With the burgeoning Industrial Revolution, machine-made furniture replaced hand-made. In the 1830’s machines were invented to cut veneer and to press designs, which would previously been carved, into timber. At the same time, improved transportation meant that a wide variety of imported timbers, including mahogany, rosewood, teak and ebony, become available, As a result the typical Victorian item was a reproduction of something from an earlier period, such as Victorian Gothic and Renaissance Revival with reproductions of Queen Anne furniture being the most popular. Elizabethan furniture designs, with their panels of open decoration and strapwork and profusion of knobs were well suited to mechanical reproduction. At the same time, Elizabethan styles were associated with romantic notions of "Merrie England" and, so, became popular in the early Victorian period.

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A porcelain factory was established at Worcester in 1751 by Dr John Wall. It produced a soft-paste, soapstone porcelain. Its wares, which were more delicately potted than its English rivals, proved immensely popular. The factory excelled at tea and coffee set, jugs, vases and the like. (The soapstone paste was not suitable for large dishes.) Worcester wares were decorated with rich background shades of blue, green, turquoise and claret; these usually framed panels of white which were decorated with paintings. In 1789, King George 111 granted the Worcester factory a Royal Warrant and "Royal" was added to its name.

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In 1750, Squire Brown began producing ceramics from clay and coal which was found on his estate, Caughley Hall, in Shropshire. On his death, he was succeeded by his nephew who, in 1772, joined by Thomas Turner, an eminent engraver and the originator of the Willow Pattern.

In 1799, the firm was sold to John Rose who moved it to the village of Coalport on the River Severn. By 1801, Coalport dinner services were selling for two hundred guineas - equivalent to several thousand dollars today. A richly decorated Coalport dessert service, which had been presented to Tsar Nicholas 1 of Russia by Queen Victoria, caused a sensation when it was shown at the Great Exhibition.

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Porcelain was produced in England from the late 1740s, first at Chelsea and soon afterwards at Derby, Bow.and elsewhere. The early products included figures (particularly from Bow and Derby) and dinnerware ( from Bow). The Chelsea factory was established by Nicholas Sprimont, a silversmith, and initially produced pieces strongly influenced by silverware designs. During the 1850s , Chelsea was increasingly influenced by Meissen and continued in this style until it was purchased by William Duesbury of Derby in 1770. From then until its closure in 1792, Chelsea produced wares in the Derby style. While the London factories, such as Derby, Bow and Chelsea, were strongly influenced by European porcelain from Meissen and Serves and by the shapes of contemporary silverware, provincial factories, like Liverpool and Lowestoft, tended to produce chinoiserie styles until almost the turn of the century.

The Worcester Porcelain Factory was established in 1751 by Dr John Wall to produce high quality, useful wares - such as tea and coffee sets, jugs, bowls and small dishes. (The soapstone porcelain body used was not suitable for large dishes.) When Dr Wall died in 1776, the new owner decided to concentrate on blue and white printed wares. Many regard the blue and white wares produced at Worcester in the following ten years as the best ever made in Europe.

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Clarice Cliff was born in Tunstall, Staffordshire in 1899. At 13, she became apprenticed to Lingard Webster and Company where she leant to paint on pottery. In 1916, she joined A.J. Wilkinson as a lithographer. Wilkinson’s were already using the vibrant orange and blue colours with which Clarice Cliff came to be associated. In 1927, Clarice was sent to Paris to study the work of French designers of the new Art Deco style which had its foundations in the Exposition Internationale des Arts Decoratifs et Industriales Modernes held in Paris in 1925. Later that year, Wilkinson’s acquired Newgate Potteries and Clarice used a large quantity of their discarded dated and imperfect wares to perfect a style of decorating with bold colours (orange, yellow,blue and black) and broad brushstrokes. The result of this was the "Bizarre" range launched in 1928. The first batch sold out within a week and by the end of the year Clarice had a staff of twenty-five producing her designs.

Late in 1928, "Crocus" pieces were added to the range. These soon became the company’s best sellers. By 1929, the stock of pottery from the Newgate Potteries was running out and Clarice began designing her own vase and bowl shapes. First "Conical" shapes were produced and then teapots and jugs with triangular handles and spouts and bowls with triangular feet. Later that year, the first non-geometric pattern, "Inspiration" which used shades of turquoise and a matt glaze, was produced

Late 1929 and 1930 saw the production of many designs, including "Applique" which is regarded as among her best work.

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William Moorcroft began working with the Burslem potter, James MacIntyre, in 1897. In 1903, Moorcroft developed a style known as Florian ware. In this, increasingly fine outlines in slip (liquid clay) are applied to a white clay body. The piece is then fired, glazed and fired again. The result is that the colours and glaze blend together forming a glasslike surface. Moorcroft’s Flaminian ware was produced mainly in pinks, yellows, blues and greens and flower designs. In 1905, Moorecroft introduced Flaminian ware. This was monochrome lustre ware in red or green with muted decoration and simple, usually circular, motifs.

In 1913, Moorcroft opened his own factory, with staff from MacIntyre’s, at Colbridge in 1913. Despite the onset of the First World War shortly after it opened, Moorcroft’s factory flourished with a strong export business. Designs were specially for the American, Canadian and Australian markets. William Moorcroft’s son, Walter, took over the business in 1945 when William suffered a stroke. During the 1950s, Walter developed his own, more dramatic, style.

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The first Torquay pottery, the Watcombe Pottery, was opened in 1869 to make terracotta wares, such as vases, urns and statues, in classical forms. Watcombe Pottery’s example was followed by the Torquay Terracotta Company which made similar wares. The Aller Vale Pottery also began in a similar style but, from the 1890s, was strongly influenced by the Arts and Crafts Movement and began producing slipwares that become so popular that the other two potteries, and eventually about a dozen more, began to follow their example.

By the 1920s, the main customers of these potteries were day trippers and holiday makers seeking a cheap souvenir. As a result, design were simplified and mottoes added. Although the potteries continues to produce a varied range of products, motto wares remained their main lines for the next fifty years.

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In 1864, Thomas Goodwin Green, an entrepreneur who gad made a fortune in Australia, purchased a Derbyshire pottery and renamed it T G Green and Company. The company flourished to become one of Britain’s largest producers of domestic pottery, hospital and institution wares.

In 1926, T G Green introduced an range of blue banded kitchen and table ware, but particularly jars, which they called "Cornish kitchen wares". (They did not originate in Cornwall and are supposed to have been named because the colours were reminiscent of the Cornish blue sky and white-tipped waves.) Cornish wares became extremely popular and established a significant export market, particularly to the British Empire There was a major revival of Cornish wares in the 1950s with yellow and gold, and briefly red and black, versions also being produced. In the 1960s, the range was restyled and rationalised and this range is still being manufactured (with a green range recently added.) T G Green was taken over by Cloverleaf in 1987.

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In 1862, Joseph Ball Shelley became a partner in the firm of Henry Wileman at the Foley China Works in Fenton, Staffordshire. From about 1910, the company began to use the name "Shelley China" on some of its wares and in 1925 it changed its name to Shelley.

Shelley China produced a wide range of products but its art deco tablewares and, to a lesser extent, its chintz wares, are the most sought after.

Both the body, whether fine bone china or earthenware, and the decoration of Shelley China were of high quality, particularly during the late 1920s and 1930s, making it one of the most important manufacturers of this period.

In 1966, Shelley was taken over by Allied English Potteries, now part of the Doulton Group.

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Pratt Ware is relief decorated, underglaze coloured creamware. It was a mid-priced product made by numerous factories in Staffordshire, Liverpool, Shropshire, Sunderland, Newcastle, Devonshire and in Scotland between about 1780 and 1830. The designs on Pratt Ware items range from sporting and country scenes to nursery rhymes, "morality" portraits of misers and spendthrifts, classical subjects and commemorative portraits. They were fired at a fairly high temperature which restricted the range of colours to the yellow, orange, green, blue and black palette derived from metal oxides (as used on majolica).  The term "Pratt Ware" was applied to these kinds of items by The Connoisseur magazine in 1909. The name came from the word "Pratt" on the base of a single item. This particular item was probably made by William Pratt or in his factory, which was run by his wife and sons after his death. His grandchildren, Felix and Richard, also had a famous pottery works, F & R Pratt, in the second half of the 19th century. But the term "Pratt Ware" refers to the style of the wares and not to the products of the Pratt factories.

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In 1890, James Wiltshaw, James Robinson and William Robinson formed a partnership to purchase the Copeland Street Works in Stoke-on-Trent. The factory was well equipped but had been occupied by a series of unsuccessful partnership. Wiltshaw & Robinson began manufacturing a range of useful earthenware items including blue ground wares similar to Royal Worcester, plain white and blue transfer-printed wares and Imari-style wares. In the early 1900s , they began making crested bone china Heraldic Ware. At the beginning of the 1930s, they took over a bone china manufacturing company, Birks, Rawlins & Co, enabling them to make their own fine bone china tea and coffee sets and figures of women and animals. In 1911, James Wiltshaw bought out his partners  and employed a new designer, Horace Wain, to develop a new range to replace the company’s old Victorian designs. His oriental patterns proved popular both  in England and in export markets.

During the First World War, more sombre designs were introduced, including a matt black range and Carlton Cloisonné Ware, which used a gilt transfer print  over hand enamelling to imitate Japanese cloisonné.  James Wiltshaw died in 1918 and was replaced by his son, Frederick who introduced brighter colours and a range "lustrous" wares which imitated the fashionable lustre ware but were fired at a lower temperature and, so, were less expensive to produce. The company also produced a range of expensive, elaborately designed true lustre ware called Carlton Armand. In the early 1920s, Enoch Boulton replace Horace Wain as the designer of Carlton Ware. His jazzy Art Deco designs, commemorative wares and designs based on Egyptian art (produced to cater for the interest sparked by the discovery of Tutankamun’s tomb) made the 1920s the most creative period in the history of Carlton Ware.

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In 1883 at a small factory called the Charles Street Works in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Frederick and Alfred, established a partnership called Johnson Brothers for the manufacture of durable earthenware, which they called "White Granite". In 1888, another brother, Henry, joined the firm. They began producing underglaze printed ware for which they became famous. By 1898, they had five factories producing tableware.

In 1896, a fourth brother, Alfred, joined the company and set up an office in New York to promote Johnson Brothers’ products in America. Promotion to overseas markets culminated in the establishment of a factory in Germany in 1913. But the First World War forced the closure of the German operation and the cessation of much of the export business to America because of the danger to sea transportation. In the 1920s, new shapes, patterns and bodies were introduced, including the "Dawn:" range of coloured bodies but it was not until the mid-1930s that full production was achieved.

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In the early 1870s, Simon Fielding purchased the Railway Works in Stoke-on-Trent but the business failed and was rescued by Simon’s son, Abraham. S Fielding and Co became a successful producer of majolica wares. From the 1880s, they began calling their wares "Crown Devon" and in 1912, they changed their name to Devon Pottery. From the late 19th century, S Fielding produced more than twenty different patterns of painted wares. The most popular today is Royal Devon. Other patterns include Royal Chelsea, Royal Sussex, Royal Stuart, Royal Windsor, Royal Kent, Royal Kew and the very rare Royal Scotia. Royal Devon paintings included scenes of pheasants, dogs, peacocks and cattle and were at first regarded as "poor man’s Royal Worcester".

Devon Pottery also produced series of figurines and seaside novelty wares. Millions of these were produced during the 1930s. Art deco figurines modelled by Kathleen Parsons in the 1930s are particularly collectable. Musical novelties produced before and after the Second World War are also highly collectable. The Devon Pottery closed in 1982.

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The exact origins of the toby jug are obscure. They first appeared in the 1760s and were most likely named after "Toby Fillpot", a nickname for someone who was always drinking. The first toby jugs depicted a seated character in a frock coat and three-corned hat nursing a jug of beer on his left knee. A few early examples bear the mark "R. WOOD" and have been attributed to Ralph Wood of Burslem.

The manufacture of toby jugs was taken up by various Staffordshire potters who depicted a range of characters, both real and imaginary. Early examples all had the three-cornered hat (which formed lips for pouring) and a separate crown which formed a lid for the jug and acted as a measure - the lid held a gill; the jug held a quart..

The Old Staffordshire Pottery continued to make toby jugs until 1962. After the First World War, A.J. Wilkinson’s Ltd made some of the finest toby jugs (modelled by Sir Francis Carruthers Gould). The Goss and Beswick potteries both made popular toby jugs from the 1930s to the 1950s. But the most collectable jugs are those made by Royal Doulton.

The first Royal Doulton toby jugs were made in the early 1920s, at the time when Doulton’s figurines were becoming popular. These early examples depicted a full length figure in the traditional toby jug style and are now quite rare.

As a result of the Great Depression, Royal Doulton attempted to diversify its range and, in 1933, started to produce a new type of character jug which depicted only the head and shoulders. Such character jugs had actually been designed as early as 1912 but Doulton’s "John Barleycorn" released in 1933 was the first to be commercially released.

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Royal Doulton dates back to 1815 when John Doulton became involved in a pottery in Lambeth, London. John’s son Henry joined the firm in 1835 and the business expanded rapidly producing chemical and industrial ceramics. The success of their sanitary ware business enabled Henry Doulton to attempt more artistic interests. In 1867 he employed George Tinworth to establish an art pottery in Lambeth. Tinworth’s work achieved great public attention and the firm grew substantially to employ 300 men by the 1880s.

Doulton exhibited a range of china figurines made by Charles Noke in Chicago in 1893 but very few of these were ever made. It was not until 1913 that figurines became an important part of Doulton’s output. The first models were made by Charles Noke, Charles Vyse and Phoebe Stabler. They were given identifying numbers beginning with HN1, after Harry Nixon who was in charge of figure painting. The first figurine (HN1) was named "Darling" after Queen Mary exclaimed "Isn’t he darling>" when she saw it. HN numbers are still in use.

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At the beginning of the 20th century, all-over floral "chintz" fabrics imported from India became very fashionable. These designs were used to decorate ceramics which also came to be called "chintz".

Early chintz patterns usually had large flowers and exotic birds with rich plumage. By the 1920ss, chintz patters were generally much tighter.

Lithography had been used in printing since the 1860s. Around 1895, two English potters, Leonard and Sidney Grimwade working at Stoke-on-Trent adapted the process to printing on ceramics. When Queen Mary (wife of George V) greatly admired some limited edition chintz ceramics made by the Grimwade brothers in 1913, they decided to apply their lithographic process to mass producing chintz table wares. They called this chintz range "Royal Winton" and later changed the name of their company to Royal Winton as well.

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Before 1775, English law allowed white clay to be used only for porcelain. When this restriction was removed, potters began to use the white clay found in Staffordshire to produce a variety of salt-glazed domestic wares and figurines. These potters included Thomas Whieldon, who had been a partner of Josiah Wedgwood, and Wheildon’s assistant Ralph Wood who was probably inventor of the Toby jug.

Staffordshire figures were generally made for workman’s cottages and were produced cheaply in large quantities in hundreds of small factories on a piece-work basis. The figures were moulded, usually in two halves (front and back) and pressed together. During the 19th century (but not earlier) the back was often not detailed or decorated as they were intended to stand on a mantelpiece where the backs would not be seen. The figures were often sold in pairs for each end of the mantelpiece. The figures were painted in enamels over the glaze and then re-fired at a lower temperature to fix the enamel. At first, the most popular colour was a rich cobalt blue but this was not used after 1863. Although the first Staffordshire figures were inspired the German Meissen wares, they were of far lesser quality having the charm of a folk craft rather than the technical quality of art pottery. Their heyday was from the 1830s until the early 20th century. Production has never really ceased but only pieces made before the First World War are usually considered collectable.

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There was once a Mandarin who had a beautiful daughter, Koong-se. He employed a secretary, Chang who, while he was attending to his master’s accounts, fell in love with Koong-se, much to the anger of the Mandarin, who regarded the secretary as unworthy of his daughter. The secretary was banished and a fence constructed around the gardens of the Mandarin’s estate so that Chang could not see his daughter and Koong-se could only walk in the gardens and to the water’s edge.

One day a shell fitted with sails containing a poem, and a bead which Koong-se had given to Chang, floated to the water’s edge. Koong-se knew that her lover was not far away.

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In the 1750s, Thomas Whieldon rediscovered the technique of decorating with coloured lead glazes, initially limited to green, grey, brown and slate blue. In 1754, Josiah Wedgwood joined Whieldon as a partner and, in 1758, established his own business. Wedgwood developed a lightweight, lead-glazed, cream coloured earthenware that he called "creamware". This was widely copied and became the staple earthenware of the late 18th century, superseding delftware.

In 1769, Wedgwood opened a second factory. Its main output was ornamental wares in the then fashionable neo-classical style. These included the most famous of all Wedgwood’s products, jasperware, first produced in 1776.

The ceramic bodies pioneered by Wedgwood continued to be used by throughout the 19th century, during which pottery declined as a craft to become an industrial process. Blue and white transfer printed earthenware from the Staffordshire potteries predominated, the most notable being from Josiah Spode’s factory at Stoke. Wedgwood continued to make neo-classical jasperware and majolica. Majolica was also made by Minton, whose most famous style was the Willow Pattern.

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Until the 16th century, British potters produced only simple, practical earthenware vessels. In the middle of that century, three potters from Antwerp, in Flanders, set up a factory in London to produce tin-glazed earthenware. Their wares became known as "delftware". Despite the name, English delftware was not only influenced by the Dutch., but also by Italian and French pottery and Chinese porcelain. Alongside the development of delftware, notable refinements were made to wares decorated with slip (clay and water) whose roots dated from medieval times. The art of slip decoration reached a peak at Wrotham in Kent and in Staffordshire in the second half of the 17th century.  From about 1740, English pottery underwent rapid development in response to competition from Chinese porcelain. The basic improvements were to add white Derbyshire clay and flint to the clay which, together with a new method of slip-cast moulding, allowed the production of light, durable, white wares capable of being cast in delicate shapes and, most importantly, of withstanding the impact of boiling water for the newly fashionable tea. From about 1745, enamelled colours reproducing the Chinese famille rose and famille verte became popular.

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Venetian glass was so fashionable in Elizabethan England that it was effecting the balance of trade. As a result, in 1575, a law was passed banning its importation. Instead, a monopoly was granted to Jacope Verelini, a Venetian-born glassmaker, to manufacture Venetian-style glass in England. This Anglo-Venetian glass was fragile, contained microscopic air bubbles and was discoloured in various hues. In 1615, concern that the burning of wood to make glass was depleting the nation’s forests, led to the passing of a law forbidding its use. In 1623, Sir Robert Mansell, took over the glass monopoly and proceeded to reorganise the entire industry, designing new coal-fired equipment and developing coal mines.

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The increasing wealth in Europe following the Renaissance (from 1450) and exploration of the New World was reflected in the furniture in English homes from the reign of Henry V111. Prior to that time, furniture consisted of simple wooden benches, boxes of various sizes used as chairs, tables and even beds, and rarely chairs or beds.

During the Tudor period, joinery replaced simple plank construction and ornate carving proliferated.

The Tudors invented the four-poster bed, the trestle table, the draw table (or refectory table), the Glastonbury chair (a folding chair with arms) and the wainscot chair (an armchair on a box). The emphasis on folding furniture came from the fact that the living quarters were also the workplace with the furniture being pushed aside, or folded up, to make space for carrying on a trade.

All Tudor furniture was oak.

The use of inlay spread with the arrival of German craftsmen in England in the 1580s.

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