The ‘Luck Of The Irish’ To You
On St. Patrick’s Day

A Belleek castle vase, decorated with a few green shamrocks. The castle door and windows are part of the mold. Irish castles do not look like Disneyland’s Cinderella castle. Most look like towers, similar to this mold.

One of the events we celebrate in March is St. Patrick’s Day. This is the time to start your collection of Irish ceramics.

There are two big well-known names that must be included when one focuses on Irish Pottery - Belleek and Wade.

Belleek, with its fine, almost translucent, parian ware, has been loved since its founding in County Fermanagh, Ireland, in 1863. The company is still operating today in the building which looks like it still belongs in the 19th century.

Collectors look for the mark on the bottom of a piece to help them determine the date when it was made, since the color of the mark has changed over time, as has the wording. Most of the marks from 1863 to 1946 were black (although a few red, blue, orange, green, brown and pink are known.) Green marks were in use from 1946 to 1981; gold marks were in use from 1965 to 1992; and since then there has been a variety of colors and wording used.

Whatever the mark on the underside, the Belleek ware remains its creamy white, with interesting molds and, when decorations are used, subdued colors.

The Wade potteries of George Wade & Son started in the Staff ord shire region of England in the 1920s. Following World War II, looking for a place to build a new factory in a place where the unemployment rate was high, they chose an old linen mill in an area of Northern Ireland.

A Wade leprechaun next to a pot for holding gold.

Wade Irish Porcelain is most well known for its shaded green glaze, which was produced accidentally. In 1953, as the company prepared to produce some souvenir items for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, its glazing foreman was instructed to devise some potential glazes to use. One was to be a cobalt blue. However, he mixed the wrong chemicals and came up with what is known today as Irish Porcelain Glaze. It was immediately approved for use; the foreman had the job of recreating his mistake. It has proved to be a glaze that remains unique to the Wade company.

Wade Ireland has made a variety of products through the years. The tankards in various sizes are popular with collectors. So are the whimsies - miniature figures and cottages. The World of Wade Ireland, by Warner and Posgay (Schiffer Publishing,) is an excellent reference for this company.

This shell dish, decorated with a design from the Book of Kells, has a diameter of just under 5”. It was made by Royal Tara.

In addition to the above well-known companies, however, there are many, many more potteries operating in Ireland. Apparently there are good clay deposits throughout Ireland, because they have operated on the east coast, the west coast, the south and the north.

Royal Tara has been making fine bone china and stoneware products in Galway for 50 years. (Galway is on the west side, on the edge of the Atlantic.) The company has made both tableware and giftware, and uses strong Irish themes in its designs. One particularly interesting set of designs is that taken from the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript produced by Irish monks about 800 A.D. (It is now located in Trinity College, Dublin.) Royal Tara also has produced a line of hand-painted ceramics called Clara Crafts.

A small cup, just 2” tall, made by Carrigaline Pottery Co. Ltd. It is decorated with green shamrocks.

The Carrigaline Pottery Co. Ltd, in County Cork in the southeast part of Ireland, was started in 1928. The founder, with advice from potters at Stoke-on-Trent in England, created a product using local clays that were sold world-wide for many years. It became especially well known for the pieces it made for the 1932 Eucharistic Con gress, held in Dublin. This event marked the 1,500th anniversary of St. Patrick’s arrival in Ireland!

Most of the products of the company were decorated with shamrocks, sometimes alone and sometimes as a border around a central design.

The company closed in 1979, reopened under German ownership as the Cork Art Potteries, changed its name back to Carrigaline Potteries Ireland Ltd. and closed again in 2002.

Ceramic cream pitcher, identified as Ballyporeen Fine Ceramics, Ireland. It is 3 1/2” tall and decorated with purple pansies.

Some of the potteries are hard to identify as to history. An example is the small pitcher shown here, marked Ballyporeen Fine Ceramics, Ireland. Ballyporeen is a village of just a few hundred people in Tipperary (and incidentally, the ancestral home of President Ronald Reagan, according to Wikipedia.) There are several small potteries in and around Ballyporeen, but in a web search this exact company name did not appear.

One does not find much in the way of really old commercially-made ceramic wares in Ireland. The country was primarily rural until late in the 19th century. However, since then, many different potteries have made interesting pieces in all price ranges, and a collector can have fun developing a collection of Irish pottery.

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