20th September 2011
Wallasey Central Library
Earlston Road
Wallasey
CH45 5DX
A free talk by Colin Simpson, Williamson Art Gallery.
The Della Robbia Pottery was a ceramic factory founded in 1894 in Birkenhead, England. The business was started by Harold Steward Rathbone and Conrad Gustave d'Huc Dressler (1856-1940). Rathbone, son of a wealthy local business man, Philip Rathbone, had been a pupil of Ford Madox Brown, who was one of the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement. Dressler was a sculptor, potter and also inventor of the continuous firing tunnel kiln. Giovanni Carlo Valentino Manzoni also joined the pottery in early 1894, leaving to establish his own pottery, the Minerva Art Ware Manufacturers in Hanley in July 1895. Manzoni returned to the pottery in June 1898, staying until its closure in 1906.
The pottery was established as a true Arts & Crafts pottery on the lines advocated by William Morris, using local labour and raw materials such as local red clay from Moreton, Wirral. The pottery had lustrous lead glazes and often used patterns of interweaving plants, typical of Art Nouveau, with heraldic and Islamic motifs. Read more on Wikipedia
A large collection of Della Robbia pottery can be seen at the Williamson Art Gallery in Birkenhead.
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