Up until the 1920s transfer printed ceramics made in Staffordshire that revived early nineteenth-century pastoral imagery were exported to America in great quantity with little American competition. This British monopoly changed in the 1930s when Thorley started designing for Taylor Smith & Taylor. He designed five or six different patterns that pictured the same types of romantic castles and ruined abbeys as the popular Staffordshire wares. Thorley engraved the patterns himself and sometimes included his signature.