Pamela Goddard 1933-2012
We are just back from a funeral, Pamela Goddard, who worked at the pottery from 1948 until she took early retirement in 1984, died at the beginning of June.
Pam was taken on by Jack and Wally Cole to help with decorating the ever increasing range of pottery they were developing in the early post-war years. The country had been starved of pretty things, but now as long as the pottery was for export they could put patterns everywhere! The home market was still restricted to decoration which only used different coloured clay slips, but export allowed total freedom of expression.Pam worked on the Cottage stripes and all their variations and was involved in the introduction of the very popular Multi floral range of tableware (click here fore more), which was exported both to the United States and to several Northern European countries throughout the 1960’s and 70’s. From the mid 60’s Pam moved from painting to throwing ware and, as more semi-automatic tableware making machinery was introduced, she concentrated mainly on thrown dishes, bowls and jugs.
Her thrown ware is identified by the pressed metal P on the base of her pots, identifying her painted work is more of a problem as Rye Pottery standard ware were patterns that were copied from a master original and pieces were not signed until the initialling of each piece was introduced by the younger Coles in the mid 1990’s.
Biddy Cole