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Ad Rates / Articles / Classified Ads / Editorial / Home / Links / Showtime   Susie Cooper was a petite giant in ceramics    List Hyla Wults Fox Next   Susie Cooper ceramics creations much in demand   By Hyla Wults Fox “Good News! Susie Cooper Patterns, Sale Priced, Friday!” screamed the T. Eaton Co. advertisement in the August, 1938, Montreal Star.   Customers were offered coffee sets, which consisted of an open sugar and creamer, coffee pot, six after dinner coffee cups and saucers, in the Tyrol pattern, in 11 different colour combinations, such as sepia and jade, azure blue and chestnut, citron yellow and black, amber and mahogany, for $3.59, down from $4.75.   Those who needed dinnerware might have dashed back to Eaton’s a month later, when two Susie Cooper patterns were on special at their “half-priced Thursday Sale!.”   Semi-porcelain dishes that were “hand decorated green or pink, motif shoulders, and floral with harmonizing centres” were available in the chinaware department for 12 cents to $1.75 each.   But the real news is that if your parents or grandparents did attend any of those sales, or received Susie Cooper as shower or wedding gifts and if they are in mint condition, they might be surprised at their value.   Today, that coffee set would cost hundreds of dollars to buy. And what about those plates that fetched 12 cents back in the thirties? Well, they might cost up to $100 or more each, depending on the colour, pattern or style. But if they are really lucky and have some of her early earthenware pieces, they might find themselves making a healthy bank deposit.   Fortunately, for collectors, sales were not confined to Montreal. Wherever there was an Eaton’s or Morgan’s, currently known as The Bay, you could count on Susie Cooper being available.   That means in most major Canadian cities, as well as in many small towns, we can still uncover treasures.   “Canada was a huge market place for Susie Cooper because there were so many English people here,” says Susan Scott, a writer/researcher specializing in 20th Century English ceramics. "And in those days, we serviced a lot of the American market too. Carloads would come up and take china back to the States, duty free.”   So, who was Susie Cooper anyway? To say she was an astonishing individual is an understatement.   To begin with, she was one of the few women in England to create, run and design her own commercial pottery company. She pioneered new ceramic techniques, shapes and functional tableware, creating everyday dinnerware that was stylish, modern, practical and affordable.   Perhaps her philosophy is summed up best, in her first, circa 1930, advertising slogan: “Elegance combined with utility. Artistry associated with commerce and practicality.”   One of Cooper’s trademarks, her famous ‘leaping deer’ motif, which she used from 1932 to the mid-60s, demonstrates her understanding and use of logos in advertising and in buyer recognition.   In 1940, she was made Royal Designer for Industry, the first woman in the potteries to receive this honour.   With her creative and innovative work, Susie Cooper stamped her mark on the decorative arts of Britain and in a way, throughout the world, becoming an icon of 20th century design.   In a career that spanned almost eight decades, from the 1920s to the early 1990s, she designed over 4,500 patterns and about 500 new shapes, for plates, cookie jars, pitchers, platters, vases, dinnerware, coffee and tea sets; had her work displayed in important exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London (they also own a large collection) and at the Wedgwood Museum in Stoke-on-Trent.   She was awarded the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II in 1979. In short, her ceramics reflected the design ideas of the times in which she worked.   Susie Vera Cooper (1902-1995) was born in Burslem, Staffordshire, the youngest of seven children. Her parents farmed and also owned a retail business with several shops.   When she was 12, her father died and the whole family worked to keep the business viable. Looking for something interesting to do with her spare time, Cooper took some evening art classes where she studied freehand painting and plant form.   So talented was she, that she won a scholarship for full time tuition. She attended the Burslem School of Art for three years and in 1922 became an assistant designer at the A. E. Gray Pottery in Hanley.   Reflecting on her early career, Cooper once said she didn't take pottery at art school.   “I intended to be a fashion designer. The only reason I went into ceramics was that I wanted to go to the Royal College and I couldn't get a scholarship unless I was employed in the decorative arts-pottery local industry.”   It didn't take long for her to realize that her talents lay in ceramics, not fashion. Cooper began as a painter on p i e c e - w o r k, was soon promoted to designer, at an hourly rate, and quickly became a resident designer, remaining at Grays for approximately seven years.   When she started producing floral designs and geometric patterns - utilizing freehand brushwork on glaze and great blobs of bright colour heavily influenced by the Bauhaus and Cubist movements - people took note.   Not surprisingly, it is her Art Deco work done while she was at Gray Pottery that is the most coveted by collectors. Ironically, it is the work Cooper herself liked the least.   On her 27th birthday, with loans from her family, she opened her own studio in Tunstall, so that she could have artistic freedom. One year later, she relocated to Burslem in space owned by Royal Doulton and began making her famous Polka Dot and Exclamation Mark patterns.   In 1931, she expanded her operation by associating with Wood and Sons where she designed highly stylized bird shapes and a few years later, patterns based on flowers such as Chrysanthemums, Scarlet Runner Beans and Orchids. Without question, her most prolific period of production was the 1920s and 30s.     Her first major shape design was the Kestrel coffee pot, which is now considered a masterpiece, since it combines well with any type of decoration, traditional florals, polka dots or geometrics. Its round body, long, sleek handle, combined with a crane-like spout with a mouth tip that pouts upwards like a bird, is sleek and seductive, crying out to be touched and held.   Fine department stores such as Harrods handled her work, as did many other top end shops.   Finally, realizing she and her small work force could not continue producing enough to fill the demand she found a way to combine hand-painting and lithography. With mass production accomplished, her pieces, were shipped to Europe and Scandinavia, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Canada.   Although Cooper took time out to marry architect Cecil Barker in 1938, having met him at a Bauhaus lecture five years earlier, her life was mostly work. They had one son, Tim, born in 1942.   In 1966, six years before she was widowed and after having her business destroyed by fire twice - shortly before Tim’s birth and again in 1957 - she finally closed her factory and went to work with Josiah Wedgwood and Sons Limited. This was a successful union as many new patterns and shapes were introduced.   To celebrate her 90th birthday in 1992, Wedgwood and Sons held an exhibition and reception. Believe it or not, Susie Cooper had a whole batch of fresh wares to offer the public. Earthenware book-ends, silk scarves and tapestries, cushion cover kits, and a porcelain model of her leaping deer symbol.   Susan Scott, a Torontonian, was thrilled to be there.   “We were introduced and she said that she shipped a great deal of her work to Canada. I told her that I was doing my best to find every last piece. We laughed.”   But the thing that surprised Scott was Cooper’s size.   “She was so petite, well under 5’2 inches.”   For someone to make such a mark on the world, Scott was expecting to encounter a giant.   “I have seen photographs of her when she was young. She was so beautiful.”   But, Scott recalls, “even at 92, she had extraordinary presence, like Katherine Hepburn. The minute she entered the room, you knew Miss Cooper had arrived.”   Photos: 1 - Susie Cooper plate in Dresden Spray pattern (Chatsworth Antiques, Picton)   2 - Susie Cooper's famous "leaping dear" logo   3 - Susie Cooper pottery cream and sugar (Chatsworth Antiques, Picton)   Hyla Wults Fox is the author of two books about antiques, published by Methuen, Canada, and Dundurn Press. She also had an antiques and collectibles column in the Saturday Toronto Star and later was the feature antique specialist for the Globe and Mail. Her work has also appeared in dozens of Canadian general-interest magazines and North American specialized antique journals. She has also been a guest on numerous TV and radio programs. She can be reached by e-mail at hyla@hylafox.com     Return to top of page   This Is Livin' Publishing © 2010 581 8th Line West, RR1 Hastings, ON, K0L 1Y0 Phone/Fax: 705-696-1833   webmaster