And beautiful
T’S E ASY to see why collectors are drawn to the gaily-coloured pots pictured here. They are examples of Wemyss Ware (say it like “Weems”) but it’s a brave soul who takes on the challenge of buying the stuff.
For a start, it’s rare: production at the Fife Pottery in the Scottish town of Kirkcaldy lasted less than 50 years. Which means it’s pricey.
Worse, when the works closed during the 1930 Great Depression, the name, production rights, all the moulds and even its chief decorator in Scotland, Joseph Nekola, all went to making it at the Bovey Pottery Company in Bovey Tracey, Devon. Consequently, it’s often hard to tell which from which.
Worse still, a London art teacher who acquired the trademark in
1994 resurrected the name and began producing Wemyss Ware in a factor y in Fife.
Among the workers was a woman who had learned the painting techniques that make the ware so desirable from none other than Nekola himself.
A new book, Scottish Wemyss Ware 1882-1930, is sure to help the purists keen to collect only the oldest (and best) pieces. It has been compiled by “a legendary collector of the ware”, who, in the early 1970s, resolved to buy only Scottish pieces.
The result is a catalogue of the extensive and diverse George Bellamy Collection, light on unnecessary words but rewardingly heavy on lavish illustrations, nearly 500 of them, detailing the impressive range of Wemyss subjects from birds, flowers, fruit, insects and the irresistible cats and pigs.
Crucially, the book also lists and illustrates the various marks that were either printed or impressed on the ware as well as those known to have been used by the decorators.
Such marks are helpful in dating and identifying pieces but this remains Bellamy’s work in progress with some decorators’ marks not yet identified – another attraction for the new collector.
Beware, though. Even he admits the odd piece of Bovery pottery might have slipped through the net as Joseph Nekola’s mark may be found on both the late Scottish pieces and those from Devon.
The Fife Pottery was established in 1817, largely with the aid of a substantial loan from a Glasgow bank. Output was simple domestic pottery for the home market that had very little to commend it, apart, perhaps, from being cheap.
Equally inexpensive, but better, pottery could be had from a hundred other sources, though, and saddled with crippling interest charges on the bank loan, the business went bankrupt after only 10 years.
The company changed hands in 1827, the new owner taking on the debts with his acquisition and it was not until 58 years later that the original loan was repaid.
The turnaround was achieved by Robert Heron, grandson of the new owner, who steered the business away from cheap dross for the domestic market, towards more stylish and sophisticated wares decorated by hand rather than uninspiring transfer printing.
He produced teapots, cheese dishes, milk jugs and other tableware intended for exactly the same market as before, but at prices that provided greater profit margins and the chance to extend the product range.
Wemyss Ware, named after the nearby cliff top castle home of the Wemyss family, was Heron’s inspired solution.
Early in the 1880s, he imported Bohemian immigrant ceramic painters to Kirkcaldy, enticing them to the cold and bleak Highlands with handsome salaries.
Few stayed long, with the exception of Karel Nekola, Joseph’s father, a gifted ceramic artist with a vivid and exceptionally creative talent.
Fortunately for the company, Nekola took a shine to
Heron’s cook and the couple married and settled in the area.
Nekola’s unique painting skills, which he passed on to his son, made their mark in the factory’s decorating shop immediately and soon, the local decorators working there began to follow his style.
Outsize flowers, fruit and farmyard animals all painted in the strongest colours began to appear on everything produced by the factory, to be snapped up by an eager public keen to own something new and different.
Meanwhile, Heron began to take stock of the product range, axing anything that was difficult or costly to produce. Instead, he concentrated on simple bedroom and domestic ware such as candlesticks, inkwells, jug and basin sets, early morning tea sets, biscuit and jam jars and charming novelties.
It is exactly these objects that today’s collectors covet
most. Unfortunately, what Heron failed to correct was the ability to successfully fuse brilliant coloured glazes on to hard-fired earthenware.
The high temperatures required for tough earthenware pots caused the underglaze colours to burn and fade. Heron responded in the only way he knew how: by reducing the heat and firing the Wemyss Ware in the coldest areas of the kilns.
This resulted in pottery with an under-fired, easily damaged body that was simply unable to stand up to the rigours of domestic life. It was a risk calculated to be offset by the appeal of the strong, fresh colours and designs Nekola and his fellow painters could achieve in the decorating shop.
This has proved to be a doubleedged sword for today’s collectors as pieces sur vive with colours still as brilliant as the day they were potted.
However chips, broken handles and hairline cracks are rife, and restoration is costly. Perfect examples are scarce and sell for a premium.
Robert Heron died in 1907. Wemyss Ware had its heyday from about 1885-1914, the Great War and increased sophistication among customers sounding its twin death knells.
Coupled to this was the dawning of the Art Deco era in which pretty Wemyss had no place. Cheap imported pottery and the General Strike of 1926 marked the beginning of the end for the Fife Pottery, which finally closed in 1930.
Once the ware could be picked up in jumble sales and junk shops for a few shillings. Nowadays, the best pieces are found in auctions and a number of dealers specialise in it to the exclusion of everything else. The more outrageous the designs and colour schemes, the more valuable the pieces become.
The charming pigs decorated with cabbage roses, shamrock or clover leaves, are arguably the rarest and most desirable of pieces, selling for £2,000-£4,000 or more.
They were produced for the nursery, sometimes as a money box, the larger examples as doorstops, while others were personalised with a child’s name and birthdate.
More scarce are sleeping piglets intended as paperweights, while families of cats, spotted, tabby or others up to their necks in the same cabbage roses that decorate other Wemyss pots are also highly sought after.