Rye Pottery

May we proffer a Mother’s Day tip?

Mother’s Day

Well what a busy a week – on all kinds of fronts! We hope half term has been good for all our customers who are parents, grandparents and other lucky ad-hoc child-carers.

So given many mums and grannies are already shattered, we can’t help but point out that Mother’s Day is fast approaching.

We reckon our sweet Naiive Mother’s Day figure has some pointers on what might go down well as a reward for all that hard-work that goes on during the year.

Breakfast in Bed

Tarquin designed this figure so we can attest that a bit of lie-in followed by breakfast in bed used to go down a treat with Biddy
– ‘specially with the family dog serving as hoover as all of us
piled in to their beautiful bed.

Well, back in the day when we were actually small enough for a morning cuddle that is!

Rye Pottery on BBC tribute to ceramics expert David Barby

Paul Martin with Tarquin Cole

In a new series on BBC2, Flog It Trade Secrets‘ presenter Paul Martin has been revealing the tricks of the trade and surprising things he has learned over his 11 years in television.

Rye Pottery was pleased to be picked for inclusion in the latest programme, which was a touching tribute to the late antiques expert David Barby who died in July 2012, and was a pioneering television antiques expert, not least on Flog It. In the programme presenter Paul reveals: “I didn’t know a great deal about Ceramics [when I started in television], but what I do know now, David taught me”. It was because of David that Paul says he was first introduced to Rye Pottery.

Interviewing Rye Pottery’s Tarquin Cole, Paul discusses the heritage, value and collectability of Sussex and Rye Pottery, not least Hopware, Sussex Pigs, and our Mid-Century Modern classics, contemporary versions of which are still produced by us today. Tarquin took over Rye Pottery from his father Wally Cole MBE in 1978 and is widely regarded as an expert in valuing and dating early Sussex Pottery.

In the programme Paul also discusses Rye Pottery’s Mid-Century”Cottage Stripe” pattern, which has been in constant production since 1950. Examples of this design are included in the Ceramics Collections of both the V&A and the British Museum’s Museum of the Home. Finally Paul braves an attempt at painting another of Rye Pottery’s pigs himself – one of our Sows! We use a very difficult technique that our accomplished paintresses spend years mastering, as the glaze has only just been applied and the slightest touch of a finger or too heavy a brush and the piece can be ruined.

 Flog It Trade Secrets featuring Rye Pottery aired on February 15th 2013 at 18.30 on BBC 2. You can watch the film on the BBC’s iplayer by clicking this link. The section about Rye Pottery starts at 42.15 and ends at 48.07.

Click the following link to see Rye Pottery’s current ranges

Roses are red …

To be honest most of the roses we do here at Rye Pottery are more pink’ish actually. But well, our point is that there’s no getting away from it now we’re in February, Valentines is officially fast approaching.

While we’re always prepared for the last-minuters among our collectors with Rye Pottery vouchers, we also have two charming themed window displays here at our base in Rye if you’re looking for inspiration.

We have pieces to suit all budgets – not least this charming little one-off dish…