Ceramics
Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery holds a substantial ceramics collection of close to 5,000 pieces, amassed over the years by donation, bequest and purchase. In 2008, the Atrium Gallery was refurbished and now a greater range of the collection is on show than ever before. Their displays will change periodically to enable the exhibition of more of these stored collections.
The ceramics collection covers 18th century English and continental soft-paste porcelains, Chinese porcelain, Plymouth and Bristol porcelain, tin glazed earthenware, stoneware, Victorian and early 20th century art pottery and local studio pottery.
Plymouth and Bristol porcelain
The museum holds the largest public collection of Plymouth porcelain, the first factory to produce hard-paste porcelain in England. This collection is the subject of a current project. To find out more visit the Plymouth porcelain project page.
English soft-paste porcelain
In 18th century Europe, the influence of Chinese porcelain was immense. Many factories were established to produce the sought after material. Most factories were experimental, not knowing the recipes, techniques of the materials used by the Chinese. As a result, many factories produced not ‘hard paste’ porcelain like the Chinese, but so-called ‘soft-paste’ which although still very desirable, did not have the glass-like effect of Chinese porcelain.
English soft-paste porcelain is highly represented in the collection with over 1,000 items. The collection covers wares from Worcester, Bow, Chelsea, Derby, Longton Hall and Liverpool amongst others.
Continental porcelain
The collection comprises of a small selection from European factories including Sévres in France and Meissen in Germany.
Chinese porcelain
Our Chinese porcelain collection is currently the subject of a project. To find out more go to the tales and legends project page.
Earthenware
The collection includes examples of Dutch, French and Italian tin glazed earthenware as well as English pottery from Staffordshire and local manufacturers, such as Watcombe, Torquay and Bovey Tracey. The museum also holds a small collection of North Devon slipware.
Art pottery
The museum holds an interesting collection of Victorian early 20th century art pottery, including the work of William de Morgan, Bernard Moore (over 60 items) and the Martin Brothers (over 100 items), responsible for the famous ‘Wally Bird’ pots.
The Martin Brothers
The Martin Brothers were a group of ‘art-potters’ who were working in the late Victorian to early 20th century period. The Brothers - Charles, Walter, Wallace and Edwin, opened their first pottery in their family home at Pomona House, Fulham in 1873, later moving to larger premises in Southall in 1877. Brotherly love was not always evident as they struggled with each other over finances and argued regularly about the artistic direction of the factory.
The brothers’ very different personalities and artistic opinions helped the Martin pottery to produce a variety of styles with particular emphasis on natural forms. Their work is influenced by the styles of Gothic Revival, Japanese crafts and the Arts and Crafts movement.
Plymouth City Museum and Art Gallery holds over 100 items of Martinware. A large proportion came into the collections in 1965 and once belonged to Sydney Greenslade who was an art critic, collector and close friend of the Martin Brothers.
This e-catalogue introduces just some of the items in the collection.
Studio pottery
Work by local potters Bernard Leach, Bernard Forrester and Michael Cardew can be seen alongside that of Ewen Henderson, Hans Coper and Lucie Rie both in the Foyer and Atrium Gallery.
