The Doulton Lambeth pottery factory, like many potteries of the 19th and early 20th centuries, employed young women as paintresses and decorators to produce the beautiful designs on their wares. At other factories, many names of these paintresses are unknown today because they did not sign their work. At Doulton Lambeth, however, women were encouraged to sign their pieces, and because of this practice we can identify the artist behind this vase as A. Euphemia Thatcher. Euphemia worked at the factory from 1879-1889 and specialized in painting detailed floral imagery.

Henry Doulton, the factory director, supported women’s careers in the arts, a rather liberal idea in Victorian society. By 1881, Doulton Lambeth employed 231 women who made up a large number of its workforce. The women of Doulton Lambeth enjoyed a professional life which was not available to women in many industries, earning salaries, the creative freedom to experiment with their designs, and of course artistic attribution through their artist signature. In 1882, the women artists of Doulton Lambeth gifted Henry Doulton with an illuminated manuscript “to take this opportunity of expressing our obligations to you for the origination of an occupation at once so interesting and elevating to so large a number of our sex.” The album was signed by all of the women employed by the factory and included their artists’ marks.

BT

Excellent.

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The Collection of Barry R. Harwood and Joseph V. Garry

Eyles, Desmond. The Doulton Lambeth Wares. Somerset, England: Richard Dennis, 2002.