The pioneering pottery of the Martin Brothers

Founded in 1873 by Robert Wallace Martin, the Martin Brothers built their name on imaginative, ambitious pottery full of colourful characters.

It was a real family affair. Robert was the main sculptor and modeller. His brother Walter supplied the technical knowhow and was the expert on the pottery wheel. The youngest, Edwin, was the thrower and decorator. And Charles managed the shop in Holborn.

At a time where ceramics could increasingly be mass produced, these talented potters championed handmade, unique works of art. Their so-called ‘Martinware’ is considered some of the finest of all Victorian art pottery.

Many Martinware ceramics are in our collection.

Robert Wallace started the brothers’ first pottery in Fulham in 1873. In 1877, with business blossoming, they moved into an old soap factory in Southall, near the Grand Union Canal. There, they had the space to build a big workshop and their kiln, an oven that fires (heats) clay into ceramics.

There, the Martins produced salt glazed stoneware, which involves salt being thrown into the kiln during a high-temperature firing. This technique helps to preserve engravings made on the clay. And it creates a uniquely textured glaze, a mixture of matt and glossy. It feels a bit like an orange peel.

Their work drew on inspiration from all over. Many of their jugs, dishes and bowls were influenced by Japanese art and the natural world. These depicted flowers, fish and marine plants.

They also looked to medieval Europe – particularly the bizarre, fantastical creatures called grotesques that were popular in gothic architecture.

The firm became best known for their grotesque bird jars, known as Wally Birds. Their outsized beaks and distorted human heads were the witty work of Robert, who’d trained as a sculptor at Lambeth School of Art. They’re full of personality and have almost human-like expressions.

They also sold ‘marred’ pots, objects that had distorted on the pottery wheel, but had been fired in the kiln and glazed anyway. They were often inscribed with this quote from The Book of Jeremiah: “And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the Potter.”

From 1878, Charles ran the sales from their shop on 16 Brownlow Street in Holborn. The dealer Holbrook Jackson described his first visit there in 1910, finding “shelves of stoneware jugs carved into leering, laughing, grinning and ogling heads, jostling with the most impossible, and most fascinating, pot birds with strangely anthropological expressions”.

The Martin Brothers were one of the earliest artist-led pottery studios, predating the British studio ceramics movement that kicked off in the 20th century. They were self reliant and had complete control over their artistic production. They closed in 1923 when Robert, the last of the brothers still alive, passed away.