Bentham Pottery

09/09/2026

https://www.cravenherald.co.uk/news/26528696.museum-north-craven-life-heading-ingleton-day/

THE Museum of North Craven Life is upping sticks and going on the road.

07/09/2026

Our Bayeux Tapestry mugs have made it into Ceramic Review!

02/09/2026

A whole double-page spread on our Bayeux Tapestry mugs in this month’s Bentham News!

Bentham Pottery Produces a Souvenir Mug for the British Museum Bayeux Tapestry Exhibition

By Lee Cartledge

Earlier this year, Bentham Pottery was contacted by the British Museum and invited to produce a souvenir mug for its forthcoming Bayeux Tapestry exhibition.

Ordinarily, we would have declined such an order, as pottery and parcel couriers are not always the happiest of companions. We generally concentrate our business in the North West, where we can deliver work ourselves whenever possible. However, this felt like a unique opportunity. Not only was it a prestigious commission, but it would also raise the profile of the pottery. I also felt a personal connection with the Bayeux Tapestry, having visited it on a school trip from Ingleton Middle School many years ago.

Determined to win the commission, I produced a series of prototype mugs and sent photographs to the British Museum. They must have liked what they saw because members of the museum’s purchasing team travelled to Bentham to visit the pottery, inspect our workshop and take sample mugs back to London. Around Easter, we received confirmation that we had secured an initial order for 200 mugs, with delivery scheduled for July.

The mugs will be sold throughout the Bayeux Tapestry exhibition, which runs for ten months from September.

Once the mugs were finished, the next challenge was getting them safely to London. After several disastrous experiences with courier companies over the years, I wasn’t prepared to trust them with such an important order. Instead, we decided to deliver the mugs ourselves and turn the trip into a short break.

We stopped off in Congleton to visit my mother-in-law before continuing to a hotel in North London. From there, I had arranged a taxi to collect us and our eight vegetable boxes packed full of mugs and take us directly to the British Museum’s delivery entrance.

The taxi driver looked slightly bemused when he saw the unusual cargo, but he soon embraced the mission. We arrived within our allocated delivery slot, and the museum porters carefully received all 200 mugs without incident.

With the business side successfully completed, we were able to enjoy everything London had to offer. We spent time exploring the British Museum, met up with our son who lives in the capital, enjoyed a tour of Buckingham Palace, ate in Soho and rounded off the evening by seeing Moulin Rouge! The Musical.

The following day we made the journey back to Yorkshire, with another visit to my mother-in-law for good measure.

Looking back, it was a memorable few days and proof that, every now and then, it’s possible to combine business with pleasure.

Given the public interest around the tapestry and the fact it sold out within 24 hours of going online (for the first 3 months), I suspect further orders are imminent!

Caption: Kathy above and Lee below with their 200 mugs

13/08/2026

A stack of Bayeux Tapestry mugs

10/08/2026

I’ve got very few pots left from my degree. The trouble was that, having a family pottery business, anything that looked even vaguely commercial was simply put into the shop and sold. It was a great way of earning a bit of pocket money at the time, but I do wish I’d photographed more of them before they disappeared.

These two pieces escaped that fate because they were on display in my parents’ house, and they were definitely part of my degree show.

They were all about exploring contrasts – texture against smooth surfaces, function against sculpture. My main inspiration came from rock formations, with their weathered surfaces and natural shapes.

06/08/2026

After graduating from Sunderland Polytechnic, I landed a job there as the Ceramics Technician. It was the perfect start to my career, as it felt as though I was carrying on with student life – only this time I was getting paid for it.

A few months into the job I received a rather unusual enquiry from a lady in Bolton. She’d heard through friends of my parents that I’d recently completed a Glass and Ceramics degree. She owned a company that extracted silver from old X-ray films. The recovered silver had a fascinating organic structure, looking a little like tiny pieces of coral, and she wondered whether it could be incorporated into a glass paperweight.

Intrigued by the challenge, I enlisted the help of a fellow Sunderland graduate. The lady funded the hire of a glass studio in Newcastle, and the silver was sent to us. The paperweight in the photograph is one of the prototypes we produced.

I did have a few concerns. Silver and glass have slightly different rates of expansion, which can sometimes cause glass to crack months or even years after it’s been made. I was also a little apprehensive about heating silver that had previously been exposed to X-rays. Although the silver itself wouldn’t be radioactive, I wasn’t entirely sure what fumes might be produced when it came into contact with molten glass.

The lady loved the finished paperweights and became very enthusiastic about setting up a studio to manufacture them. Premises were viewed, wages were discussed, and it came remarkably close to becoming a reality. Then, at the last minute, she got cold feet and decided not to go ahead. Whether my own reservations played any part in that decision, I’ll never know.

Interestingly, despite my concerns about the compatibility of the silver and glass, this particular paperweight is now over 40 years old and still shows no signs of cracking.

02/08/2026

At the end of my final year at Sunderland Polytechnic, we were offered free use of the glassmaking facilities for a week during the summer holidays. Two fellow students and I jumped at this opportunity and spent the week hand-blowing perfume bottles.

At the end of the week, we divided the perfume bottles up and each headed home to see if we could actually sell what we’d made. I sold mine wherever I could—to friends, through the shop at Bentham Pottery, and at local craft fairs. To my surprise, they sold really well.

Looking back, it was one of the most valuable lessons of my time at polytechnic. It taught us about teamwork, designing for efficient production, marketing and, perhaps most importantly, that it was actually possible to earn a living from making handmade products. Admittedly, our production costs were low because we weren’t paying for rent, gas or glass, so it wasn’t exactly a true reflection of running a business. Even so, it was an incredibly useful exercise and gave us the confidence to believe that making a living as makers might actually be possible.

Within a few months, I’d sold every single perfume bottle. The only one I kept is the one you can see here.

30/07/2026

I studied Glass and Ceramics at Sunderland Polytechnic, which was probably more Hustle Group than Russell Group. In common with Oxbridge it had a bridge, but I don’t remember seeing an ox. There were, however, plenty of rather intimidating stray dogs wandering the streets, so perhaps it was more Dogbridge.

My enduring memory from the first week was walking down the high street after throwing out time (yes, pubs actually closed at 10.30pm back then!) and seeing two lasses. One was crouched over a drain having a p*e while carrying on a conversation with the other as though this was perfectly normal practice. Anyway… I apologise for getting sidetracked.

In all seriousness, Sunderland had an excellent Glass and Ceramics course. I could fault aspects of the teaching, but one thing it got absolutely right was giving us access to the workshops from dawn until dusk. We had an incredible range of equipment and materials to experiment with. Looking back, though, I suspect that as teenagers there were rather too many other distractions for us to make the most of it all.

I thought I’d show you some of the glass I made there rather than my ceramics. My work was very sculptural, inspired by cave formations, and bears almost no resemblance to the functional pottery we make today at Bentham Pottery.

I’m also very grateful to my parents for keeping it all on permanent display in their lounge for the last fourty-odd years. Otherwise, these photos probably wouldn’t exist!

Here they are…

25/07/2026

After a lot of thought (and perhaps a little paranoia!), we decided to drive the first batch of Bayeux Tapestry mugs down to the British Museum ourselves.

24/07/2026

Very pleased with the following review from the Anglian Potters news;

The Last Potter of Black Burton
by Lee Cartledge

The Last Potter of Black Burton by Lee Cartledge

The Choir Press, 2021 | Paperback | 190pp | £6.99 | ISBN: 978-1789631838

Perhaps 30 years ago I bought some bowls on holiday in North Yorkshire. Idly turning one over recently I wondered if the pottery named on the base still existed. So started an enjoyable trip down a fascinating rabbit hole.

Bentham Pottery does still exist and Lee Cartledge who runs it still makes the range of domestic ware developed by his mother Kathy before him. Browsing their website benthampottery.com my curiosity was piqued by their history and links to the pottery traditions of the area. Lee is an accomplished potter in his own right and his Brexit Mug has made it into the V&A collection. That story appears on the Bentham Pottery website and is worth a read.

Lee’s other claim to fame is as author of The Last Potter of Black Burton, a book about Richard Bateson and the potteries of Burton-in-Lonsdale, self-published with the help of Bateson’s grandson. Richard Bateson was already an old man when, in 1977, he wandered into Bentham Pottery and asked if he could throw a pot to show his grandchildren what he used to do. Lee’s slightly sceptical mother agreed and was quickly in awe of his skill and efficiency at the wheel. Bateson subsequently became a frequent visitor and passed on many of his skills and techniques. Lee was then in his teens and not much interested. Ten years later and looking for a dissertation topic he chose to research Bateson and the local pottery heritage. This work forms the basis of the book with a later epilogue and appendices including further research.

I was fascinated to read about the scale of the potteries in the period before World War II. Burton-in-Lonsdale was blessed with earthenware, stoneware and coal deposits plus a river. The coincidence of these necessities in one place and their ease of excavation gave rise to five working potteries. Much of the production was given over to jam jars and bottles for the brewing industry, in addition to traditional pots for domestic and farming life. These were complex businesses and the book paints a compelling picture of the dangers and lighter moments of a hard-working way of life.

Bateson was taken out of school at age 13 to work with his father, initially to operate the jam jar machine, which was the least skilled of the production processes. From there he progressed quickly to “taking-off” and then to throwing, working up the weights of clay. By 17, he had mastered the whole production range, including the dreaded six-gallon bottle requiring 66 lbs of clay. His father Harry was able to throw 120 six-gallon bottles a day. The two master throwers would between them use 12 to 18 tons of clay a week feeding three kilns large enough to fire 3000 one-gallon bottles at a time. All this clay had to be dug and processed during the winter for the year ahead. The pottery had its own horses for delivery and even grew willow and made baskets for the c***r jar casings.

A principal customer was Guinness for stout bottles. Technology and fashion moved on, however. Glass bottles and jars replaced ceramic. The potteries closed steadily between the wars, and although a few more-gifted potters tried to bring new methods and transition to more refined domestic wares, none could make a lasting success of it. But Richard Bateson had a stroke of luck. The Central School of Arts and Crafts evacuated from London to the Lake District during the war, but needed a place for ceramics students to make and fire their work. As well as providing the necessary facilities, Bateson proved an able teacher. When, after the war, they needed a new tutor in London, Bateson was invited to teach at “Central” and so began a second career. Bateson taught many of the post-war generation of studio potters, linking them back to the traditions and methods of the country potters that otherwise might easily have been lost.

Although I felt the epilogue and appendices could have been integrated with the main text, I found Cartledge’s book an easy and engaging read. His insights as a working potter himself, and his family association with Bateson, bring a warmth and shrewd understanding that a pure historian would have lacked. It is a fascinating cultural and industrial history as well as a personal history of a remarkable potter working through a turbulent period.

I would definitely recommend the book if you are interested in the industrial heritage of your craft. If you want to make a time-delay water-bomb from clay to prank your workmates then the section “Larking about” will be indispensable.

The Last Potter of Black Burton is available on Amazon.

Ian George