Henry Doulton’s 'Lady Artists'

Doulton’s Lambeth Art Pottery at Vauxhall was remarkable for employing a significant number of female ceramic designers and decorators (by 1882 they numbered over 200). This illustrated talk takes us inside Doulton’s to discover what conditions were like for this pioneering generation of professional women artists, and why a significant number of these women chose long careers over marriage, which at the time was considered woman’s true career. We will focus on those artists and assistants who lived in Brixton (including some of the most famous: Florence Lewis, who also taught pottery classes at the Lambeth School of Art, and Ada Dennis, who would marry fellow-artist Walter Gandy), and we will look at a range of Doulton art pottery dating from the 1870s to 1920s.

Dr Jane Jordan is Chair of the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery and a Lambeth Tour Guide. Jane was a Senior Lecturer at Kingston University where she taught Victorian literature for 20 years. She is the author of two biographies, Josephine Butler (John Murray, 2001) and Kitty O’Shea (The History Press, 2005), and has published widely on marginalised nineteenth-century women novelists. Since starting her research into Doulton’s, Jane has discovered over 20 of the self-styled ‘Lady Artists’ buried at West Norwood Cemetery and is now an obsessive collector.

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