“AUSTERITY” POTTERY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 September 1942, Page 4

“AUSTERITY” POTTERY

BEER MUGS IN USE AGAIN. Beer and cider mugs, once popular in old English taverns, are coming back into more general use. There is a shortage of drinking glasses, and this is also causing restaurants and licensed houses in Britain to go back to the drinking cup or pottery beaker of the 17th century, shaped exactly like a tumbler. Beakers in pottery are one of the new lines in “utility” crockery worked out by the British pottery industry to meet the scarcity of domestic ware due to labour shortage. Makers of famous China like Doulton, Royal Worcester, Shelley, Spode, and Wedgwood are now concentrating upon simple plain white work all m one shape, and neither too light nor of the heavy “workhouse” type. The twelve different standard ar ticks include cups and saucers, plates, teapots, pie and vegetable dishes, as well as mugs and beakers. The designers have used their skill.to such good effect that although the results are as “austere” as the times demand, they are far more pleasing to the touch and sight than the cheap badly decorated imports which formerly came to Britain.