Belleek Pottery museum endevours to tell the story of Belleek Pottery through its many products made over its 165 year history. Each of the cabinets and displays takes one through the design and production story of Belleek Pottery.  Many of the pieces in the museum have been donated by collectors and other owners who wished to allow the many visitors to the pottery to see and appreciate the many wonderful creations crafted and made down through the years.

It was through this link that John Caldwell Bloomfield, Robert Williams Armstrong and later David Mc Birney met. Each of them was to contribute vital elements to the foundation and success of the Pottery- land, expertise and finance. The resulting company was known as David Mc Birney & Co. In 1858 construction of the main pottery building started. It is difficult to say exactly when production began but by 1863 making of utilitarian and probably some sanitary ware had commenced.

In the Dublin Exhibition of 1864 the products shown by Belleek consisted of earthen and stoneware in “dinner, toilet and other table services” made by moulding, press and die, or pressure from powdered clay. (Royal Dublin Society, Official Catalogue of the Exhibition of Manufacturers, Machinery and Fine Arts 1864)

The following year they increased the size of their exhibit and at this show they won their first Gold medal.

Farming in 19^th Century Ireland was the occupation of the majority of the population and Belleek catered for this market with a range of in-expensive everyday wares. .These products were only listed as shapes in price lists but could be purchased in a range of patterns and cost from plain to sponge decorated, to transfer printed.

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From the beginning Belleek produced a wide range of domestic and toiletry wares. These ranged from expensive decorated ewers  such as the Etruscan Ewer, shown below right, to the simple colour transfer printed  Eldon Ewer & Basin, shown in front. As well, Belleek offered a range of products for everyday use; hospitals and asylums were supplied with items such as bedpans, feeding cups and slop pans. Creameries and milking parlours could obtain milk pans and bowls. Domestic Kitchens with pudding bowls, baking dishes and jelly cans.

Earthenware was the mainstay of the Pottery’s early years and on a roll of one hundred and twenty-five employees in 1897, forty-four were Potters (earthenware), eight Parian makers and ten Basket and Flower makers.

Production of heavy sanitary ware began in the early 1870’s.The wealthy were fitting “water closets” into their homes and for a number of years this proved to be a very lucrative market. R. W. Armstrong patented many of the Belleek sanitary ware designs and the design patent of the washbasin shown below was registered on the 28^th July 1879.

By the late 1890’s the manufacture of heavy sanitary ware ceased due to technical difficulties and the cost of manufacturing.

It surprises most visitors to Belleek Pottery that Belleek manufactured heavy sanitary wares. It is likely that manufacturing began in the late 1870s and was discontinued sometime before 1900.

This particular wash basin has a registry mark dating it being registered at the Patents Office in London on the 28^th July 1879.

As expertise developed many new lines were added. In early experiments Robert Armstrong developed a white earthenware clay body, which he called his “harp body”, thus many very early pieces have an impressed harp. He later said that he had perfected his “Harp” body and to demonstrate its excellence he placed a crown above the impressed harp.

Contracts were undertaken for many institutions and organisations in both Ireland and Britain and often they had their crests or emblems printed on their purchases.

 Decoration took many forms, the more decoration and colour, the more expensive. Monograms were printed in one colour and could be hand decorated with many colours, gilded and finished to a very high standard.

 The dinner set shown here is one of the most recognisable Belleek earthenware shapes called the “Ribbon handle” In this instance it is decorated with blue bands and gilded. This along with other shape designs was decorated on a price scale from; plain white, to colour banded, to transfer printed in mono-colours i.e. brown, blue, black, green and red. Gilding was an added extra.

At this time transfer prints could only be printed in one colour. If additional colour decoration was requested, these were hand decorated over the base colour print. This involved several additional firings and as a result was expensive to produce.

The saying goes “Every picture tells a story” in this instance it’s a plate that will tell us this story.

The plate is earthenware with a first mark and a wild rose printed decoration hand tinted in colour. On the top edge of the plate is a crest, which had the Latin motto “Nunquam non Partis” printed on a banner. The plate has a first black mark and impressed Harp and Crown mark, indicating that it was made sometime between 1863 and 1884 during the tenure of the first Belleek company David McBirney & Co. It would have formed part of a complete dinner set.

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The presence of so many expensive heavily decorated, ornamented and gilded pieces, was the beginning of Robert Armstrong’s goal of making products that would interest the wealthier classes and so raising the aspirational appeal of Belleek to the wider market.

Although Belleek did not win any awards at the exhibition their stand did form the largest section within the Irish and English industrial area of the Exhibition. Here are shown some examples of the Parian pieces displayed at the Exhibition.

The elaborately flowered mirror displayed here is  believed to be the same as the one sent to Paris for the 1900 exhibition. A similar styled mirror was presented to Queen Victoria on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee in 1897.

The “Exposition Universelle” of 1900 was a world fair held in Paris, France,

“to celebrate the achievements of the past century and to accelerate development into the next”.

More than 50 million people attended the exhibition (a world record at the time), yet it still failed to turn a profit, costing the French government 2,000,000 Francs. The fair included more than 76,000 exhibitors and covered 1.12 square kilometres of Paris. The exhibition lasted from the 14^th April until 10^th November 1900.

Belleek won their fourth gold medal at this Exhibition for the International Centre-piece and it is displayed in the foyer of the Visitors Centre.

In the cabinet are shown some of the other exhibits brought to the Paris Exhibition. Some of these, such as the Dolphin Candlestick were in production for many years but others including the Henshall basket, were probably first introduced in Paris.

Belleek Pottery was represented at the Paris Exposition displaying a number of products including a flowered mirror, flowered table centres and numerous baskets and flowered pedestal pots. However, the crowning piece was the International Centrepiece, a magnificent vase standing over 30” high with pierced details and decorated with an array of hand applied flowers. The vase stands on a pedestal,  with three Irish Wolfhounds linked, as if guarding the centrepiece.

To find out more about the International Centrepiece seen in the foyer of Belleek Visitor’s Centre click on the link:

Flowered mirrors or picture frames were a relatively late introduction into the Belleek design portfolio and the earliest examples are shown in the 1881 “Belleek Old Photograph Album”

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Although Belleek previously issued trade catalogues, this listing is believed to be the first one to also feature pictures of the product. The catalogue shows a wide selection of Earthenware and Stoneware as well as the more recently developed China tea sets.

 These China tea sets  including the Neptune Tea set, (seen below) were developed in the latter twenty years of the 19^th century by a team of modellers trained by William Gallimore.

These included Michael Maguire believed responsible for the development of the Shamrock tea set and James Cleary (Thistle teaset). The latter succeeded William Gallimore as head of the Art department and who became manager of the pottery in 1886.  

In 1894 Frederick Slater arrived from Stoke-on-Trent to become head of the Art department, He develops a wide selection of new tea sets including Cone, Finner, Lily and Harp Shamrock. The 1904 catalogue offered twenty- eight different Parian ware tea sets for sale.As well, largely featuring in this catalogue are Jardinières and flowered vases.

William Henshall heads a small department of ten or so flowerers but their creativity is prodigious including pieces such as the Table Centre and hitherto un-flowered pieces such as the Thistle vase and Aberdeen Vase were revamped by adding hand crafted flowers.

“Novelties or Fancies” are another innovation introducing smaller vases, pots and assorted giftware. These were less costly to produce and were popular gifts in the early years of the new century.

The Belleek Pottery Works Company was sold in 1919 to a group of businessmen; Bernard O’Rourke, John O’Neill, James Keown, Neil McMahon and Joseph Dolan. The new firm began trading as Belleek Pottery Limited. Economies were made; large figurines, centrepieces and heavily decorated tea sets were all discontinued.

 It was not until K. E’ Leod Kandee arrived as manager in 1922 that much thought was given to developing new designs. He employed fellow Hungarian Madam Boroniuxz to design new giftware and tea ware. A gifted designer she worked alongside Fred Slater to create various embossed and printed patterns taken from the Book of Kells. The earlier Ring handle tea set is adapted to her Celtic pattern by adding a printed outline design and decorating it with hand painted colours.

The catalogue introduced in 1962 is very different in style and layout to the previous catalogue. The product numbering system is changed again eliminating the anomalies that have grown since the more radical change in 1926.

An introduction by journalist Malachy Hynes describes his visit to the Pottery. He is greatly impressed by the craftsmanship and beauty of Belleek. He describes hand crafted flowers being made:

 “In some cases as many as seventy tiny petals go into the making of just one of those blossoms. Almost forgotten now were the skills of those other craftsmen in the fascination of seeing little blobs of moist clay in the fingers of the flowerers grow into delightfully realistic leafy decorations, all so perfect, they seem to have grown as naturally there as ivy does on the crags along the Erne”

There is a large colour section featuring a selection of product including hand crafted baskets. Baskets had been offered for sale with colour decoration since 1949 but by 1962 this decoration becomes the standard and most popular form of painting baskets.

Two of the First mark tea sets Echinus and Grass were re-introduced into the range. With the latter teaset the major difference is that the teapot and kettle spout are changed from the first mark styled ducks head to a plain spout.

The Pottery is enjoying a time of relative prosperity with order books full. Major refurbishment is undertaken with the introduction of new electric kilns and the building of new workshops.

In 1965 the third green mark is introduced which is smaller in size omitting the words “County Fermanagh.”  The US registry mark “R” is placed over the harp on the trademark.