Lustre as a form of ceramic decoration originated in 9th century Iraq. In the Ceramics Gallery at the V&A in South Kensington there are boards illustrating the movement of lustre and tin glaze across North Africa and into Europe:
Lustre did not become a popular form of decoration in Britain until the early C19, when a highly innovative style developed in the North-East of England that we know as ‘Sunderland Lustre’. It used exclusively pink lustre (later in the century sometimes substituted with orange) as part of a decorative scheme that incorporated transfer printed verse, images, and mottoes. Religious and maritime themes were particularly popular, and friendly societies celebrated. Verse was unattributed, but adaptation of Byron common. The lustre is painted sometimes daintily but often with gusto. ‘Multum in parvo’ is the guiding design principle.
Manufactured in Sunderland and Newcastle, frequently celebrating the new bridge over the River Wear (designed by none other than Thomas Paine!) and also featuring nautical imagery, these pieces were often bought as gifts by sailors, and can be found in museums all over the UK, and also in Scandinavia. Sunderland Museum has a dedicated Lustre Room which is a feast for the eyes and well worth the trip for any enthusiast. Two websites dedicated to this treasure are run by collector Stephen Smith: Sunderland Pottery and Mate Sound the Pump. He had wanted to collect ceramics by Picasso, but, unable to stretch to that, settled on English lustre, he says for its similar painterly qualities.
In the early C20 artists started collecting old pieces. Enid Marx and Margaret Lambert included it in their folk art collection, now at Compton Verney. Jim Ede scattered pink lustre throughout Kettles Yard. Noel Carrington included a jug in his King Penguin book on Popular English Art, illustrated in 1945 by Clarke Hutton.
Eric Ravilious had already used pink lustre in his lemonade jug for Wedgwood. He had also designed the distinctive trade card for Dunbar Hay, the artist and designer led shop opened in 1936 by his friend Cecilia Dunbar Kilburn, with whom he’s pictured here:
Dunbar Hay closed in 1941, the same year Collins launched a series of social history books called Britain in Pictures. Celebrating everything from art and literature to trade unions and women’s institutes, these were designed as wartime morale boosters, with a host of star authors including George Orwell, John Betjeman, Edith Sitwell and John Piper.
Cecilia was commissioned for the volume on English Pottery and China, and had this to say about Sunderland lustre ware:
“There is a wholesome vulgarity about it which is extremely attractive, and it has an intimacy with the ordinary people which is lacking in the more technically perfect but elaborately ostentatious productions of the larger factories.”
Sadly, larger pot banks in the UK are having a tough time at the moment, but Sussex Lustreware, designed and decorated in Lewes, is still cast and glazed at a small family firm in Stoke on Trent.