish clay when the good people of Stoke could turn it into earth- enware en route? Looking at it like that, it’s surprising that the Leeds Pottery Company lasted until 1881. 18thC Leeds creamware jug, intertwined handle moulded with green sprigs, painted in Attribution difficult Unusual late 18th/early 19thC puce with floral bouquets, Leeds Pottery was not alone in the production of colourful art pottery, nor creamware 3 tier Grand Platt 4.5in. Gorringes, Lewes. Mar was their output by any means unique. Before Stoke became so well 01. HP: £550. ABP: £646. Menage, each tier with five connected, mass-production of pottery in UK was shared by several other shell pattern recessed dishes industrial towns. That was, quite simply, because of the vast quantities of supported by dolphins, finial as a seated figure of ‘Plenty’ coal required. In 1807 Leeds Pottery burned around thirty tons of coal per holding a cornucopia, pierced day. Similar pieces were being made elsewhere in Yorkshire, and next door base, 17.75in high, probably in Derbyshire, Lancashire and Northumberland. Of comparable production Leeds pottery, some restor- 6 outside Staffordshire, Sunderland ware is perhaps the best known. ation. Canterbury Auction There was such similarity between different towns’ production that museums Galleries, Kent. Feb 06. HP: Leeds creamware chintz can sometimes give no more than “best guess” attributions, eg by describing £1,800. ABP: £2,117. pattern coffee pot and cover, English c1775, enriched with a jug as being ‘Yorkshire, possibly Leeds’ or ‘Leeds, possibly decorated bands of stylised floral/ Derby’. In that respect, museum curators and researchers are far more geometric decoration in tones cautious than auctions, dealers or collectors. It is tempting, and all too easy, of yellow, purple, black/iron to declare an unattributable piece as ‘Derby’, ‘Leeds’ or ‘Sunderland’ if that’s red, impressed triangle to base, what the customer is looking for. 22.5cm. Rosebery’s, London. Jun 05. HP: £500. ABP: £588. 2 Publications 7 If the reviews are to be believed then the only authoritative book on the Leeds creamware documentary subject is by John D Griffin, in two volumes, sponsored by Leeds Art teapot and cover, 1774, one side inscribed/dated ‘Elizath. Collection Fund and £75 for the two volumes. The book’s meticulous Webster Winstrope, 1774’, research included ‘family letters, partnership agreements, wills, factory price reverse in polychrome with a lists, fuel accounts, shipping records and court proceedings’, mainly because Chinaman in a garden, chips Leeds Pottery’s production was generally unmarked, so other clues had to be to lid and spout, 14.5cm high. used. Not only were pattern books and drawings used to identify Leeds (2) Sworders, Stansted Leeds pearlware figure of Mountfitchet. Nov 04. HP: Neptune, crowned figure in production, the author also researched factory marks, moulds and shards of £1,650. ABP: £1,940. loose-fitting robe, standing pottery that had been excavated from the site.