Royal Doulton Plc

Royal Doulton Plc

Minton House, London Road
Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire ST4 7QD
England
01782 292292
Fax: 01782 292499

Public Company
Incorporated: 1854 as Doulton & Co.
Employees: 6,500
Sales: $339.94 million
SICs: 3262 Vitreous China Table & Kitchenware; 5023 Home
Furnishings; 3220 Glass & Glassware—Pressed or Blown

Royal Doulton Plc is the holding company of Royal Doulton Ltd., one of the world’s best-known fine china companies, which designs and produces high-quality tableware and gift-ware under the popular brand names of Royal Doulton, Royal Crown Derby, Minton, and Royal Albeit. In the mid-1990s, Royal Doulton claimed about ten percent of the world market for china and produced more than 40,000 different items. In addition to its commercial product lines available in higher-end specialty shops and department stores, the company has also accepted commissions to produce unique china service for royalty, wealthy individuals, embassies, luxury hotels, and England’s House of Lords.

The history of Royal Doulton may be traced to the early 19th century, when John Doulton began an apprenticeship at London’s Fulham Pottery, one of the most important of the early commercial potteries in England. Becoming an accomplished potter known for his hard work and innovation, Doulton found employment in Lambeth, along the south bank of the Thames River, at a small pottery business owned by Martha Jones, who had inherited it from her late husband. In 1815, Jones asked Doulton and another employee, John Watts, to enter into a partnership with her, and the three founded a business called Jones, Watts and Doulton. Producing utilitarian salt glaze and stoneware ceramics, stone jars, bottles, and flasks in its early years, the company eventually expanded its line to include mugs and jugs modeled in the likenesses of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, bottles for beer, gallipots (ointment pots), and blacking bottles. Allegedly, as a laboring child, Charles Dickens was said to have pasted labels on thousands of Doulton blacking bottles. Five of John Doulton’s sons joined him in the family business, but the second son, Henry, took his father’s place in the pottery. Henry had become a master potter, learning all aspects of the business from the production stages through management, and he played an important role in product development and in improving working conditions at the Lambeth pottery. In the 1840s Henry Doulton established the world’s first factory for making stoneware drainpipes, a significant development that helped England achieve improvements in health care by providing more sanitary conditions through the provision of piped water. As the pipe business continued to thrive, Henry opened an art studio in the early 1870s where he encouraged and employed talented artists.

Henry also became known for his interest in the welfare of workers, a rare concern at a time when industrialists capitalized on cheap labor. Potteries were generally hazardous places during this time, as arsenic was used in painting and lead in glazing. Workers often succumbed to a debilitating lung disease then known as “potter’s rot.” In addition, laborers had to carry an enormous amount of weight, lifting several tons of materials from depths of eight to ten feet. To help workers with this burden, Henry Doulton obtained a mechanical hydraulic lifting device to help eliminate some of the manual labor. He also believed encouraged scientific research to determine more modern and safe methods of production.

In 1877 Henry Doulton bought a factory at Burslem in Stoke-on-Trent, a city known as The Potteries and home of English bone china. Other famous potters located here included Wedgwood, Minton, Beswick, and Royal Adderly. Indeed, the area became the center for potters, given its wealth of raw materials including clay for earthenware, coal to heat the kilns, as well as lead and salt for glazing. The established potters in this area were initially annoyed, when Doulton moved in on their territory, and they predicted doom for the newcomer. Henry Doulton summed their attitude up thus: “In their view we Southerners know little about God and nothing at all about potting.”

Through persistence and careful investment in staff and plant, Henry Doulton did succeed. The company’s early success came from earthenware, decorated in the limited colors available from lead glaze at that time. Then, Doulton’s art director John Slater and manager John ? Bailey encouraged Henry to pursue the idea of using bone china in production, a material that could be painted with more and brighter colors. By 1884, Henry Doulton had given his consent to the new medium, and the success of the results attracted to Doulton an outstanding team of modelers, decorators, and painters.

By the late 1880s, the company and its products had become internationally famous. In 1885 Henry was honored for his achievements, receiving the Albert Medal of the Society of Arts for his “encouragement in the production of artistic pottery.” Only one Albert Medal was awarded each year, and previous recipients had included the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson and Sir Rowland Hill, honored for his creation of the penny postage system. Henry’s greatest honor, perhaps, came in 1887, when Queen Victoria awarded him knighthood; he was the first potter to ever be distinguished in this fashion. When Sir Henry Doulton died in 1897, he left behind a company that had diversified and established itself as one of the leaders in its field.

Sir Henry Doulton’s son, Henry Lewis Doulton, who had been made a partner in the firm in 1881, became a leader at the company. In 1901, four years after his father’s death, he received on behalf of the company the Royal Warrant of King Edward VII and was granted permission to add the word “Royal” to the Doulton name—a great and rare honor. As chairman and managing director, Henry Lewis Doulton guided the company through a difficult recession and period of war between 1900 and 1920.

Regarding product development, Henry Lewis Doulton was particularly interested in experimental glaze processes that produced unique, rare color effects. One such glaze, Rouge Flambé, a dramatic red and black glaze, remained unique to Royal Doulton, with a secret formula known only to three or four people in the company into the 1990s. The company also introduced new lines of character jugs, figurines, and decorative and utility china on earthenware and bone china bodies, and their popularity continued to grow.

In America, Royal Doulton became known as the finest English china. Indeed, Royal Doulton’s presence in the American market was an important part of the company’s growth and success, and remained Royal Doulton’s most important overseas market in the mid-1990s. In 1945, a subsidiary, Royal Doulton USA Inc., was formed to help in the sales and marketing of the products in the United States.

Family leadership in the company continued. Ronald Duneau Doulton, a cousin of Henry Lewis Doulton, became one of the first directors of the business when it changed to a limited company, known as Doulton & Co. Limited, in January 1899. Lewis John Eric Hooper, son of Henry Lewis’s sister, joined Royal Doulton in 1902. Under Eric’s guidance much scientific research into the physical and chemical behavior of ceramic materials was carried out and new technology was developed and installed. His nephew, Orrok Sherwood Doulton, joined the company in 1935 and became director. Under his leadership, Royal Doulton captured the Queen’s Awards for Industry, Technological Innovation, and Outstanding Export Performance.

Orrok Sherwood Doulton’s sons, Mark and Michael, both joined the company. Michael Doulton joined the company in 1970, working under a fictitious name while learning the different aspects of pottery production. Since 1976 he acted as traveling ambassador for the company and with the formation of the Royal Doulton International Collectors Club, a group dedicated to the collection and preservation of Royal Doulton products, he served as honorary president since 1980. Although the Doulton family still remained an important and integral part to running the business, leadership extended outside the family in later years.

1968 saw the first series of acquisitions by Doulton and Co. Limited. It first purchased the world-renowned Minton China, a company founded by Thomas Minton in 1793. Minton dominated the industry during the middle of the 19th century and the company’s innovations included the acid gold decorating process, the majolica-type body, the pâte-sur-pâte relief decoration technique, encaustic tiles, and parían statuary. In the same year, Doulton acquired Dunn Bennett, a company founded in 1876 when Thomas Wood-Bennett joined his father-in-law William Dunn to begin potting, concentrating on hotelware. In 1969, Webb Corbett and Beswick became part of the Royal Doulton group. Webb Corbett was founded in 1897 to make English full-lead crystal; Beswick traced its history to 1890, when James Wright Beswick and his son began producing both table and ornamental ware.

The greatest merger in the history of ceramics came in 1972, when Pearson PLC purchased Doulton and Co. Pearson had a controlling interest in Allied English Potteries and combined the two tableware groups under the Royal Doulton Tableware name. Pearson’s emergence in the pottery industry came about almost by accident. Originally, the Pearson empire was mainly concerned with constructional engineering and the development of oil fields. But after investing money into a struggling business called Booth’s pottery during the 1920s, Pearson eventually became the controlling shareholder. Then, 20 years later, Pearson began increasing their pottery interests. In 1944, the company bought Colclough’s of Longton, a business founded in 1893 that made moderately priced bone china teaware. Pearson combined its Booth pottery with that of Colclough’s, forming a new entity called Booth and Colclough. In 1952, Pearson acquired the Lawley Group, a company controlling a national chain of specialist china and glass retailers and pottery manufacturers, including Ridgway and Adderly. Seven years later they purchased Swinnertons and Alcock, Lindley and ? loor, manufacturers of redware pots. Other names joining the group were Royal Crown Derby, Royal Albert, and Paragon. Following its string of pottery acquisitions, Pearson eventually changed their focus in the 1990s and divested many of its holdings. Royal Doulton plc was thus formed in December 1993 and was listed on the London stock exchange; according to analysts, the company had a market value of between £150 million and £200 million at the time.

The development of Royal Doulton’s product lines are also integral to the company’s history. In fact, some products developed in the company’s early years remained popular in modern times. The Toby jug was one such example. First produced in the early 18th century, the Toby jug, or beverage mug, was designed to represent a seated male figure, stout and smiling, with the spouts at either side of the mug’s rim serving as points on the character’s tricorn hat. Royal Doulton produced the jugs at their Lambeth factory during the 19th and 20th centuries, and they reclaimed popularity in the 1930s when they were produced to represent famous characters from English songs, literature, and history. Since that time, Royal Doulton introduced updated versions of the mugs, featuring only the head of the character rather than its full body. Characters have included figures from American history as well as popular culture.

Figurines were also an important product line of Royal Doulton, and the company became known for the quality and attention to detail of its figurines. The earliest recorded figurative work produced by Royal Doulton is attributed to John Doulton, who made a flask depicting Queen Caroline around 1820. The tradition of producing figurines of people and animals continued throughout the years, and lines were constantly updated. Ideas for subjects came from a variety of sources, such as historic figures, popular nursery tales, or celebrated events. For example, figurines of the Royal family gained popularity in the 1980s, and a special edition was created in 1992 commemorating the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s setting sail to discover the New World.

Tableware design and decoration began at the company in 1877, when Henry Doulton entered into a partnership with and later bought out Pinder & Bourne Company, a medium-sized producer of earthenware tableware. From earthenware the company moved into the area of fine china. As new decorative and manufacturing techniques emerged, fine china became available at more affordable prices. In 1960, the company introduced English Translucent China, a medium it pioneered and from which the costly ingredient of calcined bone had been eliminated. Through this new product, which became known as Royal Doulton Fine China, the company was able to offer the qualities associated with fine bone china at a modest cost to consumers. In 1974, the company revived the concept of its original Lambethware, creating a casual tableware with a country charm and practicality, being oven and freezer proof and unaffected by detergent or the dishwasher. Royal Doulton Tableware Limited grew to represent approximately one-third of the entire British tableware industry. Finally, by the 1990s, Royal Doulton was producing a wide variety of ceramic products for use in the chemical, textile, aircraft, engineering and atomic industries.

In the mid-1990s Royal Doulton management was focusing on achieving a greater degree of efficiency at its facilities. From 1987 to 1990, the company spent £10 million annually (approximately $16.4 million) to automate and mechanize their factories, resulting in even finer quality and manufacturing flexibility. The company maintained a dozen factories producing all types and grades of product at that time. Royal Doulton’s superb products, excellent management, and outstanding reputation positioned the company among the top echelon of the industry. Their efforts to appeal to lower-priced markets, while maintaining their reputation for producing high-quality, traditional china, was likely to ensure their position as one of the leaders for many more years to come.

Principal Subsidiaries

Royal Doulton USA Inc.

Further Reading

Doulton, Michael, Discovering Royal Doulton, Shrewsbury: Swan-Hill Press, 1993, 144 p.

Eyles, Desmond, Royal Doulton: 1815-1965, London: Hutchinson & Co., 1965.

Fallon, James, “Parent to Spin Off Royal Doulton,” HFD-The Weekly Home Furnishings Newspaper, August 9, 1993, p. 44.

Neiss, Doug, “Royal Doulton Expands with Efficiency,” HFD-The Weekly Home Furnishings Newspaper, April 30, 1990, p. 94.

Shenker, Israel, “From the Villages of Stoke-on-Trent: A River of China,” Smithsonian, March 1989, pp. 131-138.

—Beth Watson Highman