Pottery Ladies. Miss Cooper, Miss Cliff, Miss Rhead and all the forgotten girls...... (Charlotte Rhead) - ACE154.4

Paintress and Jackson explain the technique of pincing, pricking round the edge of a traced design. Paintress demonstrates how to use a pince to create a charcoal copy of the pattern on the item to be decorated, and then starts to tube-line it. Examples of pots, vases and plates. Paintresses showing how some work might be done partly with a pince and partly freehand. Jackson explains that Rhead would always make the first of a new design. If need be, paintresses would make copies. Rose Cumbernach with a plate painted by Rhead as a sample. Woman talking about how she came to appreciate the plaques and other pieces, and realising that it was more than "just a job". Jugs. Barry Leigh, a pottery manufacturer, explains that the fact that men were called up during the first world war led to increasing employment for women. That and the lower women’s wages meant that about two-thirds of tableware industry workers were women. Paintress explains that she worked on dinnerware and teaware, while men worked on fancy jugs and larger items. Examples of highly decorative jugs; photographs of men at work. She would stand behind them to watch them work. A jug she was given by one of the men. She tells how she eventually came to do jugs herself when the men had all gone, and to show other women how to do them as well. Photographs of women painting jugs and large pots. Leigh talking about the development of brighter pigments after the first world war, and the consequent growth of multi-coloured designs. Examples of Rhead’s work from the 1920s and 1930s. Paintress wishes she were still doing painting. Credits.