Rye Pottery

Notes from a web spotting day!

We’ve tiled more bathrooms than we can count in the last 40 years with our Rye Tiles Range, but we’ve just spotted a wonderful photograph on .housetohome.co.uk, showing one of the many, many uses for some of the beautiful pots we’ve made over the years at Rye Pottery.housetohome  It’s a classic 1/2pt  multifloral jug-  probably made in the 70′s  but it is  one which we can  still produce if asked,  here it’s used as a vase for flowers in a very contemporary bathroom.  I recently bought a lovely Cadborough Brown dark rich glazed jug on ebay which I too, use as a flower vase. This though, is a glaze which we no longer make and we needed one for our archive.

It’s a very useful website, packed with ideas and inspiration, and it’s the online home for a diverse group of leading interiors magazines from Homes & Gardens and Country Homes & Interiors to Style at home and Livingetc – take a look by clicking here.

1/2 pt Rye Pottery Jug

News round up

Although this seemingly endless rain has prevented some of the regular April visitors from making the dash from London to Rye this year, we have been very pleased to receve a great many compliments from all the ones who have braved the April showers.  So many people seem surprised that we have managed to avoid using the standard Royal photograph as  decoration on our Jubilee Pottery, instead we have continued working with images from our very good collection of Royal  Heraldry artwork to produce a souvenir that people really appreciate. We have let one customer down though, she really wanted a thimble and somehow Rye has never trodden the souvenir thimble path!

We have struggled to find out exactly how Rye Town plans to spend the Jubilee week end, but so far have found a rather large hole in the information available; however I am sure something will be happening then, and  in the meantime we have looked out our Union Jack flag   so it will be ready to fly from our flagpole on June 2.

Finally I must apologise to the people who write to us hoping for information about  items of pottery produced over the past 60 years by the other potteries in Rye- now ALL CLOSED.  We try to give you any information we do have, but as they were all separate businesses,  albeit mainly opened by ex- employees of Rye Pottery, I am afraid it means  that we have only a limited amount of  hard facts at our disposal.

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.

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)

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Noticed in the papers.

Last week we were saddened but interested to see an obituary of cartoonist Ronald Searle that used a photograph of him standing in his studio. Just behind him was a lovely 50s Rye Pottery Jug holding his paint brushes.

(You can see the picture here).

Spotting the Rye Pot is always a fun game – they seem to come up in Midsomer Murders frequently, though so far no piece has been the actual murder weapon!

Last week was also the anniversary of the death of Edward the Confessor in 1066 and the accession to the English throne of  Harold the following day; so much for his promises to William, perhaps like many politicians the opportunity  of holding  power made it worthwhile jettisoning his principles.

For the next 9 weeks the railway from Ashford  to Hastings via Rye  will be closed for major repairs, so if you are visiting Rye  it  will be simpler to travel by car until the end of March.

A new year and some old friends.

The  Christmas decorations are  now all put away until next December, while we   work our way through some large boxes of samples which had been stored away when we were moving out of the Ferry Road site 5 years ago this month. We have found several figures in different colourways, some of which we may decide to repeat, as well as some very early lamp bases with charming hand painted  designs  which  we may copy onto some other shapes.    Meanwhile we wish all our  collectors a very happy and healthy 2012 and we look forward to hearing from you and hopefully seeing some of you during the coming year.

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!

LADIES IN WAITING from Rye Pottery 2011

NOVEMBER BEGINS:

Rye has a special feel in November, like a great many East Sussex towns and villages it has a thriving Bonfire Society  whose hardworking members stage a flaming torch lit procession around the town, with a magnificent  firework display and huge bonfire  down on The Salts-this year’s date is Saturday 11^th. 

The whole day has a special excitement with the scent of smoke & darkness  and members of other Bonfire Societies marching around the town most of the day in full costume. Rye’s tradition goes way back beyond Guy Fawkes to medieval  days when our local  fishermen and their opposite numbers across the Channel in France were continuously raiding each other and setting fire to the fishing boats. There is always a “ Burning boat” bringing up the rear of the procession to this day, though its more mundane task now is to collect the burnt out torches. Grown-up children who have long moved away from Rye make a point of trying to be back for Bonfire Night.

>> To find out more visit the Rye & District Bonfire Society website here!

Vintage Sussex Pigs

Today Tarquin has been asked to help identify an early 20^thcentury “Sussex Pig” for a collector, but the consensus from all the local  experts was that it was nothing to do with Rye. Too many things did not match up, colour of the glaze, the lettering technique and of course no basemark at all. It looked as if it was cast from a mould so beware there could be more about! 

Note to the wary: Pre war Sussex Pigs were all thrown by hand & not made in a mould.

Here at Rye Pottery we do not reproduce pre-war pieces and any post-war designs we do introduce always have our current Rye Pottery mark, or “back stamp” as we call it in the trade, to make sure there can be no confusion.

>> We’ll be adding more about the various marks used to identify Rye Pottery in the future, but in the meantime, click here to find out how our backstamp and initialling systems work – both now and in years past. 

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.