New Book on William Moorcroft, Celebrated Potter

by Jonathan Mallinson   

British potter William Moorcroft (1872–1945) was one of the most celebrated artists of his era, and his work was sought by museums and stocked by the most prestigious retail outlets in the world. But he was also one of the most individual: a combination of designer, ceramic chemist, and manufacturer. He developed his own distinctive style of slip decoration and created the oxide mixtures for his colours. He drew the decoration template onto each shape and, in the case of his flambé wares, he personally fired the kiln. He oversaw the training of his decorators. And he was responsible for the promotion and sale of his work. Through this unique fusion of roles, he bridged the ever-widening gulf between studio and industrial production, between art and commerce.

The new book William Moorcroft, Potter: Individuality by Design examines the qualities which defined Moorcroft’s success in his lifetime, and which underlie the enduring significance of his art. His reputation as a potter like no other is explored  in the many reviews of his work in art and trade journals the world over. His published statements, from letters in The Times to articles in magazines, reveal his distinctive response to debates about the relationship of art and industry. In this book, work on published sources is complemented by extensive research in a private collection of personal and business papers, never before comprehensively examined and now housed in the Stoke-on-Trent City Archives. This unique resource provides innumerable new insights into important phases of his career: the formative (and turbulent) relationships with his first employer, James Macintyre & Co., and with Liberty’s of London, who promoted his pottery for more than 40 years; the material impact of two world wars; and the pressures of creating artworks in the Depression. Letters sent to Moorcroft bear witness to the effect of his pottery on private individuals, and comments in notebooks and correspondence reveal his deep sense of vocation.

What emerges from this study is not just the individuality of the potter, but the individuality of his output. This remarkable diversity is illustrated in more than 70 photographs and was, in the words of one critic, “no ordinary pottery,”¹ not just because it was different, but because it was personal. Moorcroft’s designs were informed by a desire to express in clay, the quintessential material of creation, his sensitivity to the beauty of nature. This expressiveness was appreciated throughout his career, likened to poetry in early reviews, and later described as “soulfulness.”² One critic noted in the 1920s that even a modest piece of Moorcroft’s pottery is “regarded by thousands of people as a priceless possession.”³ Pottery was not simply a commercial commodity for Moorcroft, it was a means of communication, a true everyday art, bringing beauty into the lives of others. 

Described in one obituary as a “post-Morrisite,”⁴ William Moorcroft brought together two opposing conceptions of the Arts and Crafts legacy: one traced by art historian Nikolaus Pevsner to the modern industrial designer; and the other situated by potter Bernard Leach in the individual craftworker. From Moorcroft’s unique position in the space between factory and studio, he turned craft pottery into a performance art, the collaborative production of an artist’s vision, each object the individual rendition of a design.

This is a book about a potter and his art, but it is also a book about a potter and his times. It follows Moorcroft’s career through the different phases of his nation’s life, as he responds to the optimism of the new Edwardian era, the terrors of war, and the growing cultural and political tensions of the interwar years. It is a story of resourcefulness and courage, of an individual unshaken in his belief that (his) art had something to say in an uncertain world—a belief clearly vindicated, and just as relevant now as it was then.

1. Pottery Gazette and Glass Trade Review (April 1930), p. 612.
2. Pottery Gazette and Glass Trade Review (April 1930), p. 612; Pottery Gazette and Glass Trade Review (February 1938), p. 250.
3. “Pottery and Glass at the Paris Exhibition of Decorative Arts,” Pottery Gazette and Glass Trade Review (September 1925), p. 1398.
4. Pottery & Glass Record (October 1945), p. 21.

Jonathan Mallinson is the author of William Moorcroft, Potter: Individuality by Design and Emeritus Professor of Early Modern French Literature and Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.