The Fulham Pottery was founded in

Fulham Fulham () is an area of the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham in West London, England, southwest of Charing Cross. It lies in a loop on the north bank of the River Thames, bordering Hammersmith, Kensington and Chelsea, London, Chelsea ...

, London, by John Dwight in 1672, at the junction of New King's Road and Burlington Road, Fulham, not far from Putney Bridge. Dwight is the earliest clearly documented maker of

stoneware Stoneware is a broad class of pottery fired at a relatively high temperature, to be impervious to water. A modern definition is a Vitrification#Ceramics, vitreous or semi-vitreous ceramic made primarily from stoneware clay or non-refractory fire ...

in England, although immigrant Dutch or German potters were probably active several decades before. By 1690 there was a rival stoneware operation in Fulham, run by the Dutch Elers brothers, who after a few years went off to become important early figures in transforming the Staffordshire pottery industry. In its first years it was a pioneering force in English

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...

in several respects, in particular salt-glazed wares and figures. After Dwight's death in 1703 the pottery made less ambitious stonewares until a revival in the later 19th century. It operated on the same site until 1956, and then until at least the 1980s as a base for studio pottery to be fired. Today, all that remains of the original pottery is one large

bottle kiln A bottle is a narrow-necked container made of an impermeable material (such as glass, plastic or aluminium) in various shapes and sizes that stores and transports liquids. Its mouth, at the bottling line, can be sealed with an internal Stoppe ...

, "probably 19th-century", which is now a

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building is a structure of particular architectural or historic interest deserving of special protection. Such buildings are placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, H ...

building.

Wares and history

John Dwight

From the earliest days, the pottery was a significant manufacturer of salt-glazed stoneware, initially brown, and later white; often the two glaze colours were combined in different zones. Dwight was a very early experimenter with

porcelain Porcelain (), also called china, is a ceramic material made by heating Industrial mineral, raw materials, generally including kaolinite, in a kiln to temperatures between . The greater strength and translucence of porcelain, relative to oth ...

, approaching the matter scientifically, keeping records of his trials. Dwight's background was not in pottery; he had a

Master of Arts A Master of Arts ( or ''Artium Magister''; abbreviated MA or AM) is the holder of a master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The degree is usually contrasted with that of Master of Science. Those admitted to the degree have ...

degree from

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

, and worked as an assistant to

Robert Boyle Robert Boyle (; 25 January 1627 – 31 December 1691) was an Anglo-Irish natural philosopher, chemist, physicist, Alchemy, alchemist and inventor. Boyle is largely regarded today as the first modern chemist, and therefore one of the foun ...

in the later 1650s. Excavations in the 1970s uncovered many of his coded test pieces, dated to 1673–74, which the

Museum of London London Museum (known from 1976 to 2024 as the Museum of London) is a museum in London, covering the history of the city from prehistoric to modern times, with a particular focus on social history. The Museum of London was formed in 1976 by ama ...

feels able to call "porcelain", although such wares never seem to have been produced for sale. The

, which has the excavated pieces, has a small porcelain vase, deliberately broken, with painted floral decoration, and a similar unpainted one. The stoneware vessels often copied German shapes and decoration, while the porcelain shapes imitate Chinese porcelain. In its first years the pottery produced some small sculptural pieces of good quality, which were unprecedented in English pottery. These were figures of classical gods and busts of Dwight's family and English royalty, which were evidently modelled by sculptors brought in, though scholars cannot agree which. Most of the small number of examples in the London museums were made as one-off hand-modelled pieces, rather than using moulds to allow repetition, and seem to have come from a sale after Dwight's last descendant died in 1859. The

Victoria and Albert Museum The Victoria and Albert Museum (abbreviated V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and named after Queen ...

has a memorial statuette of his daughter Lydia Dwight, who died aged 6 in 1674, standing in her burial clothes with a skull at her foot. This was a private image for the family of the dead girl. Another half-length figure shows the girl dead in her bed, holding a posy of flowers.

After 1703

After Dwight died in 1703, the business continued under his daughter and later other members of the family, but the range and quality of wares declined, and (at least the survivals) are mostly "tavernware": bottles, jugs, mugs and the like, many with relief decoration (hunting scenes appealed to the tavern market) and inscribed or impressed inscriptions, the latter using printer's type. A relief moulded mug shown below has a version of

William Hogarth William Hogarth (; 10 November 1697 – 26 October 1764) was an English painter, engraving, engraver, pictorial social satire, satirist, editorial cartoonist and occasional writer on art. His work ranges from Realism (visual arts), realistic p ...

's print ''Midnight Modern Conversation'', a satirical drinking scene, and "a very popular subject found on mugs and jugs of this type", above the inevitable hunting scene. The stamped inscription "Richd – Turner; Three Sugar – Loaves (across the medallion);

Rickmansworth Rickmansworth () is a town in south-west Hertfordshire, England, located approximately north-west of central London, south-west of Watford and inside the perimeter of the M25 motorway. The town is mainly to the north of the Grand Union Canal ( ...

Herts (below)" shows it was made for Richard Turner, landlord of the "Three Sugar Loaves" inn in

, Herts. John Doulton, founder of the later Doulton & Co. (now

Royal Doulton Royal Doulton is an English ceramic and home accessories manufacturer that was founded in 1815. Operating originally in Vauxhall, London, and later moving to Lambeth, in 1882 it opened a factory in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, in the centre of Engl ...

) finished an apprenticeship there in 1815, as "a noted big ware thrower"; he went on to found his own firm in

Lambeth Lambeth () is a district in South London, England, which today also gives its name to the (much larger) London Borough of Lambeth. Lambeth itself was an ancient parish in the county of Surrey. It is situated 1 mile (1.6 km) south of Charin ...

and make a fortune supplying Victorian England with drain and sewage pipes. Fulham continued to produce wares, but had "nearly fallen into ruin" by 1864, when it was bought by C.J.C. Bailey, who revived it, making architectural ceramics in

, and also following Doulton's in making some art pottery from the late 1860s. The pottery changed hands again in 1888, and was soon mainly making salt-glazed stoneware again, which continued until 1956. The pottery continued to fire pieces of studio pottery, and in the 1980s produced a number of pieces with Quentin Bell, Philip Sutton and others.''The Artist''
1987, pp. 37, 57, Artist Publishing Company Limited
Two Bell examples, lot at Bonham'sTile, c. 1981
V&A Museum
"The Fulham Pottery Ltd." was dissolved
in 1996 File:Covered Tankard, John Dwight, Fulham, c. 1685-1690 - Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art - DSC08692.JPG, Covered tankard, c. 1685–1690, with sprigged decoration including a double bust of

William William is a masculine given name of Germanic languages, Germanic origin. It became popular in England after the Norman Conquest, Norman conquest in 1066,All Things William"Meaning & Origin of the Name"/ref> and remained so throughout the Middle ...

and Mary File:Tankard, John Dwight, Fulham, dated 1724 - Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art - DSC08698.JPG, Mug with hunting scene and metal rim, dated 1724, inscription includes "Drink all up and Fill itt" File:Mug (AM 1965.46-1) (cropped).jpg, Mug, c. 1730, inscribed "Richd – Turner; Three Sugar - Loaves (across the medallion);

Herts (below)" – ''see text'' File:Mug LACMA 27.1.6.jpg, Mug with metal rim, 1700±25

Notes

References

*Bergesen, Victoria, ''Bergesen's Price Guide: British Ceramics'', 1992, Barrie & Jenkins, *Elliott, Gordon, "The Elers in Staffordshire", in ''Aspects of Ceramic History: A Series of Papers Focusing on the Ceramic Artifact As Evidence of Cultural and Technical Developments'', 2006, Gordon Elliott, , 9780955769009
online
*"MoL

*Wood, Frank L., ''The World of British Stoneware: Its History, Manufacture and Wares'', 2014, Troubador Publishing Ltd, , 9781783063673
google books

External links