By Isla Quinn
Blue on white. That is the first thing, and for many people it is the whole thing.
But look at how it got there. Behind the pattern is a Victorian works on a canal in Stoke-on-Trent, and a process that the company says nobody else in the world still does.
The works by the water
Middleport Pottery was built in 1888, in the Middleport district of Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent. Burgess & Leigh moved in the following year, 1889, according to the company’s own history. The firm’s roots go back to 1851, when a business called Hulme and Booth began making earthenware in Burslem. In 1862 William Leigh and Frederick Rathbone Burgess took it over. The name Burleigh, run together from their two surnames, became the trademark in the 1930s.
The site sits beside the Trent and Mersey Canal. Seven bottle ovens once stood here. Six were demolished before the building was listed in the 1970s, and one survives with a listing of its own. The works as a whole is Grade II* listed.
One technique, held on to
Burleigh describes itself as the last pottery in the world to use underglaze tissue printing, an English process the company says is more than 200 years old. That is the company’s claim, and we have not been able to check it against an outside source. The general technique is well documented. An engraved copper plate is inked with pigment that survives firing, printed onto tissue paper, and pressed onto the unfired ware. The piece is then glazed and fired, which fixes the pattern under the glaze. Transfer printing developed in England from the 1750s, and Staffordshire dominated it in the nineteenth century.
At Burleigh the patterns are hand-engraved on copper cylinders, and tissue is drawn beneath the cylinder to make a continuous stream of pattern, according to the works’ own description of how it makes its ware. The people who apply the tissue are called transferrers. They rub it down with a brush and soft soap. Before that, ware is cast in plaster moulds and fired in gas kilns at 1,180 degrees for about 18 hours. After printing comes a second firing to fix the decoration, then the glaze dip. The glaze is tinted pink with food dye so the dippers can see where it has gone. A final firing follows, and the ware is graded in the glost warehouse as best, seconds or rejects.
A golden age, then a close call
In the 1920s and 1930s the factory had what is called its golden age. Designers included Charlotte Rhead, who worked there from 1926 to 1931, and by 1939 the works employed more than 500 people.
Then came the long decline that hit the Potteries as a whole. Ownership changed hands: the Dorling family bought the business in 1999, and Denby Holdings acquired it in 2010. The building was identified as at risk in 2011. The Prince’s Regeneration Trust stepped in around then, and a restoration costing about £9 million, partly funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund and Historic England, followed. The visitor centre opened in 2014. Prince Charles, as he then was, opened it.
What it’s like now
The restored works houses a heritage visitor centre, a gallery, a café, workshops and spaces for small businesses. Burleigh still makes pottery there. Wikipedia notes that the works has served as a filming location for The Great Pottery Throw Down and for Peaky Blinders.
Opening hours, tours and factory shop times change, and we have not confirmed current ones, so check before you travel. Give yourself time to walk the canal.
What to look for
Look at the blue. Turn a plate over and find the mark. Notice how the pattern runs to the edge, and where it stops. Ask the person at the counter which patterns are printed at the works and which are not. Pick up a piece and feel where the pattern sits: under the glaze, not on it.
We follow places like this first and build shelves second. Roam first. Shop later. And if you make things in a town with a story of its own, the path is /sell-with-sephari/.