In their prime, they may have graced a grand dining table, been a much-loved drinking vessel, container for food or unctuous lotions, or a highly decorative ornament carefully positioned high on a shelf.
But once broken, even the prettiest of pottery was consigned to the midden, to be swallowed up by the earth.
Now a project combining art and heritage is taking the tiny fragments of long since shattered pottery found by chance by walkers and beachcombers, to piece together their stories and recall the huge factories which once churned it out on a global scale.
The online project, Fragment Found, also aims to re-imagine how the tiny glimpses of designs visible on the shards may once have looked like in its entirety.
Once complete, the new pattern will be applied to modern ceramic wares using traditional transfer printing techniques - bringing lost history together with a new, fictional narrative.
The project has been developed by Glasgow artist Eva Jack, who became intrigued by tiny transfer-printed pottery fragments she found during rural walks near her childhood home in West Lothian.
Most date from the 19th century, when transfer printed pottery was booming and busy factories in Glasgow and Staffordshire sold their wares around the world.
“I would go walking around the area where I grew up in Uphall, which is surrounded by fields, and find these fragments of pottery,” says Eva.
“I started to collect them and realised that if I was finding them, other people were too.
“I thought it would be nice to share what we have found, curate and categorise them.”
Started in October with just a handful of fragments, Eva has now been sent images and details of hundreds of pottery shards from collectors as far away as the Northern Mariana Islands in the Pacific Ocean, the east coast of the United States of America, Greece and across the UK.
While some feel distinctly familiar with glimpses of blue and white willow pattern, others are almost miniature artworks in themselves: sharp-beaked swallows captured in full flight, delicate flowers, grand castles and, in one particularly striking fragment, the wise face of an elderly woman.
According to Eva, the fragments are also a reminder of ‘throwaway’ culture, and how items consigned to waste in the past can still be present generations later.
“Most people would have had pottery with printed patterns in their homes, and when they broke, they’d be smashed up and put in the midden with all the other waste.
“While the food waste rotted away, the pottery is left and is the last remains of human activity; it says a lot about the impact the way we live has on the environment.”
The Fragment Found website, created by designer Becky Sparks, now showcases more than 500 pottery pieces, with details of where they were found and, where possible, notes on the original design and its origins.
As part of the project, which has received funding from Creative Scotland, Claire Blakey, Curator of Modern Decorative Arts at the National Museum of Scotland, is analysing some of the fragments in the hope of connecting them back to individual factories, locations and changing trends.
“As a museum, we often show the whole item and things that come to us tend to be saved for a reason,” she says. “This is a different way for people to engage with the past.
“I particularly like that links back to the fact that clay from the earth and people are finding these again - it’s like it has come full circle.”
The technique of transfer printing pottery emerged in England in the mid-18th century, and offered affordable highly decorative items which became commonplace at homes across the country.
While the bulk of production was initially from the Staffordshire potteries, demand for the colourful and heavily patterned plates, pots and decorative items soared, and by the mid-19th century Glasgow had become a centre for transfer ware production.
Claire adds: “Their products were transported around the world and Glasgow came to rival the Staffordshire potteries.
“However, while it was a huge industry, sadly there’s nothing left now for us to see of any of the factories.
“A lot of pottery was broken and discarded, fashions changed and people got bored with the things they had.”
Unravelling the stories behind each fragment may prove almost impossible because different factories often shared the same designs, she adds.
However, some already submitted to the project are so distinctive, that it’s hoped they can be traced to where they came from and the larger pattern.
“The factories in Glasgow would adapt their patterns when they were exporting to different countries, because what was desirable in one place might not be interesting in another.
“One, Bell’s Pottery, sent a lot of pottery to south east Asian market, and made patterns for them often in dual colours of green and red with a different colour for the border and for the centre, which didn’t tend to happen for designs made for Britain.
“They incorporated fruits that were available locally, such as pineapples which were not common in the 19th century in Scotland, flowers and birds.”
Potteries often responded to royal events and news stories – in 1830, one Staffordshire factory released a distinctive design feature giraffes in response to the arrival in London of a group of giraffes from Sudan.
Walkers and beachcombers who find pottery pieces are now being urged to add to the online project by photographing them and uploading to the website or to the site’s Instagram page, @fragmentfound.
“Once you tune your eyes to spotting them, these pottery fragments are actually pretty easy to find,” adds Eva, who says she has found interesting shards in Glasgow, close to paths in park areas created for the Commonwealth Games.
“The aim is to build a community which centres around the joy of collecting, identifying and sharing mysterious pieces of history which would otherwise remain undocumented.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here