Since 1793
Thank you Country & Town House for the shout out for our new decoration “Breakwater” which we developed in collaboration with Turner Contemporary’s top team to mark their wonderful new spring exhibition – Beyond Form Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950-1970.
Lovely feature in Country & Town House on the best things to do in Margate.
 
We’re delighted to announce a creative partnership with Turner Contemporary to introduce a striking new design –Breakwater.
Initially conceived by Wally Cole MBE and completed by our current creative director Josh Cole and illustrator Laura Gill, the Breakwater design has been brought to life in a series of ceramic table lamps, utensil pots & vases and will be sold exclusively in the Turner Contemporary shop, Margate until early May 2024.
The collaboration coincides with the launch of Turner’s spring exhibition – Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950-1970, which opened earlier this month, and focuses on abstraction in a post-WWII period.
Once the Rye Pottery Design Team understood the nature of the exhibition we felt instinctively Breakwater could be a great match.The original pattern was developed and trialled in the mid 50s using a very different colour palette, but the randomness of the hand-painted design was difficult to master and ultimately too time consuming.
Working in tandem with Turner director Clarrie Wallis and leadership from the gallery, the Rye Pottery Design Team re-imagined the little known 1950s pattern, which was originally inspired by the weathered wooden groynes on the pebble beaches, into a bold new hand-painted colourway. The new surface decoration features raw, earthy tonal shifts, layered lines and sgraffito, with the colours taking inspiration from the exhibition’s title and abstract markings from key pieces within it, as well as the Rye Pottery archive and our shared coastal geography.
The Mid-Century Modern aesthetic of our shapes and the abstract style of the hand-painted design complement the exhibition perfectly.
Clarrie Wallis, Director of Turner Contemporary, said: “Turner Contemporary is excited to partner with Rye Pottery on a new collection inspired by the 1950s and 60s – a golden era in the pottery’s history. This collaboration honours a significant period in the decorative arts and resonates beautifully with our ‘Beyond Form’ exhibition, which explores the emergence of post-war abstraction and its role in shaping a new period of creative expression.”
Turner Contemporary believes the partnership with Rye Pottery enriches the gallery’s offering and exemplifies its commitment to supporting the vibrant community of craftspeople and the creative industries in the Southeast. It says the collaboration is an opportunity for them to champion traditional craftsmanship and innovative design, furthering the gallery’s role in nurturing the rich cultural landscape of the region.
Beyond Form: Lines of Abstraction, 1950-1970 runs until May 6th and entry is free. Find out more about the exhibition and how to buy our pottery from the Turner Shop here www.turnercontemporary.org
 
Thanks to House & Garden and Ticky Headley-Dent for the lovely feature on Rye Pottery’s “exciting collaboration” with Turner Contemporary in the form of our newest design “Breakwater”.
The new collection reimagines an original 1950s abstract design by Wally Cole, which was inspired by the striking pebbled beaches and weather-beaten groynes so common in Sussex and Kent.
H&G desribes the newhand-painted surface decoration as “distinctly modern, yet hark[ing] unmistakably back to their heritage… a wonderful example of British craftsmanship.”
 
Country Living has given us a fab start to the year by naming one of our Lamp Bases “Editor’s Choice” in their first Emporium of 2024. The whole section had a focus on artisanal gifts from some of their favourite makers and small businesses so we were in good company too.
“Established in the late 1700s, family-owned Rye Pottery has a rich history of crafting beautiful ceramics. This lamp is no exception, showcasing their skill in blending past and present by combining mid-century design with centuries old techniques.”
This beautiful photo was styled by Country Living’s Alaina Binks with photography by Nato Weldon.
The table lamp pictured shows our Cascade sgraffito decoration in Denmark Green. You can see more of our Lighting here.
 
Thrilled to be be in House & Garden’s must keep annual “Kitchens & Bathrooms” supplement. Out now (June) but do note it’s the July edition you need to buy.
Our Mid-century Modern lamp bases in Denmark Cascade were a small part of the amazing Carroline Riddell scheme on a Manor Barn she and her team renovated. Even if you’re only looking it’s worth a few minutes to enjoy the scale and beautiful simplictiy one of our favrouite interior designers has brought to the project. You can read more about Caroline and this specific project here.
But if you’re considering an upgrade or even just a bit of a spruce this month’s House & Garden supplement will be invaluable to have on the coffee table. It’s packed full of inspiration and stunning ideas with a host of different styles, suppliers and designers and interior designers on every page. Come on you know you want to. You can click here to read a bit more about it.
 
Our thanks to Homes & Antiques Magazine for including us in their latest “Wishlist – Collectables” feature, marking the Coronation.
With some of our past designs in museums around the world – not least the V&A’s Ceramics Collection and the British Museum’s Museum of The Home – it’s very rewarding to have our very latest Lion & Unicorn Bookend figures included in their roundup for heirlooms commemorating the Coronation.
We were one of just 8 items picked and it was a testament to the ceramics industry that we were alongside four other high quality ceramic designs from Bridie Hall, Spode, Emma Bridgewater & Moorcroft. Thanks Homes & Antiques.
 
We’re loving the buzz around the launch of “The Wife of Bath: A Biography” by Oxford Uni Chaucer specialist Professor Marion Turner. The book is published by Princeton University Press & has had incredible reviews. And lots of you will know that we love anything that celebrates & demystifies the many women who have been airbrushed from history.
So to celebrate we filmed our very own Wife of Bath figure being painted so you can see how we bring our own amazing version of this renowned medieval woman to life. We know lots of our collectors love seeing how we actually make and paint things here, so this is a short 1 minute insight into Chaucer’s most famous pilgrim being hand-decorated by one of our talented team – using freehand brushwork. You can see how the colours change after she’s been fired for the second time.
Discover more about the professor’s book by visiting the Princeton Uni website here and if you’d like to see more about the 37 figures in our hand-made Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales Collection do click here.
 
Large thanks to the team at House & Garden who were so kind as to include us in one of their 2022 Christmas Gift Guides.
And guess what they picked? Well our timeless Cottage Stripe Design of course. As many of you will know we nearly always have a long waiting list for this decoration and it remains a firm favourite with every age group – in some cases we’re now supplying the fourth generation with our stripey pots!
some families we are now suppling the fourth generation!
Knowing that your straight lines have been hand-painted by a human being is a thing to behold every time to use one of our pots and if you’re in Rye, you may even catch someone actualy painting them in front of you.
You can see all things Cottage stripe here. And the H&G Gift Guide is here.
 
An online film about our unusual Sussex Wedding gift, the Sussex Pig has been unveiled by Rye Arts Festival. The 12 minute short is a gentle & thoughtfully constructed piece explaining our pigs’ extraordinary story and revealing exactly how these unusual pottery drinking vessels are made.
Our ceramic Sussex Pigs have been hand-made & hand painted using freehand brushwork since the 1800s, with over 12 hand processes used to create them. Created by arts & culture filmmaker Alisdair Kitchen, the film launched this week as part of Rye Arts Festival’s Digital Fringe.
We’re enormously grateful to Al and the Rye Arts Festival team for choosing us. We really enjoyed working with him and can’t believe he’s made such a strong testament to our amazing team and quite how much time and skill is involved in every single piece of pottery we make.
Do click on the film above to find out about the history of our crazy wedding pigs and how they’re made entirely by hand. And if you’re tempted to have one yourself, you can see the full range by clicking here.
 
We’ve often worked with interior designer Caroline Riddell and her team, but we were so pleased to see the finished result of one recent project in particular. It’s a barn conversion with an adjoining 17th-century house in Berkshire and the result is stunning.
Do take a look at the House & Garden article featuring the project – it’s available online to read and will give you a good feeling for Caroline as well as the property itself. Our small part was to supply two of our hand-made & painted Mid-Century Modern lamp bases in our Cascade decoration in Denmark Green.
Do click on this link to see it all – it’s a really comfortable yet stylish look that’s created a “home” rather than a showpiece and our lamp bases look amazeballs if we do say so ourselves. Pics by Simon Brown and Scheme by Caroline Riddell Interiors.
 
A bit late to the party, what with the run-up to Christmas and all that, but we were chuffed to bits to be named one of The Guardian‘s Top Ten Independent Shops in the UK at the start of December. And the reason it’s a particularly big compliment is that all the shops featured were voted for by the newspaper’s readers.
They were looking for, ahem, quirky places, so our totally bonkers approach to working and making a living finally came good.
Do click here to read the article on The Guardian’s website and discover the other fab places suggested for shopping inspiration. And if you like the look of our Mid-Century Modern lamp base in the photo then click here.
 
Our thanks to Country Life who featured Rye Pottery in a knowledgeable article about regional potteries – not just us! It was written by the thoughtful journalist, Matthew Dennison. Thank you to all. To read the article click right here
 
Suitably Bonkers for Rye Pottery … and suitably last minute!
What started as a few baubles for a window display has quickly escalated. These are fun one-offs at the moment, hand-painted and individually singed by the decorator – we’ve been having some fun with them if we’re honest and the whole team has taken part.
Pick n mix from the tree in store, or order here from our seven favourites so far. £25 each plus £2.95 UK p&p.
Please click through here to see more pics and order or email us at sales@ryepottery.co.uk and say which you’d like by using numbers from left to right!
 
It is with great sadness that we announce the death of a man very significant in Rye Pottery’s continued existence. Please follow this link to the Hastings and Rye Observer or click on the picture below to read a concise little obituary printed about Quin – a man we will miss dearly both as a family and a business. May 2019
 
Chuffed to have The LB1 Mid Century Modern ceramic lamp base picked for the Living Etc Agenda pages.
Do check out the June 2018 edition.
 
Our thanks to Country & Town House magazine and The Insider team for featuring The LB1 – our Mid Century Modern Ceramic Lamp base in their May 2018 Edition.
 
We’re very pleased to see Soho House’s latest venture unveiled publicly and even more pleased to see our specially commissioned Mid Century Modern Lamp Bases in situ!
Their latest hotel and member’s club is in London’s Shepherd’s Bush, housed in the former BBC HQ that used to flash up on the telly.
You know – the iconic round 60’s “doughnut” building with the famous sculpture of Helios in the centre.
Shown here: The LB1 Medium in Black Tracery
Choosing our medium LB1, we were asked to create 92 table lamps, 2 for each bedroom. The Soho House interiors team of Daisy Bere & Linda Boronkay first picked one of our own revamped 1960’s patterns (Black Astrakhan) and then complimented it with 2 further mid century-esque designs alongside one specifically developed for the project – the all new Soho Stripe.
You can view our full range of lamps by clicking here, but for now here’s another pic of one of the cosy White City House rooms. Oh and did we mention there’s a swimming pool on the roof. With a bar…..
This picture: The LB1 medium in Denmark Green Cascade and Denmark Green Soho Stripe
All images courtesy of White City House
 
Our last few tweaks to the final of four majolica decorations chosen by the Soho House Interiors team for their Mid Century White City House project.
Practice makes perfect.
 
After a visit from the Soho House interior design team, Rye Pottery is looking forward to working with them on a grand new Mid Century Hotel opening for 2018.
Shapes agreed…Pattern Development pics to follow soon …
 
Welcome to the formal unveiling of our Mid Century Modern LB1 Large Lamp Base.
An iconic shape from our archive redesigned with a contemporary decorative twist in six different designs.
Collection designed & conceived by Josh Cole.
Please CLICK HERE for more details 
Jamie Oliver’s foodie mag “Jamie” included Rye in their recent guide to the best Gourmet Getaways in the UK – and quite right too we say.
Many thanks to journo Claire Nelson for including Rye Pottery and a pic of one of our decorating team hand-painting one of our sheep.
It’s not the kind you can eat though Jamie… 
We’re very pleased to say that Margaret Howell in London are stocking our Mid Century Modern LB1 large Lamp Base in two different decorations- All White Tracery & Black Astrakhan.
Do TAKE A LOOK at the full range of designs here.
 
The Telegraph Magazine. With many thanks to journos Jessica Doyle and Talib Choudhry for including us in their piece about three British, family-run ceramics companies.
 
Thanks to Country Living Magazine and Deputy Home Design Editor Alaina Binks for including our Cottage Stripe Little Bowls in their latest autumnal Emporium section. For more details click here
 
Landscape Magazine were kind enough to interview one of us for a feature in their January/February 2016 issue.
 
Channel 4’s Grand Designs
Rye Pottery & our Dragonfly Tiles were featured on an episode of Grand Designs on September 16th. It was a Godsmark Architects build for James Strangeways next to a Romney Marsh Canal. Our hand-glazed & hand-painted Tiles were used as a stylish backdrop for a woodburner in the living room. And yes, our Cottage Stripes Stripe Bowls were in the kitchen too.
Our thanks to Director Ned Williams & the team for beautiful sequences showing our techniques and talented paintress Julie Catt. And thanks also to Kevin McCloud Esq not least for describing our tiles as “charming”.
First shown Wed 16th September 2015 you can catch-up and watch Grand Designs Series 15 – Episode 2 on All4 by clicking here
 
BBC South East Today & Paddy O’Connell – 29 August 2015
Josh Cole was interviewed as part of a special series fronted Radio 4’s Paddy O’Connell for BBC South East Today. Our section was a pre-filmed part of a whole programme dedicated to Rye and the town’s wonderful Jazz Festival.
Jane Davies and Rebecca Rhodes from our painting team were also featured painting our Chaucer Figures and Cottage Stripes.
 
It’s fair to say that it takes something of a long time to put our Wealden Times stand up … and down!
So large thanks from all at Rye Pottery to Wealden Times Editor Lucy Fleming & Harpers and Hurlingham’s Jane Beard for naming Rye Pottery as this year’s “Best Stand” at the MidWinter Fair.
The Wealden Times MidWinter Fair is a hugely popular Christmas Market held at the charming Victorian Walled Garden at Bedgebury Pinetum. Visitors come from far and wide but it’s a “must” in the Kent & Sussex calendar for locals too.
Whatever the weather the event is staged in warm marquees with wonderful food and lunch stalls making it a great way to get going on your Christmas shopping.
It’s a huge compliment to win given such strong competition, so we’re all very chuffed indeed.
 
We’re very pleased to say Rye Pottery has been selected as one of Coast Magazine’s “Ten Best Potteries” in the UK.
The team at the glossy mag have designed a stylish 4-page feature with evocative pics of life potting and showcasing, well yes us, but also nine other talented potters and firms, not least The Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall. If you love all things ceramic it’s well worth a read and may well give you inspiration about other potters and potteries to visit while you’re out and about in the UK.
Many thanks to the journo Alex Reece and the rest of the crew at Coast. As soon as we get our hands on a PDF we’ll add it in here, but in the meantime, see if you can spot our paintress Karen in the screen grabs below…. she’s painting Cottage Stripes onto one of our mugs.
For more on this monthly magazine about the seaside click the following link http://www.coastmagazine.co.uk/
 
Those Collectors who visit the shop in Rye will know if they’ve been lucky, over the last 2 or 3 years they’ve been able to pick up the occasional one-off design sample of this Mid-Century Rye Pottery Classic as we worked out how, and indeed if, we could incorporate a contemporary version of this wonderful, popular figure from days gone by.
So, drum roll please, here is Miss Simplicity fit for the 21st Century, but retaining all her 1950s charm. Modelled by our post-war co-founder Jack Cole, this piece was originally designed as an oil & vinegar bottle. Now with her head firmly in place, and with totally fresh decoration and design, we gave her a suitably demure “soft” launch at the Wealden Times MidSummer Fair in June … and promptly sold out! So now we’ve managed to make a few more, we thought it was time to re-introduce her formally back into British Society.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we’d like you to meet Miss Simplicity. 
We know lots of our customers like to group these little fellas together, so this spring/summer we’ve produced a limited edition run of our popular Ceramic Puppies & Dogs in three (oh yes) new colourways. And collectors will be pleased to know this is the first time they’ve been painted in these colours.
They’re designed to compliment our focus this season on Flamingo Pink, Cobalt Blue and our fresh new Paris Green.
 
The English Tourist Board – Visit England – has published a select list of some of the best hand-crafted products still being produced in England.
And we’re thrilled to say that Rye Pottery has been included. As a company we’re incredibly proud that all our pieces & Collections have been continuously Made in Britain (we’ve never “re-shored” because we never offshored in the first place) and it’s wonderful to have been chosen.
We’re alongside a handful of other great names, so do look them up:
Barbour – Wax Jackets,
Pashley Cycles – Incredible Bikes
Debbie Bryan Heritage – Lace
Norfolk Lavender Company
Do take a look at the list on the Visit England website here too.
 
We all send The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge our best wishes on the birth of their first son – The Prince of Cambridge.
But please may we beg the happy parents not to keep us all waiting too long to hear what he is to be called. We – alongside countless other British companies around the country – are all waiting primed and ready to fire our hand-made and hand-decorated commemorative ceramic tankards in the kiln, but, when, and only when, they reveal the last piece of the puzzle. Like many other British firms, we have the additional problem of summer holidays, as if they delay the naming for too long some of our talented but small team will be away on their well earned holidays. HM the Queen was not the only person wanting everything to be sorted before the holidays arrived!
In the hope of being as prepared as possible we’ve worked through a host of different designs to allow for different months, long names, short names and so on. Not that it’s useful to anyone but privately some of us reckon it won’t be a Richard (pre-Tudor), or even a William (too close to his dad), and definitely not Cnut! But we quite fancy George or possibly Albert. If it was a girl we were quite sure Alexandra, Elizabeth or Victoria had a very good chance – but alas, that’s for the next one, and fortunately our business is making pottery not bookmaking!
Our hand-thrown tankards will be produced just as they were when Prince William was born back in 1982. Featuring the two most popular colourways for our Royal Commemorative pieces, Cobalt Blue and Blue Green, these charming little mugs will be decorated with hand-printed (not digital) transfers and additional hand-painted banding. All very traditional and quintessentially Rye Pottery.
The waiting list for these limited edition tankards commemorating the Birth of the Prince of Cambridge is already growing from our band of dedicated collectors, so do let us know soon if you would like one. The mugs are £18.00 each plus p&p.
As soon as we have a name we’ll hope to provide a sneak peak here of the design.
 
The Wife of Bath
Here at Rye Pottery we have a special interest in the enthronement of the new Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, to whom we send our very best wishes. We’ve supplied the shop at Canterbury Cathedral with our ceramic figures and tiles based on Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales for more years than some of us like to remember! We also produce a special tile of the Thomas a’ Beckett Tomb for the Cathedral.
But what some of our collectors may not know, is that Rye Pottery’s figures from Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales were born from a request by Canterbury Cathedral for its gift shop in the early 1970s.
Mr Steele who launched the shop, introduced us to sculptor and painter Gordon Davies and suggested we should work together to produce something featuring one of the pilgrims – The Wife of Bath. Discussions and then work ensued, and lo the Wife become the very first in a what is now a series of 38 ceramic figures based on Chaucer’s Pilgrims. And the rest as they say is history!
Gordon went on to design our Rye Nativity too and in the year 2000, then Archbishop George Carey took a complete set of the Rye Nativity to Jerusalem as a gift to mark his Millennium visit. We recently heard from a Rye Pottery collector who had seen it on display out there but sadly his camera had failed him at the crucial moment.
So we’ll always be grateful to Canterbury Cathedral and its inhabitants, not least to Mr Steele for introducing us to Gordon, who did a great deal of wonderful work at Canterbury over the years, as well for us here at Rye.
 
Congratulations to our paintress Karen Wicking who’s become the proud wife and mother to an award-winning duo at Crufts! Karen is one of the brilliant paintresses who hand-decorates our figures, not least our animals and the recently returned Rye Pottery Hounds!
Karen’s husband Willie and the family’s 4 year-old Labrador Harvey scooped top prize in the the first ever BASC Chudleys Invitation Scurry at Crufts, after clocking up the fastest time in their class.
For the uninitiated, a Scurry is a time event for Gundogs and their handlers where the animal has to retrieve a hidden object as fast as possible. To make it even harder, the object itself is hidden and various distractions are then deployed to put the poor dog off the task in hand.
Organised by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC)14 dogs were competing, but fortunately there was no distracting Harvey or Willie and they secured the top slot.
Karen paints, among other things, our Rye Pottery Hounds
The pair are regulars on the Scurry circuit in Kent and Sussex – often winning we might add – and also competed in the Mitsubishi Motors World Series Gundog Championships in 2012. More than that, Karen and Willie’s 14-year-old daughter Alisha has amassed over 90 Rosettes working with Harvey at a host of country shows and fairs.
And it’s all the more impressive when you know that Harvey is the first dog either Willie or Alisha have ever owned or trained, and Karen says that if it hadn’t been for Alisha, who begged them to get a dog in the first place, none of this would have ever happened.
Next stop is a Cabinet to display all those trophies and Alisha’s Rosettes.
Well, after they’ve fulfilled all their media commitments that is, not least in the latest issue of the The Rye and Battle Observer (click here for more).
 
Mother’s Day
Well what a busy a week – on all kinds of fronts! We hope half term has been good for all our customers who are parents, grandparents and other lucky ad-hoc child-carers.
So given many mums and grannies are already shattered, we can’t help but point out that Mother’s Day is fast approaching.
We reckon our sweet Naiive Mother’s Day figure has some pointers on what might go down well as a reward for all that hard-work that goes on during the year.
Breakfast in Bed
Tarquin designed this figure so we can attest that a bit of lie-in followed by breakfast in bed used to go down a treat with Biddy
– ‘specially with the family dog serving as hoover as all of us
piled in to their beautiful bed.
Well, back in the day when we were actually small enough for a morning cuddle that is!
 
Paul Martin with Tarquin Cole
In a new series on BBC2, Flog It Trade Secrets‘ presenter Paul Martin has been revealing the tricks of the trade and surprising things he has learned over his 11 years in television.
Rye Pottery was pleased to be picked for inclusion in the latest programme, which was a touching tribute to the late antiques expert David Barby who died in July 2012, and was a pioneering television antiques expert, not least on Flog It. In the programme presenter Paul reveals: “I didn’t know a great deal about Ceramics [when I started in television], but what I do know now, David taught me”. It was because of David that Paul says he was first introduced to Rye Pottery.
Interviewing Rye Pottery’s Tarquin Cole, Paul discusses the heritage, value and collectability of Sussex and Rye Pottery, not least Hopware, Sussex Pigs, and our Mid-Century Modern classics, contemporary versions of which are still produced by us today. Tarquin took over Rye Pottery from his father Wally Cole MBE in 1978 and is widely regarded as an expert in valuing and dating early Sussex Pottery.
In the programme Paul also discusses Rye Pottery’s 
Mid-Century”Cottage Stripe” pattern, which has been in constant production since 1950. Examples of this design are included in the Ceramics Collections of both the V&A and the British Museum’s Museum of the Home. Finally Paul braves an attempt at painting another of Rye Pottery’s pigs himself – one of our Sows! We use a very difficult technique that our accomplished paintresses spend years mastering, as the glaze has only just been applied and the slightest touch of a finger or too heavy a brush and the piece can be ruined.
Flog It Trade Secrets featuring Rye Pottery aired on February 15th 2013 at 18.30 on BBC 2. You can watch the film on the BBC’s iplayer by clicking this link. The section about Rye Pottery starts at 42.15 and ends at 48.07.
Click the following link to see Rye Pottery’s current ranges
 
Walter Vivian Cole with Mid-Century pieces in hand!
We are celebrating our own little anniversary here, as one of the founders of the current Rye Pottery – Wally Cole – would have been 100 today January 21st 2013.
Whilst we reminisce, here are links to a couple of his obituaries so you can see how the national press remembered him in 1999.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/1999/jan/29/guardianobituaries
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-walter-cole-1076687.html
And a picture that even some of us have never seen.
 
Whilst you are wrapped up in your winter woolies here’s a sneak peak of a new design we are working on for 2013.
Part of our new all-white collection, this cosy coat is achieved with a decorating technique we call Tracery.
Now for a black face…
 
We’re extending our opening hours in the run-up to Christmas and we also have a guest appearance in the form of a stylish “pop-up” shop from Josh Cole and his successful online gift company – Green & Present. (Click here for more).
Everything in Josh’s shop is on its second life – Recycled, Reclaimed or Reused.
Why not “pop in” and have a look – we’re even open on Sundays at the moment for the first time in umpteen years!
Monday-Thursday 9.00am – 1.oopm and 2.15pm – 5.00pm
Friday & Saturday 9.30am – 5.00pm
Sunday 11.00am – 4.30pm
If in doubt, do ring us on 01797 223038.
 
Our First Vouchers!
It is nearly Christmas and we are working our socks off to keep the kiln firing and make sure everything we have promised has gone out in time!
We have this year also been asked for Rye Pottery Gift Vouchers, which we think is an excellent answer to those folk who really have left it too late. Do please call us for one of whatever value you choose and we will be delighted to help.
 
So the third Downton Abbey series has finished, what are we all to do I wonder, on dark winter Sunday evenings? At Rye Pottery we are busy planning all the changes involved in the next Cole generation of Joshua and Tabitha taking over from Tarquin and me.
There will be lots of changes with all their new ideas and energy, but I am very pleased that they still want to go on making the lovely Neal French Country House figures, which fit so well with the Downton Abbey lifestyle.
Elegant and stylish the Rye Golfers, Gardeners and Cook all blend into the Downton story, perhaps in the next series they will even employ a Male Chef rather like our Escoffier Chef! I was pleased to realise that we already have 2 Rye Cricketers for the anuual Downton versus the village match, though our Batsman and Bowler are from a rather earlier cricketing period they make quite a good match for Mr Carson in his whites I felt!
The Rye Bowler: James Lillywhite played for Sussex and England, and also had a few games for Rye, before retiring and helping his family found the famous Lillywhites sportswear shop in Piccadilly.
Biddy Cole
 
On October 9th Eileen Cole widow of Wally, died in her hundredth year. Tiny – barely 5 foot tall – blonde and very feisty, Eileen was Wally’s strength and support over 30 years at Rye Pottery. They first met in 1930 as students at Woolwich Art School and never looked back. During WW2 Eileen, plus small son Tarquin, found digs wherever Wally was posted in England, ending up finally in Farnham while he was with Army Camouflage based at Farnham Castle working on deceptions for the D Day landings.
In 1947 Wally was teaching part time at The Central School & they moved into a small cottage in Winchelsea (by now with new baby daughter as well as teenage son), this allowed Wally with brother Jack to re-open Rye Pottery. Eileen soon found herself having to make pottery trugs, small vases and silk lampshades as well as manning the “Seconds shop”. After Jack’s retirement in the early 1960’s. they moved in to live over the Pottery and Eileen she took over most of the everlasting paper work as well. In 1978 although officially retired, Eileen stayed on to man the shop on Saturdays so that Tarquin and Biddy could have week ends with their young family.
Once retired Eileen was able to give more time to her other great love – gardening. She created a wonderful oasis of cool and calm behind the untidy Pottery development which had grown like Topsy over the years in Ferry Road. Active in Inner Wheel until well into her 90’s, Eileen always loved a visit from old friends & customers happy to have a cup of tea and discuss the good old days of Purchase tax and 3 day weeks! We wish her peace and rest.
Our local paper ran an obituary, which you can read here.
Biddy Cole
 
I know that here in the South East, we have been luckier than a great many areas this summer , at least since the beginning of August. We were fortunate to be close to London and obviously benefited from the Olympic sunshine and feel good factor; Napoleon always asked his prospective generals if they were lucky before he promoted them. We certainly were lucky to share in Lord Coe’s luck with the weather!
Now we we are all back at work painting pots, firing kilns and making changes and decisions about the future. Keep an eye on this space ~ when we know ourselves we will let you all know too!
Biddy Cole
 
The late Pam Goddard, painting 1950s Rye Pottery Sussex Pigs
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
 
Hard to believe half the year has gone and we are now running downhill until December. We seem to have one, or if we are amazingly lucky two,fine days followed by enoromously damaging winds and rain. A poor friend who runs a local nursery said after a while their customers just give up on gardening and decide to leave it all until next year. We are so lucky that pottery does not go off or turn brown in the wet and wind, and we have seen a lot of our regular summer visitors from overseas, though they won’t be having much fun looking at the gardens on the Kent and Sussex borders, in particular Great Dixter and Sissinghurst, both of which make great outings when spending a few days in Rye.
 
Hot on the heels of Biddy’s appearance in the Mail on Sunday, a great piece about our Royal Jubilee Commemorative pieces in our supportive local paper – The Rye and Battle Observer.
“Rye Pottery is the original and also the last remaining pottery in Rye, but it is also one of just a handful of English potteries to have consistently manufactured commemorative items for all the major Royal Events throughout the reign of Queen Elizabeth II…
Biddy Cole, from Rye Pottery, said: “One long-established local family recently came to buy Rye Pottery’s Diamond Jubilee mugs for their grandchildren, because they had such fond memories of their own children being given Rye Pottery Silver Jubilee tankards while attending Rye’s primary school back in 1977.
“It was a wonderful symbol of support for both the Diamond Jubilee and our long-standing local manufacturing business, and particularly so in the current economic climate.
”The charm of a hand-decorated mug is still so great and so particular to Rye Pottery that yet again we are struggling to keep up with demand.”
>> Click here to read the whole article and to find out all the latest local news!
 
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 from interiors magazine Country Homes & Interiors. You can see the beautifully styled shot on the magazine’s website here – Summer bathroom | Bathroom ideas | Image | housetohome.co.uk. It’s a classic straight jug in multifloral and serves as a good reminder that jugs are just as good for flowers as they are for drinks!
Biddy recently bought a Rye Pottery vintage Cadborough Brown glazed jug on ebay (yes we’re partial to a bit of Ebaying too) which she also uses as a flower vase. This though, is a glaze which we don’t currently make and we wanted an extra one for our archive.
The House to Home site is great, 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 Living etc – take a look by clicking here.  
Small engraved Christmas dish by Wally Cole c 1960
So we have finally arrived, last parcels sent off and the last kiln fired!
Our shop will be open until 3.00pm on Friday December 23rd 2011 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.
Biddy
 
The Prince Regent or Prinny as he was sometimes known
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.
Mrs 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.
>> Or to see more pictures of the actual figures themselves, click here
 
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.
 
We’ve been looking on the web and spotted there’s one of our popular Mid-Century Classics for sale on ebay – a vintage MISS SIMPLICITY bottle. These bottles in 2 sizes were originally used for Oil and Vinegar.
They were designed by Wally’s brother 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 – just not this one!
A very, very few were made and production had stopped by the early 60s, but we have traced about 20 of these very charming one-offs. 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 without doubt a very popular piece at the time and still with collectors today.
We recently rediscovered the long-forgotten moulds for Miss S while trawling through our Mid-Century archives. We’ve been working on plans to revitalise and refresh some of our classic pieces and designs from this period, and Miss Simplicity is such a favourite for us that she’s certain to be part of that. So far, we’ve decided she will be reborn in the 21st Century with a fixed head that faces in a different direction! Next up is the decoration development stage. To the right you can see some samples we’ve been working on – absolute one-offs that a handful of collectors have been lucky enough to snap up in our shop in Rye.
But there are lots more decoration ideas we’re working on, so watch this space, because her outfit’s not finalised yet. When we decide on the first design to officially enter production we’ll be sure to let you know here.
If you want to be one of the first to find out when Miss Simplicity is available to buy, visit our shop in Rye every, single day … or alternatively just sign up for our newsletter at the top right corner of the site.
 
Vintage Sussex Pigs
Today (31st October 2011) Tarquin has been asked to help identify an early 20thcentury “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 hope one day to add 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.