Review by Miranda Goodby
Staffordshire Potters, 1781–1900: A Comprehensive List Assembled from Contemporary Directories with Selected Marks

R. K. Henrywood. Staffordshire Potters, 1781–1900: A Comprehensive List Assembled from Contemporary Directories with Selected Marks. Woodbridge, Suffolk, Eng.: Antique Collectors’ Club, 2002. 416 pp., numerous bw illus.; bibliography, index. $89.50 / £45.00 (clothbound).

The information about manufacturers and their marks assembled by Dick Henrywood for his earlier books underpins the present volume, which has been eagerly anticipated for a number of years.^[1] While much printed and molded pottery from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries bears a maker’s mark, the great majority does not. Even where a piece is clearly marked, it is usually necessary to consult other sources for confirmation of the date range in which a piece might have been produced or where it might have been made. Obvious sources to consult are the contemporary local, regional, and trade directories for the period, but these publications are by their very nature ephemeral, tending to be discarded when the latest edition comes out, and surviving copies are often rare and fragile.

Henrywood is to be congratulated on drawing together information on pottery manufacturers operating in the north Staffordshire Potteries between 1781 and 1900 by systematically examining the directories that covered this region. The former date is that of the earliest directory to include Staffordshire, while the latter is, as the author admits, an arbitrary, but logical, cutoff point. The present volume is not a wholesale reproduction of the Staffordshire directories in their entirety. He has kept strictly to pottery manufacturers, omitting references to engravers, color manufacturers, flint millers, and the scores of subsidiary trades that formed the infrastructure of the dominant industry. While these omissions might be regretted by some, it does make the information manageable and coherent.

Henrywood’s aim is to provide a companion volume to the existing standard works on British ceramics, notably, Geoffrey Godden’s Encyclopaedia of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks and his subsequent Encyclopaedia of British Porcelain Manufacturers, John Cushion’s Handbook of Pottery and Porcelain Marks, and, from the nineteenth century, Simeon Shaw’s History of the Staffordshire Potteries, John Ward’s The Borough of Stoke-upon-Trent, and Llewellynn Jewitt’s The Ceramic Art of Great Britain.^[2]

As the author states in the introduction, the drawback with marks books is that not all pottery firms marked their wares. Contemporary books by Shaw, Ward, and Jewitt did not claim to be comprehensive in their coverage of Staffordshire companies. Many firms were short-lived, changing their names or company partners frequently; others were operating on a small scale; scores saw no commercial reason to mark their wares with their names. Regardless, most were listed in the directories and it is on these lesser-known companies that Henrywood’s book sheds light.

The purpose of the directories was to list the businesses, tradesmen, and shopkeepers in a town or region, indicate the private addresses of the principal citizens, and give an outline of other commercial intelligence (railway stations, post offices, etc.), often including a history of the town. Over the 119-year period that Henrywood’s book covers, such directories were produced by a variety of publishers, from the national coverage of the London-based Kelly directories of 1850 onward, to the single directory of the Staffordshire pottery towns published in 1796 by the Hanley-based printers, Chester and Mort.

The book is aimed at serious collectors but is not afraid to address some basic issues. Chapter 2, “The Staffordshire Potteries,” for example, offers a useful overview of the six pottery towns that make up the modern city of Stoke-on-Trent, as well as the numerous villages, hamlets, suburbs, and districts in this heavily industrialized area. It draws extensively on contemporary descriptions from the various directories themselves. Combined with the simple map on page 10 illustrating the relative position of the places mentioned in the directories, the chapter provides a clear guide to the geography of this small but crowded part of the county.

Chapter 3, “The Directories, Compilers, and Publishers,” gives short histories of the various companies that produced the directories and highlights some of the problems associated with individual directories. Tunnicliffe’s 1787 list of potters, for example, was lifted verbatim from Bailey’s 1784 directory, and Pigot’s directories of 1842 and 1844 were simply reprints of the company’s 1841 directory.

Chapter 4, “Potters’ Marks,” is a brief listing of the types of marks to be found on wares. It covers how marks were applied (printed, impressed, etc.), what the marks represent (makers’ names, pattern or series names, types of body, etc.), and when and how different mark types were introduced and how they can assist in dating a piece. A notable feature of this chapter is the range of illustrations showing the different types of mark.

The majority of the book (more than 200 pages) is taken up by Chapter 5, “Alphabetical List of Manufacturers.” This is the real meat of the book and will doubtless be the chapter that readers will turn to most often.

The alphabetical list extracts all the pottery companies and partnerships listed in the directories and gives a brief address, the date and name of the directory or directories in which they are listed, and an abbreviated classification of the types of wares made as described in the directory. While each directory had its idiosyncrasies and no one directory was fully inclusive, together they provide a broadly comprehensive list of the pottery firms operating at the time of the industry’s greatest expansion. Henrywood has taken from sixty directories the details of all the pottery manufacturers listed. Every partnership and spelling variation is listed, and the author has wisely resisted any attempt to correct obvious inconsistencies or mistakes in the original directory entries, listing instead all spelling and partnership variations and cross-referencing them.

Organizing the entries from all the different directories and compiling this alphabetical list was a truly mammoth task. The text is augmented by a selection of black-and-white photographs of marks and by reproductions of advertisements that appeared in the directories. In many cases these expand considerably on the brief official directory entry. 

The usefulness of this chapter is augmented by Appendix I, “Original Directory Listings,” in which all relevant transcribed entries from each directory are listed as they appear in the original. Indeed, calling this section an appendix—it is more than 130 pages long—diminishes its significance. Many of the directories cited are rare, some extremely so, and almost impossible to access. In reprinting the entries Henrywood has placed the raw data into the hands of his readers, enabling them to extrapolate whatever additional information they may want. A minor criticism is that it would have been interesting to have had a checklist of directory titles and dates at the beginning of the appendix. It also would have been useful if, in addition to putting the directory name in the running header, the date had been given as well. These are, however, minor quibbles from one who uses the book frequently as an important reference tool. It is a great pleasure to see the extremely rare map from Allbut’s 1802 directory, which includes the location of the various potteries, reproduced in redrawn form following its directory entries.

Appendix II, “Index of Partnership Surnames,” is also extremely useful in that it lists all the partners’ names mentioned in company titles. While it is usually straightforward to follow the dominant partner in a company, the second- and third-named partners are frequently lost in alphabetical listings of company names. Henrywood has rescued these other partners and in so doing reveals how, as partnerships changed, different individuals moved to the fore, either as dominant partners or as independent manufacturers.

This is a useful, authoritative, and important book and will be a valuable addition to the library of anyone interested in the north Staffordshire potteries. As the author himself acknowledges, it is not—and was not intended to be—a list of every Staffordshire pottery company, as some firms known to exist from marked specimens are not listed in the directories (for example, figure makers John Dale and Charles Tittensor and the company of Lakin & Poole).^[3] Some may have been overlooked when the directories were compiled, and others may have come and gone in the period (sometimes five years or more) between published directories.

The number of pottery companies operating in north Staffordshire during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was truly staggering. Although it is rarely stated in the directories themselves, it is known that hundreds of these companies were exporting either to North America, to the expanding British Empire, or to Britain’s allies. Indeed, some companies’ products were almost entirely destined for export, and wares bearing the marks of many of these companies can be found all over the world. No single source could possibly provide information on all the companies that made pottery in north Staffordshire, but Henrywood has significantly increased the information available in a magisterial and accessible form, and thereby enabled researchers to gain a better idea of the scale and complexity of the Staffordshire potteries.

Miranda Goodby
Collections Officer, Ceramics
Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent