Rye Pottery

Even more Diamond Jubilee.

: COBALT BLUE JUBILEE TANKARDS

We are working very hard trying to produce lots of our popular little tankards, but as with all very special things it is quite a process to have one ready to display for sale in the shop.

All the tankards are hand thrown on the wheel by Steve Russeell, who works to carefully pre-set measurements, but of course with anything totally hand made there must always be room for a little variation in width and height!

This clay mug is then bisque fired and brought down to our decorating workshop in Rye, where Julie Catt glazes it, then paints the bands around the top of the mug and puts the dash onto the handle then it is back into the kiln again.

Finally Betty Sayer having printed up a folder full of transfers will apply the transfers carefully, including the Rye Pottery backstamp and it is ready for the final firing in the kiln. So as you will appreciate we really do sell a Diamond Jubilee Tankard which is both hand made and hand decorated here in Rye.

DIAMOND JUBILEE

HAND PAINTED DIAMOND JUBILEE PLATE

Although the first week end of June will be the time for the main Diamond Jubilee celebrations, February 6th is the actual date of Her Majesty’s accession in 1952. We have been working hard to have some special pieces ready, we had already sold our first handpainted plate sample to a regular customer who is involved in various civic celebrations, fortunately we have painted a few more which we have now fired!

We are planning to have a display in our shop of some of our Commemorative Jubilee pottery which we will hope to change as and when new pieces appear! Our current problem is that somehow we have managed to only put one of the 2 relevant dates on the first trial batch of little tankards. At least this is a fault we can easily put right, just need to stay awake while putting the transfer onto the tankard; unlike the plate we painted for the Queen and Prince Philip’s Silver Wedding in 1972 when we managed to write PRICNCE (sic) instead of prince and did not notice it until it was fired and ready to go on display!

STOP PRESS correctly dated tankards with the right dates just starting to come through the system.

Rye Pottery gears up to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee

This year we are, in total contrast to last year’s Royal Wedding, all geared up and raring to go with new Rye Pottery designs to commemorate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee.

We have planned and painted a sample of our hand-painted large plate, as well as designing the artwork for the much-loved little transfer tankards and small dishes. We hope to add some one-off pots throughout the next 6 months, which will be sold on a strictly first come first served basis.

Rye Pottery have produced Royal Commemoratives for over 100 years. Hastings Museum has a 1902 jug made for Edward VII and we’ve also seen trials and drawings for an Edward VIII 1936 mug designed by Robert “Bobby” Baker (later Professor of Ceramics at the Royal College of Art while Tarquin was a student) who before WW2 was working for Rural Industries.

: ANNE & MARK WEDDDING PLATE WVC FOR RYE POTTERY

The post-war Cole dynasty at Rye Pottery made tankards and dishes for the 1953 Coronation and have never looked back, producing special designs for each succeeding Royal event. We even printed 2 miles of 6 inch square tiles during the 1981 Royal Wedding celebrations.

Recently we bought two lovely Royal pieces on ebay, one of which, a Wally Cole design, may be a one-off. (See picture to the left)

Collecting old Rye Pottery

1950's Rye Pottery Miss Simplicity bottles

I have been looking on the web and see that there is a MISS SIMPLICITY bottle for sale on ebay.

These bottles in 2 sizes were originally used for Oil and Vinegar. They were designed by Jack Cole in the early- mid 1950′s, not as stated in the text for the one for sale on ebay, by Marjorie Cole. Marjorie was Jack’s wife and she produced some very collectable Pottery dolls in the 50′s; we have traced about 20 of these very charming one- off dolls, sadly Marjorie in later years destroyed any she could lay her hands on.

Jack did not really like his Miss Simplicity, (we have this in a letter on file in the archive) but despite his artistic misgivings she was a popular piece at the time.

We have recently found the moulds and have played around with it as a figure with a fixed head, trying several different patterns and colours, turned her head round on her body and called her a Lady in Waiting!

Rye Pottery 2011 Ladies in waiting, remodelled from original 1950s Rye Pottery Design by Jack Cole

LADIES IN WAITING from Rye Pottery 2011

More pages go live!

We are adding new pages in all the time and trying to ensure there is plenty of information about the Rye Pottery range for you to find without too much hassle. Please let us know what you think we love to hear from you.

New Website & an update of some of our latest pottings!

Some of you will have struggled to find us over the past weeks while we have been having our new website sorted out! We are here and working even if off the radar for a short while, so please contact us if you need us (click here). Meanwhile I am doing my best to put all our pottery back on to this lovely new site! I am sure you will eventually find it simpler to navigate and hopefully full of interesting things about all our Rye Pottery ranges. Update: end of September: with help from our daughter Tabby we have finally sorted out the cut off heads and now have put the complete Canterbury Tales pages up on the website. Please do have a look while we go on looking for all the other pre digital pictures for some of the other pages. We are getting very excited as we work through each group and hope you will enjoy the new-look Rye Pottery as much we as do

Vintage Rye Pottery Vases

During the long damp summer June Woolley who retired in 1998 after 45 years, has been back in the attics peering through our amazing archive. The result of all this activity means that we have some really exciting early 1950′s patterns painted by June onto vases and bowls so not only are we one of the few country potteries still in existence today who were selected to show in one of the pavilions of the Festival of Britain, here 60 years on are some of those same patterns.

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