New Favourite

I love the early Carter and Co, tin glazed, Blue Stripe pots and this one, that came from eBay 2 weeks ago, is my best yet.  It's just 5 inches tall, potted from white stoneware, and has a particularly thin application of the white slip these pots were dipped in, leaving exposed much of the rough stoneware surface.  There are some thicker globs of slip around the rim, but the over all surface has a parchment quality that adds to the watercolour on paper look of the blue painted lines.  Its signed with the MC mark used by Sissey Collett.

Blue Stripe Ware

This is the second early Poole Pottery vase that arrived in the post this week.  Again, it's another James Radley Young design, this time painted by Ann Hatchard, right at the start of her career in about 1918.  It's 7 inches tall and appears to have inscribed writing on the base that reads no 148.
Finding all of these Carter and Co vases recently has prompted me to read again some of Jennifer Hawkins book "The Poole Potteries".  This is probably the most scholarly of the Poole reference books written. In her book Hawkins describes these pots in chapter 3 as "blue stripe ware" decorated with "plain stripes from top to bottom ...or rather more elaborate versions including diamonds and lozenges".
Reading about these early pots has also reminded me of a nice Carter & Co connection to my home city of Sheffield.  William Carter Unwin (chief sculptor in the architectural pottery) and James Radley Young, both trained at Sheffield School of Art, and Jame Radley Young's half brother Edwin Page Turner also born in Sheffield,  was the first identified painter at the Carter tile works.

Any Excuse

I spotted this vase advertised online for sale at an antiques center in West Yorkshire, so it gave me a great excuse last weekend to visit a friend, who happens to live in that part of the world, for lunch and some shopping!  Made by Carter & Co this early tin-glazed, stoneware, Poole Pottery vase was made between 1918 and 1921.  It's signed by the decorator MC and painted in an unnamed pattern designed by James Radley Young.

A Bit Rough Around the Edges and Just About Perfect

Apart from the heavily thrown shape and the blurred, wabbley and sometimes absent decoration, this early Carter & Co, tin-glazed, stoneware vase (c1915) unfortunately also has an old chip on the rim.  Otherwise it's absolutely perfect.  Signed MC and carrying a hand inscribed mark reading Carter and Co Poole on its upturned base.

100 Years Ago - Where it all began

I stretched myself a little to buy this vase from eBay last week.  It's just over 5 inches tall and made from a white stoneware.  The base has been left unturned and you can feel all the trowing ridges that have been unevenly covered in a white tin glaze, then painted by a slightly wobbly hand.  There's no shape number or pattern code, but just the painted mark used by Anne Hatchard (1918-36), and a CARTER & CO stamp that I imagine was more commonly used on their tiles.  Dating to about 1918, vases like this were the forerunners of all that was to follow at Poole Pottery over the next couple of decades.
I'm very chuffed to own it and can see it being my favorite vase for quite a while.