North Devon
Pottery
HHistorian and author Alison Grant has completed her book on North Devon
Pottery.
Introduction to the book
Many North Devon people are interested in local pottery. They appreciate
especially the handsome harvest jugs with their bold designs of ships in
full sail, or rural landscapes with verses that evoke scenes of peace and
plenty and the jovial atmosphere of harvest suppers. Most of these jugs
were made in the nineteenth century, a relatively late period in the
history of the industry. Until recently, nothing was known of its earlier
development. When Llewellyn Jewitt visited North Devon to gather material
for his pioneering work on ceramic art in Britain, published in 1878 he
found that local memories did not go back before 1800. He was shown only
one ‘interesting relic’ of earlier times, an earthenware chimney-pot from
a Bideford pottery bearing the date 1668. In the two hundred years that
had passed, the names of earlier potters had been forgotten and knowledge
of their work lost, yet the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries had
been the period of the greatest expansion of the industry. This became
clear in 1960, when Malcolm Watkins published the first study of North
Devon pottery to make use of archaeological finds. Since then
archaeologists have been able to identify sherds of North Devon ware from
excavations. These finds add a new dimension to the study of the industry,
for as well as enabling the fabric and form of past products to be
examined, they provide important evidence of their distribution.
Archaeological evidence is used in this book to help rediscover some of
the forgotten past of the North Devon pottery industry, and most of the
seventeenth-century information is drawn from the documentary sources used
for the University of Exeter PhD thesis in history on which the first
edition was based. For the second edition I am adding a little about
medieval pottery, which archaeologists are now finding was also made in
North Devon, and am including the pottery of later centuries. Therefore
this edition is considerably larger.
For the purposes of the study, North Devon is defined as the area within a
radius of approximately fifteen miles from the market towns of Barnstaple,
Bideford and Great Torrington. In this edition, the manufacture of
pottery, and the wares themselves are described first. The book then
identifies many North Devon potters, but not every man or boy who worked
as a potter’s labourer in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as some
probably never threw a pot! Potters are discussed in the context of the
communities in which they lived and worked. As before, the last part of
the book is concerned with the distribution and marketing of the wares,
showing that North Devon became the pivot of a fan of commerce extending,
at its greatest point, westward as far as the colonies in North America
and the West Indies. In the seventeenth-century the pottery industry had
more than local significance, and played an important part in some aspects
of Irish trade, as well as the early development of the colonies. In later
years, these markets contracted considerably, and the industry itself
declined. In spite of many changes, however, an industry still exists,
after over 800 years, and its influence past, present and even future, has
been, and is, immeasurable.
‘NORTH DEVON POTTERY’ is published by Lazarus Publishing and costs £20.
Tel: 01237 421195
Tel: 01237 425520
Lazarus Publishing, Unit 7, Caddsdown Industrial Park, Clovelly Road,
Bideford, Devon, UK