The Souvenir Age
With the advent of the railroads in Victorian England, access to cheap travel became the impetus for a new phenomena: the Tourist. Derived from that rite of passage, the Continental Tour, now the shopgirls, accounting clerks, parsons' wives and young honeymooners could travel just about anywhere in Great Britain in relative comfort and convenience - once a privilege accorded only to the wealthy. Britons rushed to the seashore, the mountains of Wales, the rocky cliffsides of Devon and the Scottish highlands. The coasts of France became so Anglicized during holiday season that a generation later, most of the small-boat armada that rushed to Dunkirk knew the route without further assistance from the British Navy.
The magnificent hotels and spas that had been graced by royalty and the very upper class one hundred years previously now lowered their rates and catered to the new middle class. Where modest crofters and quiet fishermen's wives had lived peacefully only a few years before, now tea-shops, gift-shops, boardwalks and carriages-for-hire appeared.
At roughly the same time, many of the indigenous industries such as potteries were experiencing a downturn in demand for their products. Cheap imports from the Continent were flooding their markets, and mass production factory output meant less profitable firms faced ruin. Nonetheless, a few entrepreneurs saw a new market in the tourists - and began producing inexpensive items that the tourist could take back home as a "souvenir" or reminder of his holiday pleasures. Clearly, a work-force skilled at making faux Greek vases and tea caddies could readily turn their hand to making other articles and this is exactly what they did.
Torquay is the name given to ceramics by several potteries working near Torquay, England, from 1870 until 1962. Until about 1900, the potteries used local red clay to make classical-style art pottery vases and figurines. Then they turned to making souvenir wares. Items were dipped in colored slip and decorated with painted slip and sgraffito designs. They often had mottoes or proverbs, and scenes of cottages, ships, birds, or flowers. The Scandy design was a symmetrical arrangement of brushstrokes and spots done in colored slips. Potteries included Watcombe Pottery (1870-1962); Torquay Terra-Cotta Company (1875-1905); Aller Vale (1881-1924); Torquay Pottery (1908-1940); and Longpark (1883-1957).
To the uninitiated, Torquay Pottery means "mottowares," yet that was only a very small part of the output of the Torquay potteries; indeed, the term "Torquay Pottery" is misleading too because very few of the cluster of potteries that made these wares were actually in Torquay itself. The main customers were day trippers or holiday makers who wanted something cheap and cheerful to take home; gradually designs were simplified (for cheapness) and mottoes added. The public loved the mottoes - which varied from the profound to the humorous - and they remain popular with many collectors today. Mottowares were the bread and butter lines of the potteries for over 50 years, so they are still readily available.
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