Roland Heath, Gordon Forsyth & the Radiance Lustre Series

I know very little about Roland Heath, Gordon Forsyth or the Radiance Lustre Series from Crown Ducal. But since there is virtually zero content on the internet about the subject I thought I might as well make a start.

A group of items from the Radiance Lustre Series

The pottery designed by Roland Heath is very attractive and deserves to be better known and attributed to him. However his style is not unique and similar designs and glaze effects were produced by other companies before the Crown Ducal productions, and the reason for this leads us to Gordon Forsyth.

Gordon Forsyth was an important ceramic designer during the first half of the 20^th century. You will find biographical details on Wikipedia and the Gray’s Pottery website.

http://www.grayspottery.co.uk/designer-forsyth.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Forsyth 

Gordon Forsyth with some of his students c1934. Picture is from the Pottery Gazette/Evening Sentinel

His connection to Crown Ducal pottery is that from 1920 he was the Superintendent of Art Instruction to the City of Stoke on Trent and was thus involved in the tutoring of student ceramic artists who were being trained during the 1920s and 1930s. One of these students was Susie Cooper, who went to work for Gray’s and another was Roland Heath, who went on to A G Richardson & Co Ltd and probably Gray's afterwards.

Forsyth was also a freelance designer and worked with Gray’s to produce a range of decorations known as Gloria Lustre in the early 1920s. Searching on the internet will reveal plenty of examples and you will see the similarity with the Crown Ducal Radiance Lustre patterns and it seems this was not the only factory producing this type of ware. The name Harold Holdcroft for Royal Venton Ware is linked to much the same style of designs. I assume that Gordon Forsyth taught his students well and they all left art school to design much the same as what he had done!

Before moving on to look at the pottery, there are two interesting documents to reference. The first is Forsyths book “Art and Craft of the Potter”. This is a great little book explaining the pottery processes that were taught at the time, relevant to both studio potters and those going into the pottery industry. Published in 1934 it was written when Charlotte Rhead was employed at Richardsons, so it is useful in recording the terms and techniques in use that would have been familiar to her. The sections on decoration are particularly interesting. I even found a clue as to how Charlotte might have created her “Snow Glaze” tucked away in the chemistry of glazes section. But that is another story. The book also has lots of photographs showing the various stages of manufacture in the pottery factories.

"Art and Craft of the Potter" by Gordon Forsyth

The second document is an article in the Pottery Gazette of January 1935 entitled British Art in British Pottery which is a record of the speech Forsyth gave at the Royal Society of Arts. In essence it is about motivating everyone in the industry to employ good ceramic artists and berating anyone who manufactures pottery with poor artistic taste. “There is no reason why the very cheapest articles should not be beautiful; on the other hand, there can be no justification or excuse for producing one ugly piece of pottery. The mass production of ugliness is a crime against the community, and personally one would have no hesitation in classifying manufacturers of bad art as Public Enemy No 1.” So, having a tutor with that kind of attitude it is not surprising that all his students went off and copied his designs!

Little is known about Roland Heath himself. The trade journals of the period introduce the Radiance Lustre Series in early 1927 and therefore he was working on Crown Ducal designs around that time. He may have been with the company only for a short time, but he managed to leave his monogram mark on some of his creations for us to remember him by.

The monogram of Roland Heath

In common with a lot of early Crown Ducal pottery there are no pattern books describing these designs and most items are unmarked with pattern numbers. The Radiance Lustre Series seems to have had its own numbering system, presumably starting at No1. It is unknown how many designs there were in the series, the highest number I have seen is No38, but several patterns are unnumbered so there may be more than 38.

Typical Crown Ducal backstamp and other markings, the N.8 indicates the design number

I believe the method of decoration is that the outline of the design is painted in gold, then each of the outlined fruits, bands, panels etc is filled with the appropriate colour lustre for the design and all this is under an opalescent glaze. I may be wrong, I am not a ceramic artist and Gordon Forsyth does not explain the method in his book! The work is all freehand so that each piece is quite unique, much like the tube-lined designs of Charlotte Rhead that would be made at the factory five years later. The overall effect is really beautiful and extraordinarily difficult to photograph as it is so highly reflective.


An attempt to show how the opalescent glaze over the lustres displays when the light catches it

Now for a display of the designs so far recorded.

No6  bowl 17cm diameter

No8 Gem shaped coffee set components

No8  vases 14.5cm high

No12 lidded trinket box

No31 bowl 10.5cm diameter

No38 vase 29cm high

A couple of designs without numbers

Apart from these illustrated designs, several others have been seen but I do not have images to show.

No3 Round fruits, grapes, pears, leaves and twigs, blue background, no bands at rim or neck and orange inside vases or outside bowls. 

UNKN As No3 with same design elements but with a more turquoise background and with a darker turquoise band at rim/neck

No4 A single perched bird, with long tail feathers crested head and parrot like beak amongst twigs and leaves, blue background, and orange band at rim/neck.

No33 Similar to central design of No31, circular fruits, twigs and leaves but no bands and the background is a riot of all the rainbow lustre colours but predominantly blue.

UNKN Similar scheme to No33 but has large 4 petalled flowers instead of  circular fruits.

No34 A pair of perched birds, (different from those in No4), amongst fruits and leaves, blue background, deep pink band above orange band at rim/neck.

Edited 19th March 2019 to remove invalid links.