Designers Directory

Discover more about a selection of my favourite designers.

William De-Morgan

William De Morgan, born in London on 16 November 1839, was a potter, tile designer and a novelist. 

He was a good  friend of William Morris and designed tiles, stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co. from 1863 to 1872. He then set up a pottery in Chelsea, where he worked until 1881.

He used innovative glazes and firing techniques and he was particularly drawn to Eastern tiles and intricate patterns. His work often featured galleons, fish, birds and animals.

De Morgan also became a novelist and his first novel, Joseph Vance, was published in 1906.

He died of trench fever in London in 1917, and was buried in Brookwood Cemetery.


René Lalique

René Lalique was born in France on 6 April 1860 and was a glass designer particularly known for glass art, perfume bottles, vases, jewellery, chandeliers, clocks, and automobile hood ornaments. 

He spent 2 years at the Crystal Palace School of Art Sydenham, London and on his return to France, he worked as a freelance artist designing jewellery for Cartier amongst others. In 1885, he opened his own business designing and making his own jewellery and other pieces.

In the 1920s, he became noted for his work in the Art Deco style.

Lalique died on 1 May or 5 May 1945 in Paris and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.


Piero Fornasetti

Piero Fornasetti (1913-1988) was an Italian eclectic artist. During his artistic career he created over 13,000 works - one of the largest outputs of objects and furniture of the 20th century. 

Porcelain, furniture and furnishing accessories form the heart of his work. He wanted to produce everyday objects that were decorated in such a way that would bring art into ordinary people's homes. 

In the 1950s, Fornasetti founded the design and decorative arts atelier in Milan that bears his name, Fornasetti. Today this exists under the artistic direction of his son Barnaba Fornasetti.

Piero Fornasetti died in 1988 during a minor operation in hospital.


Meryll Watts

Meryl was an only child to Charles Issac Watts and Eveline Watts being born in Blackheath London SE3 in 5th April 1910.  They lived in Germains Place, Blackheath, London SE3.  She attended the Blackheath School of Art and studied under John Edgar Platt, Charles Paine, James Woodford RA, William Clause and Reginald Brill.

She began to work independently in 1937 producing her own works while still living in Blackheath.  The onset of the war was a difficult time for the Watts family as they were very near to the London Docs and Greenwich which were targeted by the German bombers. During 1940 their house and her father's printing...

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Brian Bradshaw

Brian Bradshaw was born in Bolton, Lancashire in 1923. In 1939, he attended the Bolton College of Art but owing to the outbreak of war, his time spent there was short. He enlisted in 1942 and served in the army until 1948. Upon his return, he was awarded a Royal Scholarship from the Royal College of Art, London and studied there until 1951. During his final year, he was awarded a 1st Class Silver Medal for ‘Work of Special Distinction’ and was noted for his engravings and architecture designs. He was also awarded the Prix de Rome at the British Academy in Rome where he spent two years working. By this time he has also become an elected member of the Manchester Academy of...

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The Martin Brothers

The four Martin Brothers were pottery manufacturers in London from 1873 to 1914. In their own day their Martinware was described as art pottery, and they were one of the earliest potteries making this, but in modern terms they fit better into the studio pottery category, which was invented later.

The four brothers (Wallace, Walter, Charles and Edwin) produced a distinctive type of 

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William Moorcroft

In 1897 Staffordshire pottery manufacturers James Macintyre & Co. Ltd employed 24-year-old William Moorcroft as a designer, and within a year he was put in full charge of the company's art pottery studio. Early in his employment at Macintyre's, William Moorcroft created designs for the company's Aurelian Ware range of high-Victorian pottery, which had transfer-printed and enamelled decoration in bold red, blue and gold colours....

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Arthur Berridge

Arthur Berridge was born in Leicester in 1902. After leaving school, he spent 4 years studying at Leicester College of Art and then Goldsmith’s College in London, where he graduated as an art teacher in 1924.

Originally Arthur worked as an artist under his paternal name of Smith, but he later considered his mother’s name of Berridge to be more suitable as an artist’s surname. His artistic career began in the early...

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John Ward

John Ward was born in London in 1938, and is regarded as one of the most important modern British potters. He first worked as a cameraman for the BBC and subsequently took a ceramics course at East Ham Technical College in London, before attending the Camberwell School of Arts & Crafts where he studied under the tutelage of Hans Coper and Lucie Rie. He established his first workshop in London in 1971, and spent several years as a part-time potter and teacher. He later moved to...

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