// Buyer’s Guide
With bold pattern, vibrant palette and visible brush strokes these daring abstracts have become some of the most popular of all Susie’s designs. Today these are amongst some of the most sought after, with three and even four figure sums for good vases and tea services. Ironically in later life Susie looked back on them with a little disdain, commenting that she found them impractical and even crude!
WEDGWOOD: 1966 - 1980
In the mid-1960s Susie Cooper became part of the Wedgwood Group. The merger released Susie from the everyday factory management responsibilities, allowing more time for designing and creating an early sense of optimism. Wedgwood were also pleased with their acquisition, adding the words "Susie Cooper Design" to the famous Portland vase factory mark when appropriate.
SUSIE COOPER POTTERY: 1929 – 1966
The years between 1929 and 1966 mark the most creative of her career, with an endless array of patterns, shapes and ranges filling an already growing pattern book! From exotic animals to stylised fruit, her trademark elegant abstraction with intricate yet understated detail became instantly recognised and admired throughout the industry.
With the help of her family, particularly her brother-in-law, Susie took two rooms at the George Street Pottery, Tunstall and from these humble beginnings, with just six paintresses, an empire was to grow! Demand for Susie Cooper ware grew steadily and despite taking on extra staff, it became necessary to find larger premises. In 1931, Susie Cooper Productions took a premises adjacent to Wood & Sons of Burslem, who provided her with the best quality white-ware she required for her designs and the new premises were relaunched as the Crown Works Wartime restrictions and a terrible fire saw Susie handle post war austerity with a brave face! The fire of 1942 had all but destroyed her stock of lithographs and the rationing of building materials made refurbishment difficult. Susie, not one to give up, returned to pre-war decorating techniques in order to increase production. Hand-painting, aerographed and scrafitto decoration all re-appeared, however the colours were more subdued than pre-war equivalents and organic or plant forms provided the inspiration for her work.
Susie worked closely with Wedgwood through the 1960s and 1970s creating some of the most distinctive patterns not only of the period, but also her career including Carnaby Daisy, a bright harlequin set with more than a nod to the flower power generation, and the vibrant Harlequinade pattern with its Pop Art inspired psychedelic palette.
Despite the success of her ever-fashionable designs, Susie found herself struggling with the corporate structure of Wedgwood and the difficulties such a large organisation presented in simply putting her ideas into practice! A frustrated Susie met with personal loss with the death of her husband in March 1972. Just two months later Susie resigned her position as a director and operated solely as a designer.
Over the last 20 or so years Susie has had an interesting rollercoaster ride on the international antique and collectors market. The late 1980s and early 1990s saw her bold abstract wares smash as many auction room records as Clarice Cliff, while fervent Japanese buyers snapped up refined tea sets. Today, as with so many once popular markets, Susie has bedded down to something far more affordable, but while prices may have fallen from those heady days it is no less stylish or beautifully made! Combine that with the thousands of designs and hundreds of shapes all from as little as a few pounds and is there really any reason not to start a collection? I think not!
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