A Country Baronet And Two Boot-Boys Edmund Elton & Elton Ware Pottery
- Heather Tweed
- 4 hours ago
- 3 min read
The Victorian pagoda at the end of Clevedon pier tilts its hat elegantly towards Cardiff.
Muddy waves tickle at the pier’s slim, curved cast-iron legs then busy off to shift sandbanks, tumble the stony shore and rise with angry wind to smooth the jagged rocks where the Toll House clings.
Coleridge Vale, Thackeray Drive and Hallam Road are no hollow named streets, Thackeray suffered unrequited love here, Tennyson wrote his heartbreaking ‘In Memorium’ poem to his young friend Arthur Hallam, and Coleridge honeymooned here.
From the pier, walk up the hill, then down craggy sided Highdale Avenue and clamber steps to the garden of Firwood a fine Georgian house set with its back against steep wooded hills, forever staring at the ancient wetlands of the Somerset Levels.
Travel back to 1882. A homegrown kiln puffs smoke from an old brick chimney, local clay wallows in shallow troughs waiting to be pugged and refined and, nearby, the usually verdant vine-house is cleared of tendrils to make way for a workspace. Moustachioed Edmund Elton sits at his potters wheel. He stands and sprinkles dry clay from his coarse apron on to his expensive lace up brogues.
Tables pack the vine-house, spread with saucers of watery coloured slips and glazes. Test-pieces hang from every hook. Edmund’s assistant carefully carries elegant pots to the just-cooling kiln and prepares to load a new batch.
Edmund was born in 1846. His uncle Lord Arthur Elton lived at Clevedon Court and Edmund later married his cousin Mary, Arthur’s daughter, to inherit the title and lands.
Edmunds mother died shortly after bearing him. His father moved abroad and Edmund was sent to live with an aunt and uncle in London. In 1859 his father and uncle both died and Edmund was sent to Bradfield College near Reading. The Hall of the school was designed by Gilbert Scott and its Minton tiles, neo-gothic fireplaces and an Edward Burne-Jones stained glass window all made an impression on the young boy.
Modest and enquiring, Edmund read Chemistry at Cambridge, then moved to the Royal Agricultural College at Cirencester where he learnt farm management, practical laboratory skills, woodworking and metal forging. Here he befriended his chemistry teacher, Arthur Herbert Church, who was to help and advise Edmund for many years as he sought to battle problems with blackened pots and spoilt glazes emerging from the kiln.
Returning to Clevedon, Edmund ordered clay from a local brickworks and employed a flowerpot maker to teach him how to throw on a wheel.
Elton Ware was born.
His rich and beautiful toffee-apple glazed pots won medals across the world. Tiffany in New York became his biggest stockist.
Edmund developed a fabulous crackleware using platinum, gold and silver Lustres, a technique requiring gentle handling and perfect conditions if it is to thrive and meld with the fired body underneath.
Once asked if his methods were secret Edmund ‘laughed and replied that potters were as notorious for being liars as fishermen’[2]. His extraordinary pots survive in collections around the world.
Sources:
The Annals of Clevedon, (Clevedon Civic Society,1988)
Clevedon Past, (Woodspring Resource Centre, Weston-Super-Mare 1993)
Clevedon’s Social And Industrial Heritage, (Clevedon Civic Society 1998)
Clevedon Court, The National Trust, (Thomas Copeland, Clevedon 1990)
Cooper, Emmanuel. A History Of World Pottery. (London: Batsford, 1988)
Dickens, C All The Year Round (Charles Dickens and Evans, London Dec 1882 from www.books.google.com)
The Magazine Of Art, Vol VI, (Cassel and Company, London, Paris, New York, 1883 from www.archive.org)
Quentin, Charles The Art Journal (1901 )
[1] Edmund Elton’s description of his own set-up employing two ‘boot-boys’ as trusted assistants. George Masters started at age 18 and his headstone inscription reads ‘For 43 years the friend and collaborator of the late Sir Edmund Elton Bt’ see Haslam p44, p52
[2] Charles Quentin, The Art Journal 1901 p375
