Ceramics Susie Cooper RDI - An Undervalued Legacy? by Roland Head ore than 100 years after her birth, Susie Cooper remains the only Mwoman potter to be awarded the prestigious RSA Royal Designer for Industry (RDI) award. Her career was longer than both the other two notable women, Clarice Cliff and Charlotte Rhead. Unlike them, she not only designed but founded and ran a successful pottery business on an industrial scale for many decades. Susie Cooper was one of the most important ceramic designers of the twentieth century, yet her work has less financial value and collectable A small plate in the Cubist pattern, dating from appeal than that of her contemporary, Clarice Cliff. Here I’ll explore her career Susie Cooper’s time at Gray’s. and work. I’ll also examine current prices and suggest how collectors should Image courtesy of www.decodance.com approach the market. Susie Cooper - The Art Deco Years used: she was not able to design her own shapes and simply Born in 1902, Susie Cooper was the youngest of seven decorated what she was given. Driven by a desire for greater children in a prosperous middle-class family. Her parents creative freedom and the belief she could do better herself, in owned several local businesses and her early experience of 1929 she resigned and founded the Susie Cooper Pottery. This work was gained in these establishments. Despite this, she was was to mark the beginning of a long and successful journey never tempted to make a career in the family businesses, and that would survive the depression of the 1930s, the Second by the age of sixteen had gained admission to the Burslem World War, two factory fires and multiple other setbacks. School of Art. Cooper was lucky enough to arrive shortly after noted Elegance Combined With Utility designer Gordon Forsyth had been appointed Superintendent Despite the foundation of her pottery coinciding with the for Art Instruction in Stoke-on-Trent. Forsyth had a reputation worst economic depression in modern history, Susie Cooper as a brilliant designer and passionately believed in the impor- gradually built up a profitable business, with exports playing a tance of combining good art with industrial processes. This significant role in her success. At the heart of the Susie was to be a guiding principle of Susie Cooper’s work, too, and Cooper Pottery was her passionate adherence to the concept of the relationship she built up with Forsyth undoubtedly played ‘elegance combined with utility’. This led her to master and a part in starting and shaping her career in the potteries. develop a wide range of contemporary styles and decorating In 1922, Susie Cooper started work at A. E. Gray & Co Ltd., technologies as the years progressed. Despite their popularity, a Stoke pottery for which Forsyth also worked at that time. Susie Cooper came to consider her Art Deco geometric and Although she started on piecework decoration, within a year cubist patterns to be crude in design and impractical in she had managed to obtain the designer’s role she sought and execution. The thick, on-glaze enamels used to paint the wares rapidly established herself as a key element of the pottery’s were prone to flaking. As with the lustre designs that came success. Susie Cooper’s employment at Gray’s coincided with before them, both designs and decorating techniques were the rapid growth in popularity of the Art Deco movement in abandoned in favour of new aesthetically and industrially the United Kingdom. She embraced Art Deco and produced superior designs. Over the years, Susie Cooper mastered and some of the most collectable and valuable work of her career, developed decorating techniques including lithographing, first in partnership with Gordon Forsyth and later independ- which was used increasingly heavily in the late 1930s, under- ently. Cooper’s first range as a Gray’s designer was Gloria glaze decoration and aerographing (air brushing). The switch Lustre. This was designed in partnership with Gordon Forsyth from lithographing to aerographing and underglaze decoration and included lustre glazing of the type that Forsyth had became necessary in the post-war years because of a shortage mastered so successfully in his work at Pilkington’s Royal of lithographing equipment, and later, because of growing Lancastrian pottery. The difference, in this case, was that even concerns over toxic chemicals leaching from overglaze at this early stage, Susie Cooper was concerned to ensure that decoration on tableware. her wares were durable and usable. Her motto was ‘Elegance The 1950s and 1960s saw a gradual change of body from combined with utility’, a concept she used to guide her earthenware to bone china, but throughout her career, the ceramics career throughout her life. majority of Susie Cooper’s wares were tableware, especially Over time, she came to realise that the lustre wares wore coffee and tea sets. badly and were thus not suitable for continued development as Cooper’s wares could always be said to meet the following tableware. Instead, she produced a series of bold, colourful Art criteria: Deco patterns that rivalled those of Clarice Cliff and proved • Accessible (intellectually and culturally) immediately, and enduringly, successful. Despite her success, • As affordable as possible by the end of the 1920s Susie Cooper was feeling frustrated • Durable and restricted by the remit of her role at Gray’s. Her main • Well-designed, aesthetically and technically issue was that she had little or no control over the shapes she • Contemporary in style and manufacturing technique ANTIQUES INFO - January/February 11 Ceramics Susie Cooper’s designs always remained modern in both subject and style. The vast majority was genuine tableware, designed to be fairly affordable and regularly used. Form did not interfere with function, which was usually excellent, most notably perhaps with the Kestrel shape range, which was both stylish and highly functional. Susie Cooper andToday’s Market There is no avoiding the fact that much of the Susie Cooper’s tableware, especially post war, is not especially valuable today and can be picked up in large quantities for relatively little money. Today’s enthusiasm for Art Deco and A Susie Cooper Kestrel coffee set in the blue variation of the Tyrol pattern. retro styling mean that Cooper’s pre-war Art Deco designs Image courtesy of www.decodance.com fare much better in the current market, although perhaps not as well as they did before the credit crunch. Good patterns on the Kestrel shape are also desirable. This classic shape was used from 1932-1950. It’s interesting to note that despite Susie Cooper’s long and widely-admired career, her work does not attract the same amount of money and interest as Clarice Cliff. As a crude barometer of market buoyancy and volume, I looked for the highest price recent sales for both designers in this magazine's auction results database and on the internet auction site eBay. At the time of writing, the highest price recorded for a recent Susie Cooper sale on eBay was just £229.40, compared to £1,575 for a conical shape Clarice Cliff cruet A Gray’s Susie Cooper part coffee set in the Overlapping Triangles pattern. Image courtesy of www.decodance.com set. Similarly, a search of 2009/10 auction results revealed a top Susie Cooper hammer price of just £90 for a Moon Mountains jug, perhaps restored, which was again compre- hensively trumped by the top Clarice Cliff lot at a hammer price of £5,100. Even excluding this exceptional result, there were a number of individual Clarice Cliff vases and other pieces with hammer prices in excess of £800. Clarice Cliff volumes were far higher in both cases, too. I believe this set of examples exaggerates the difference in value between the two designers’ best wares, but nevertheless it is impossible to avoid the conclusion that even Susie Cooper’s most collectable work does not have the collectable appeal of Clarice Cliff’s best pieces. Collectors with a passion for Susie Cooper’s work will find that good pieces are relatively thin on the ground, but they can be found, especially from specialist dealers. Collectors can choose between focusing on where the money is, mostly Two Susie Cooper Kestrel coffee pots in variations of the Tyrol pattern. pre-war Art Deco, or collecting a broader range of Susie Image courtesy of www.decodance.com Cooper’s work and creating a testament to one of the most talented industrial ceramic designers of the twentieth century. Clarice Cliff ‘Fantasque’ pottery coffee Susie Cooper for Grays service decorated in orange, blue, brown Pottery ‘Jazz’ jug. Great and green , Sunrise pattern. Canterbury Western Auctions, Glasgow. Auction Galleries, Kent. Apr 06. HP: Oct 08. HP: £90. BP: £106. £960. BP: £1,129. From l-r. Two jugs in the Cubist pattern, vase in the Arcs and Spikes pattern and a large plate and coffee pot in the Moon and Mountains pattern. Image courtesy of www.decodance.com ANTIQUES INFO - January/February 11 .