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

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!.

HAND PAINTED DIAMOND JUBILEE PLATE

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.

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.

Christmas and New Year!

Small engraved Christmas dish by Wally Cole c 1960

So we have finally arrived,  last parcels sent off  and  last kiln fired! Our shop will be open until 3.00pm on  Friday December 23rd and then we are closed until Tuesday January 3rd.

We  would like to thank all our Rye enthusiasts for continuing to support us,  and we wish you all, wherever you are in the world, a happy and enjoyable Christmas and a healthy and peaceful 2012.

Wedding anniversaries!

The Prince Regent or Prinny as he was sometimes known

Mrs Fitzherbert

 

Years ago we were asked by Brighton Pavilion to produce a pair of Regency figures based on some of their wonderfully vicious James Gillray cartoons.

One of the figures was The Prince Regent and the other was Maria Fitzherbert.  Their unrecognised morganatic marriage took place on 15th December 1785, but sadly, despite his genuine love for her, his increasing debts and extravagance meant  he had to to agree to King George III’s terms and in 1795  he  married his cousin Princess Caroline of Brunswick.  This  royal alliance was  a disaster from day one, resulting in an official separation a year later, and producing such dislike on both sides that as George IV in 1820 he even  forbade her admittance to his Coronation.

>> You can find out more about them both by clicking this link which will take you to the Royal Pavilion’s website.

STILL WORKING HARD

Our poor kiln here is working so hard it hardly has time to cool between being unpacked and repacked and switched on again.

For safety reasons the kiln is on the ground floor here, but the heat comes up through the floor boards and keeps my feet pleasantly warm. The other useful byproduct of firing the kiln is that over the years it has caused the floor boards to warp a little so that customers simply cannot come in and out without us hearing - so much easier than keeping a dog to bark at them!

Panic stations for December!

So December has arrived and the cold weather with it, our fingers are well crossed that we do not have a  repeat  of the cold and snow of last December.

The general feeling of panic and chaos in our building would no doubt keep us warm however cold it was outside,  as we frantically try and make sure that we have all the right figures for the last minute mail order customers, who  somehow over the years, have never quite understood that in a small pottery it is not always feasible to carry large numbers of every single piece we produce.  We hate to upset or disappoint any customer,so we work very hard to second guess all the last minuters,  but sometimes it just is not possible. So if you are one of the unlucky would- be -buyers, we apologise in advance. Why not give them an IOU and we will send it in January as a pick-me- up for the post Christmas blues?

Rye has now switched on the Christmas Tree lights  and on Saturday 10th  Father Christmas is arrving at Rye Station with his reindeer and then will be  driving around Rye to the Christmas Market on the Strand Quay to hear the Victorian carol singers !

Christmas Decorations!

It is the last week of November and we finally managed to remember where we had  put the Christmas decorations last January!  June & Betty  had a very busy day  sorting everything out  and we are now as festive as the proverbial Christmas robin. As usual the moment we started to dismantle the previous window display we had a a run of customers  all wanting to buy  something fron the things we were carefully putting away. This  had been a seaside theme, using our various  donkey figures with or without riders, along with The Netmenders and The Fisherman’s Tale.   To add a little scale to the nautical scene, we had included some very nice nesting boxes made from reclaimed wood and modelled on the iconic  Hastings  black timber fishing sheds, which  are sold by our son Josh via  his on line shop  www.greenandpresent.co.uk  and suddenly from no sales of the boxes in 2 months we found we had sold  all five of  them  as we tried to pack them  away!

With our  windows now shining and twinkling we are all set for Rye’s Christmas Festival which starts on December 3rd with  the switching on of the Lights and the High Street Christmas Tree followed by a firework display.  More about the Rye Christmas Festival plans next week.