Ceramic souvenirs celebrating places and buildings reached a peak with the booming Victorian tourist trade. Today, they can still be picked up cheaply.

There is a long history, dating back to the 18th century, of British potters making small, decorative objects to commemorate places and buildings. The ceramic cottage had as its forerunner the architectural teapot, shaped like a formal Queen Anne-style house and produced by a number of Staffordshire potteries around the 1750s, either in salt-glazed stoneware or in earthenware. Similar buildings, and many that were less grand, were the models for brown earthenware money boxes produced by Derbyshire, Nottingham and Lambeth potteries in the early l0th century.

Cottages

The ceramic cottage really came into its own during the golden age of bone china, between 1820 and 1850. It was primarily for ornament, but some examples also served as inkwells, nightlight holders or pastille burners (to bum pastilles of sweet-smelling gums).

Unnamed potters and the large porcelain factories all produced ceramic cottages. After the 1840s, cheaper, cruder versions appeared in earthenware, and production of these continued well into the 20th century. Early pieces in bone-china are the most sought after today and may sell at auction for £500 or more. Later earthenware models usually fetch around £ 100. The architectural teapot reappeared in the 1930 in the form of rustic, timber-framed cottages, and since then cottage wares, including jugs and biscuit barrels, have been made by companies such as Carlton Ware and Wade; all are sought after.

Antique Collection

Crested Souvenirs

Crested china was a phenomenon of the late l0th and early 20th centuries. Pieces were decorated with local landscapes or amusing mottoes, designed to attract the tourist trade.

Among the first big sellers of tourist wares was the Staffordshire potter W.H. Goss. In the 188os, he made glazed parian articles bearing the crest or badge of a particular place, to which he later added small-scale models of local objects: Roman pots with the crest of York or Chester, or Robert Burns’s cottage stamped with the crest of Ayr. Today these pieces fetch up to £2000, compared with £10-£25 for a simpler early Goss crested piece.

Crested souvenirs boomed during the First World War, when ships, aircraft and buses were reproduced. War models are always in demand and can sell for up to £80.

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