Historical information

W Baker and Co-produced many different types of pottery at their Fenton Potteries, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire England. The company was established in 1790 by Ralph Bourne and William Baker the company was working at capacity by the end of the century. By the late 1820's Bourne and Baker, in partnership with John Bourne, had acquired additional works opposite the first in 1833. With the deaths of John Bourne and William Baker, the partnership was dissolved, and then for a short time, the business was carried on by Ralph Bourne and William Baker junior and John Baker. By the early 1840s, William Baker was running it alone and was then using 'machinery for the potteries manufacturing operations in addition to the mill that was producing the raw clay. The business was subsequently carried on by William Baker and Company that were known for the making of printed, sponged, and pearl-white granite ware for export in the early 1880s at the Fenton works between Manor and Fountain Streets. The original works on the south side of City Road were by then an en-caustic tile works, apparently still in the hands of the Baker family. The pottery works flourished under William Baker’s management and by the middle of the nineteenth century with almost 500 employees was the biggest firm in Fenton.

Significance

An early piece of ironstone Staffordshire pottery now a collector's item showing the types of domestic items that were exported from England to its colonies towards the end of the nineteenth century and into the beginning of the twentieth.

Physical description

Water pitcher ironstone ceramic white with raised embossed Lilly of the valley decoration around handle and lip sections.

Inscriptions & markings

Marked on bottom, "Royal stone china, Baker and Co, England" with emblem of lion, crown and unicorn