Royal Doultons

If you’re headed to the china cabinet to use your good dinnerware this holiday season – you know, the items that will become family heirlooms – there’s a good chance they’re Royal Doultons.

One of the most well-known ceramic and home accessories manufacturers on both sides of the pond, Royal Doulton pottery, stoneware, cookware, glassware, tableware, and even linens have become synonymous with those special occasions that call for a touch of class and sophistication. Even today, the company, at more than two centuries old, is creating new traditions for families in the United States, its native Great Britain, and around the world.

The early years

Founded in London in 1815, the Royal Doulton company was the result of a collaboration between John Doulton, Martha Jones, and John Watts, who worked as a foreman at a London factory. In the beginning, their small company produced only salt glaze stoneware pieces, mostly jugs and jars intended for pubs or inns.

Jones left the company after only five years; Watts stayed on until 1853, and the following year, the company was renamed Doulton & Co. John Doulton’s son Henry, who had been working in his father’s studio since the age of 15, took over the business from John upon his death in 1873.

Throughout the mid-19th century, the company had branched out from stoneware to manufacturing circular sewage pipes, due to a cholera pandemic between 1846 and 1860. The cholera pandemic, which killed 23,000 in Great Britain in one year alone, was traced back to contaminated water as the original method of the disease’s transmission.

Though the company wasn’t known for its plumbing items – among them, cast-iron bath tubs – it added a variety of housewares to its catalogue in the ensuing years, including mixing bowls and storage jars. Later, Doulton added decorative objects such as vases and plaques, having moved on from the original salt glaze finish to an underglaze painting.

Now a household name

By 1871, the company brought young artists into its employ at its studio in Lambeth, a district in London, bringing in students from the nearby Lambeth School of Art. Many of the artists were young women, and most of the surviving pieces from that studio are signed and dated by the artist.

The company was a household name by the end of the 19th century, when Doulton & Co. had more than 4,000 employees on its payroll. Henry Doulton, having run his family’s company and overseen its dramatic expansion for nearly 25 years, retired in 1897 and died just a few months later.

As the Victorian era came to a close at the dawn of the 20th century, the company had already begun making architectural terracotta – columns, arches, sculpture. Many were designed in the British Art Nouveau style that became popular during the reign of King Edward VII; the monarch would later grant a Royal Warrant that allowed the company to change its name to the one we know today – Royal Doulton.

As the 20th century progressed, though Royal Doulton continued the production of its sewage pipes as well as its decorative ceramics, the company shifted its focus to manufacturing high-quality bone china. Figures, too, would become increasingly popular, with the highest-quality pieces produced between the end of World War I in 1918 and the outbreak of World War II in 1939.

A brand fit for a prime minister

One of the most well-known artists in the company’s studio in Burslem, Charles Noke, produced some of Royal Doulton’s most sought-after ‘character jugs’ – jugs in the likeness of a variety of people, from grizzled fishermen to soldiers to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.

“Until his death in 1941 (one of his last models was a character jug of Winston Churchill) he oversaw many of the factory’s most popular 20th century lines, including the rich brown glazed Kingsware, the practical and decorative Series Ware and the range of loving cups and jugs modelled with scenes from British literature and history,” according to antiquestradegazette.com. “Noke showed the first Doulton figures at the Chicago Exhibition in 1893 and 20 years later was responsible for launching a designated range of figure models – known as the HN (Harry Nixon) collection – while the first character jugs, John Barleycorn, Old Charley and the double-faced Mephistopheles, arrived in 1934. … Although made across a century in a bewildering variety of subjects, styles, and colors, Doulton figures and ‘tobys’ are instantly recognized and widely collected around the English-speaking world.”

Hopping into a postwar world

In the post-war years, Royal Doulton acquired ceramic filter company Gloucester-based Aerox Ltd., and, a few years after that, Beswick Pottery, which specialized in porcelain figurines (including figurines of characters from the popular Beatrix Potter books). Royal Doulton’s immensely popular “Bunnykins” figurine series, which had been introduced in the 1930s, later ceased production and re-introduced in the late 1960s, was a series of nursery dishes and collectible figurines of anthropomorphic rabbits. The original pieces were illustrated by Sister Bailey, an English Roman Catholic nun.

Between 1971 and 2005, Royal Doulton was owned by conglomerate Pearson plc, and later by Ireland-based Waterford Wedgewood plc. Today, Royal Doulton is owned by New York-based KPS Capital Partners. Collectors can still buy contemporary pieces – including a cookware, dinnerware, and crockery collection from celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay — at www.royaldoulton.com.

Royal Doulton collections have their loyal collectors, but there’s always room for more, according to antiquestradegazette.com.

“For casual collectors who buy Doulton simply on the strength of subject matter or personal preferences, this is a buyer’s market in need of new entry-level collectors. Online trading, and eBay in particular, has proved well-suited to Royal Doulton, but it has brought a glut of examples to light – too many for even the large number of collectors in the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa to absorb,” the website states. “But rarities, those that plug holes in the collections of the top tier of Doulton collectors, are a different matter. Here high three- and four-figure prices are the norm with a clutch of hard-to-find early figures capable of selling at over ($5,000 U.S. dollars).”

And though it can be difficult to know where to begin your Royal Doulton collection, there are opportunities around every corner, according to online antiques seller Roundabout Antiques.

“A Royal Doulton figurine may begin at a variety of sources, a chance gift, a souvenir picked up on holiday,” the website states, “or an appreciation of Royal Doulton craftsmanship can initiate a lifetime of extremely satisfying collecting.”