The latest Transactions of the English Ceramic Circle has an article by Robin Emmerson on the origins of Art Pottery which looks at its emergence from the design reform movement, which was familiar, and fashions and trends in home decoration, which was not. The art school at South Kensington was important and was linked with Minton and the Lambeth art school was similarly linked with Doulton.
But ceramics displayed in the home signified that the owner was on the side of the Aesthetes rather than the Barbarians (the contrast introduced by Matthew Arnold). Emmerson points out that Art Pottery was almost all meant for display, one of those obvious things that you could overlook. Charlotte Gere and Lesley Hoskins touched on ceramics and put them into the wider context of the Aesthetic interior in The House Beautiful twenty years ago.
MARSHALL COLMAN 