The Premier Pottery was established at Preston, in Melbourne, by Walter Dee and Reg Hawkins, two potters who ere out of work as a result of the Depression. At first, Premier Pottery produced functional pieces very similar to English wares. But Dee soon began experimenting with glazes and developed a technique of overlaying different coloured glazes which ran into one another and fused in a random manner. These wares were called "Remued" after an investor in the company, Nonie Deumer (Remued backwards) who later married Hawkins.

From about 1933, Premier Pottery began applying Australian flora and fauna motifs, such as gum leaves and koalas, which were designed by Margaret Kerr, to their pottery. These proved very popular in Australia during the Depression when it was often difficult to afford imported pottery. Premier Pottery scaled down during the Second World War and, although it increased production again after the war, it never regained its earlier inventiveness. The Pottery closed in 1956.

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George Guthrie, the founder of the Bendigo pottery, began his first pottery business, Camperdown Pottery, in Sydney in 1851. His most successful product was ginger beer bottles. Following a downturn in the market, Guthrie moved to Melbourne and then to Sandhurst (later called Bendigo) on the Victorian goldfields, where a superior white clay had been discovered. In 1857 he established a pottery at Sandhurst. The Pottery made a large range of wares but, due to a small local population and poor transport to the cities, it closed in 1861. When the railway line reached the area in 1863, Guthrie opened another pottery at Epsom, a suburb of Sandhurst near the line.

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When the first white settles arrived in Australia in 1788, one of the first things they did was send clay samples to England for analysis. Josiah Wedgwood examined the samples and declared them excellent for making pottery. (He used the clay to make the "Sydney Cove Medallion", a neoclassical relief depicting the figure of Hope addressing Peace, Labour and Art on the shows of Sydney Cove.)

The first potter in Australia was Samuel Skinner who arrived as a free settler (with a convict wife) in 1801. His work was extremely popular right up to death in 1807, reportedly from overwork.

Several potteries were established in the 1830s. Enoch Fowler established a pottery at Glebe in Sydney to produce pipes, tiles, chimney pots and items for industrial use. James King set up the Irrawong Pottery north of Newcastle to produce cheap earthenware and stoneware. He became a very successful businessman and was instrumental in establishing wine growing the Hunter Valley .Around the same time, James Sherwin established a pottery in Hobart and a number of potteries were set up in Brunswick, Melbourne. In particular, the Brunswick Pottery and Brickworks produced pipes, water filters, chimney pots and terra cotta. The Brunswick Pottery continued in production until the early 1950s.

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Mikasa was established as a trading company in the 1930s. In the 1950s, Mikasa added ceramic dinnerware to its range. It has since become their main product. Mikasa China does not manufacture dinnerware; instead, it imports product, initially mostly from Japan, but now from some 150 factories in 20 different countries. This arrangement allows it it adjust its product line to changing taste and, as a result, Mikasa has become a leading fashion brand. The Mikasa Group’s brand names include Studio Nova which is aimed at a young, casual market, Home Beautiful which is targeted at the mid-range consumer for everyday use and Christopher Stuart which aims to provide a wide selection of styles at a competitive price as well as the up-market Mikasa brand. Although it originally sold only porcelain, the company has expanded its range to include earthenware, stoneware, bone china, glass stemware, stainless steel flatware and gift items.

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In 1871, the Onondaga Pottery Company was incorporated in Syracuse, New York and purchase the struggling Empire Crockery Manufacturing Company. The company was managed by an English potter, Lyman Clark, who hired English potters and began training local men. The company produced undecorated pottery, mainly stoneware until 1886, when fire destroyed a nearby decorating shop and Onondaga Pottery Company took on its employees to establish one of the first in-house decorating departments in America. In 1885, James Pass joined the Company as Superintendent and, later, President. He transformed the Company into a leader in ceramic research. By 1891, they were turning out a "vitrified" china that was white, thin, translucent, and stronger than any European porcelain. At first called Imperial Geddo, in 1895, these wares were given the name Syracuse China. In 1896, the company unveiled its "rolled edge" china which became a standard in the commercial food industry.

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In 1889, a young artist-potter, named Walter Scott Lenox, founded a company dedicated to the proposition that an American firm could create the finest china in the world. He possessed a zeal for perfection that he applied to the relentless pursuit of his artistic goals. In the years that followed, Lenox china became the first American chinaware ever exhibited at the National Museum of Ceramics, in Sevres, France. In 1918, Lenox became the first American company to create the official state table service for the White House. Lenox china has been in use at the White House ever since.

Being founded by an artist, Lenox has always placed special emphasis on working with the very finest artistic talents available. The most celebrated of these was William Morley, often considered the greatest of all china painters. Lenox is now the only major producer of fine china in the United States.

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In 1875, an exceptional clay deposit was discovered in Lincoln, California. The land was purchased by Charles Gladding, Peter McBean and George Chambers who formed Gladding, McBean and Company. In 1928, Dr Andrew Malinovsky developed a high talc, one fire body, using non-crystalline amorphous flux. This innovative ceramic material was patented as "Malinite". By 1932, experimental work had started at the Lincoln plant aimed at producing a pottery line using the "Malinite" body. The dinnerware and art ware were to be made in solid coloured glazes and sold under the name of Franciscan Pottery. By 1939, the prolific Glendale plant had produced at least fifteen patterns of dinnerware and nine lines of art ware.

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In 1857, John Bloomfield, a landowner in County Fermanagh in Ireland, decided to exploit deposits of felspar and kaolin on his property. He formed a partnership with Robert William Armstrong, who had worded with the Worcester porcelain factory, and David McBirney, a merchant, to build a factory in the small town of Belleek.

At first the factory produced only domestic and industrial earthenware but, by 1863, it was making decorative Parian wares for which it quickly established a worldwide reputation. As well as busts and statues, which are the most common Parian wares (which look like marble), Belleek made elaborate table centrepieces and vases, extremely light tea services, ornaments, lamps, jugs and other items, all with great delicacy of modeling. Many Belleek wares had a nautical theme such as shell, fish or coral motifs.

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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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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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From about 1900, a number of factories in Gouda, Holland, began producing a unique type of ware which represented a transition between Art Nouveau and Art Deco. Earlier pieces had stylised flower patterns; more realistic flowers representations appeared later. Early pieces also used a lighter coloured matt glaze. Production slowed after the mid-1930s.

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Tin-glazed pottery also reached the Netherlands, probably through Italian migrants who settled in the Netherlands in 1508. Factories were set up in Antwerp, Rotterdam, Haarlem and The Hague but, by the early 17th century, Delft became the predominant centre. 

At the beginning of the 17th century, two ships arrived in Delft laden with cargoes of Chinese blue-and-white porcelain. From that time on, Delft pottery emulated Chinese blue-and-white porcelain, initially using Chinese designs but gradually more Dutch elements. Delft produced large quantities of tiles for wall panels, signs and tile pictures. A important innovation in Delftware is the "trekking", or outlining, of designs in manganese under the glaze, to heighten detail. 

In the 18th century, Delft polychrome enamelled wares influenced by Japanese decoration and Meissen shapes. Output fell drastically following the introduction of English creamwares late in the 18th century.

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