Glaze pots, A W Buchan & Co, Portobello

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

23807

Title

Glaze pots, A W Buchan & Co, Portobello

Description

Three glaze pots used in the decorating workshop at A W Buchan & Co, Portobello

Artist / maker

Buchan Pottery

Date

1970

Location

Museum of Edinburgh

These pots were used in the decorating studio of A W Buchan & Co, Portobello and were donated to Museums and Galleries Edinburgh when the pottery closed in 1927. The two larger pots were originally Jam pots and have been then used to hold two different coloured glazes. The small bowl held a brown glaze which was often used for outlines.

In 1867, Alexander Willison Buchan and Thomas F Murray set up a pottery making business in Portobello, three miles east of Edinburgh city centre. Murray was a former employee of the Caledonian Pottery in Glasgow, while A W Buchan was a travelling salesman for a firm of whisky merchants who wanted to move into pottery manufacture to make flagons to store and transport whisky. A W Buchan assumed sole control of the business in the 1870s, and from then it was run by successive generations of the Buchan family. The Pottery had various names associated with it over its history – the Portobello Pottery, Waverley Potteries, the Thistle Pottery, but is usually known as A W Buchan & Co.

For much of its history the Pottery mainly concentrated on producing stoneware items for the home, retail businesses and industry. Stoneware was strong and durable, and its glazed surface made it easy to clean. The Buchan’s Pottery made huge quantities of stoneware bottles, jars, flagons and other vessels for storing food and drink as well as stoneware hot water bottles or foot warmers.

A W Buchan & Co. survived the Depression which led to the closure of so many Scottish Potteries in the 1930s, but after World War 2 its trade was declining. Many of the stoneware items produced by Buchan’s, such as jars and bottles, were now being made in glass, and the Pottery began to look for new ways to extend their range of products and so attract new customers. After World War 2 the Buchan’s Pottery began producing stoneware with coloured glazes. Initially this just involved using a single coloured glaze on existing patterns, but soon new ranges of wares were developed. A chemist called Winifrede Milne was employed to develop glazes and a new range of wares. In the 1950s a range of painted wares was developed. Inspired by Mediterranean pottery and given names such as Brittany, Riviera and Costa Brava. Other patterns included Hebrides, Festival and the popular Thistle pattern with its naturalistic design of thistles and harebells which became the Buchan’s Pottery’s staple product. A decorating workshop was eventually set up alongside the Pottery, and in 1949 Grace Blair became the first full-time employee in this department. The workshop employed up to 30 decorators who were encouraged to experiment with different ideas and submit their own designs.

The Buchan’s Pottery at Portobello operated for just over 100 years, but on 30 June 1972 production ceased and the Pottery moved to Crieff in Perthshire where government grants available for business who moved to the area.

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Manufacturing Industry > Manufacturing facilities > Potteries