CARLTON WARE: The Pottery Company with a Flair

Carlton Ware was a pottery manufacturing company that manufactured hand-painted household pottery in lofty Art Deco styles throughout the 1920s and 1930s. It produced promotional items for Guinness. Carlton Ware focused on the ornamental giftware end of the household pottery market for the major part of its career. As part of innovation and development, the company introduced new production methods where the decal and hand-painting work was incorporated into high-glaze substrates in the 1920s. The necessity to pass on increasing labour and fuel costs critically affected the aptitude of Carlton Ware to keep manufacturing sophisticated hand-painted items. It was on this note that the company then focused more on novelty items until its downfall.

ALBERT TUCKER: Painting Life’s Different Colours

Albert Tucker was interested in art from a very young age. He had a premonition then that he would become an artist. But to help supplement the family income, he left school and worked as a house painter, where he developed lead poisoning. Albert turned towards Communism when he worked for a commercial artist; he felt exploited. Albert then left the company, and with a group of like-minded artists, formed The Angry Penguins. During and after World War II, casualties from both sides of the war had a traumatic effect on him. The same can be said of the deaths of those he knew as he made portraits of them.