Perfect Pieces Specialists in British Pottery

Although it’s not widely known (or seen), the Carlton Ware brand has been resurrected in recent years by well-known collectables publisher Francis Joseph.

Examples of the company’s new wares can be found on it’s website, www.carltonwaredirect.com and they also offer a newsletter (free initially, but then you have to make a purchase or subscribe for £35 per year…).

I haven’t seen much of this new Carlton Ware around on the secondary market yet - which isn’t surprising, as it is being made in extremely low volumes. This means you can at least be assured of exclusivity if you do buy any of these pieces.

The designs available are a mixture of licensed version of timeless classics - such as the Golliwog and the children’s designs of Mabel Lucie Attwell - and genuinely new designs, mostly by Marie Graves, a ceramic artist based in Stoke on Trent. Many of the shapes, however, are clearly freshened versions of old designs.

If you’re interested in Carlton Ware then it is well worth taking a look, although to me, these wares don’t seem to be being made or marketed intensively enough for Carlton Ware to take a significant place in the market again.

A question with several possible answers - but in our case it’s nursery wares, in particular those made by Shelley, which form the subject of our newsletter this month.
Hot on the heels of the birth of our first niece, it seemed a good choice, especially as Shelley
produced a surprisingly wide range of nursery wares - from commemorative pieces through to Mabel Lucie Attwell’s Boo-Boo wares with their fairyland characters.

If you’re interested in Shelley or nursery wares, or would just like to see some fantastic pictures, you can take a look here.