Top tips for your Easter table
Old-fashioned British crockery is trendy again. Jessica Doyle looks at which brands to buy for an Instagram-ready Easter
Until relatively recently, tableware, particularly patterned plates and teacups, didn’t exactly top trend lists. The last few years, however, have seen a surge of interest in old-fashioned British pottery, partly thanks to social media (showing off your tablesetting skills has become quite the thing on Instagram, where #tablescape has almost a million posts). Dusting off granny’s old china has never been so fashionable: traditional tableware is bang on trend.
One company riding the wave of the pottery revival is Burleigh, which recently launched a new collection of plates, bowls and teaware with fashion brand Ralph Lauren (Lauren himself is, apparently, a fan, and has used Burleigh products for years at his Colorado ranch).
The collaboration cements the return to fashionable status of the company, which has been producing its earthenware pottery with botanical and bird motifs since 1851, and also marks something of a reversal of fortunes.
Like many British crockery companies, Burleigh experienced difficult times from the Nineties on, as the trend for modern, minimalist interiors took hold and traditional British ceramics fell out of fashion. The Middleport Pottery in Stoke-ontrent, where all of Burleigh’s products are made, was in a state of disrepair, and the company lacked the investment to modernise it. In
2011, the Prince of Wales came to the rescue, supplying £9million through his charity the Prince’s Regeneration Trust (now named The Prince’s Foundation) to carry out emergency repair work.
Since then, demand for home-grown china and pottery made in Stoke-ontrent has rocketed thanks to the “slow interiors” movement: a growing appreciation of artisan, handmade products over cheap, mass-produced imports. Tea-drinking in particular has seen a spike in popularity among millennials, partly thanks to the social media-friendly nature of dainty patterned teacups and pots.
In the case of Burleigh, its cool credentials have undoubtedly been helped along by its connection with the Soho House Group, which has been using the brand’s tableware in its hotels and restaurants for years. The Soho Home online store, which launched in 2016, also sells heritage Burleigh patterns such as Blue Arden, Calico and Regal Peacock, along with Hibiscus, an archive design that was reintroduced for The Ned last year in a bespoke forest-green colourway, and became an instant collectible.
Other lines have similar associations – David Beckham recently posted a picture of himself on Instagram with a Burleigh teacup (the Pink Asiatic Pheasant pattern), which has gained more than a million likes.
A large part of Burleigh’s charm lies in the traditional technique of tissue-printing, which results in a slightly imperfect, obviously
There’s no need to invest in a whole new tableware set to update your collection. Try using patterned side plates with plain dinner plates you already own, or clash patterns for the maximalist look (see Cabana’s handmade product. Jim Norman, the brand’s commercial director, compares its resurgence to the revival of vinyl records: “There was a time when uniformity was key,” he says. “Now, people like differences. The character and warmth of tissue decorating will always have something over massproduced wares.”
Burleigh is now the only pottery company in the world still to use tissue-printing, which was invented over 200 years ago. The pattern is initially engraved into a copper roller, from which it is printed on to tissue paper, which is then wrapped by hand around the cup, teapot, jug or plate. The design is rubbed in with a brush, before the piece is glazed and fired. Tissue-printing is a time-consuming process – originally, it would take a year just to hand-engrave the copper roll – so new patterns were fairly infrequent. Burleigh has recently developed a new way of engraving the roller by employing digital printing technology, which significantly speeds up that part of the process, hence the new Ralph Lauren designs, which blend Burleigh’s traditional English floral aesthetic with a modern, American star motif.
Josiah Spode is credited with developing the tissue-printing process in the 18th century, and although his eponymous pottery brand no longer uses it, its products are still handmade in Stoke-on-trent.
Like Burleigh, Spode is also reissuing archive designs but giving them a modern twist, with rescaled patterns and updated colourways.
While Burleigh and Spode survived the lean years of the British pottery industry, one company that didn’t was Johnson Brothers. Established in 1882, it stopped manufacturing in 2003, before being finally discontinued four years ago. However, Emily Johnson, a descendant of the founding family, revived it in spirit in 2011 when she formed 1882 Ltd with her father, Chris, who had previously run one of the company’s factories.
From the start, their aim was to push the boundaries of bone china. They have done this by collaborating with a cutting-edge designer not normally associated with china on each new collection, all of which are aimed at attracting a cooler type of consumer. Fashion brand Peter Pilotto (who designed Princess Eugenie’s wedding dress), and furniture and product designers Bethan Gray and Faye Toogood, have come up with bold motifs in recent years that give the brand’s dinnerware a contemporary edge, even though it is made using traditional hand-crafting techniques. At this week’s Milan Design Week, the Johnsons unveiled their latest work, a project with fashion designer Paul Smith comprising brightly coloured bone-china tableware pieces, which will lead on to a full dinnerware collection later in the year.
Few might have suspected that these designs would have captured a new generation of buyer. The hope is that they will keep alive the centuriesold skills that go into making them long into the future.