Bernard Moore (1850-1935)
Bernard Moore was one of the most highly regarded figures in the pottery industry at the turn of the twentieth century, making a highly significant contribution to so many potteries within the ceramic industry.
From a long standing pottery family, Samuel Moore & Son, (formerly Hamilton & Moore) which Bernard joined in 1865, and after the family firm ceased trading in 1905, Bernard set up his own art pottery, as well as a consultancy business in Wolfe Street in 1905, along with this nephew, Reginald Moore and later joined by his son Bernard Joseph Moore. Long before this works was established, Bernard had been experimenting with Chinese inspired ‘sang-de-boeuf’ and ‘rouge flambé’ glazes for many years, possibly spurned on by wares being produced in the late 19th century by several French art potters, perfecting the art by about 1900/02.
Examples of his work quickly found their way into several museums including the Victoria & Albert, London, the British Museum as well as Hanley, Stoke and Burslem museums. In all eleven pieces were purchased in 1905 by the Victoria & Albert and six more pieces were donated by Moore in 1902 to the British Museum, the later recorded as being “the first results of attempts to produce Chinese flambé on porcelain.”
Moore produced a wide range of color and glaze effects using a number of different metals and other ores, but it was the range of flambé glaze effects that enabled Moore, through his consultancy that was to provide himself with an income for the rest of his life. The display cabinets at the Wolfe street studio, whilst full of various examples of his work, were often not for actually for sale, just for advertising or promotion as to what he could achieve.
Bernard Moore, along with William Howson Taylor, (Ruskin Pottery, West Smethwick, Birmingham) and William and Joseph Burton, (chemists at the Pilkington’s Royal Lancastrian pottery) were regarded by John Adams (director of the Poole Pottery and a former employee of Bernard Moore) as the founders of the studio pottery movement.
It was William Burton, reviewing a 1906 exhibition of Bernard Moores pottery, held in Stoke-on-Trent, wrote that “the glazes now produced by Mr Moore are as perfect, their tones as varied and in some cases, their colour more brilliant than any that have come from China.”
His consultancy business, whilst mostly sought after by British potteries, including Doulton, Minton, Copeland, Wedgwood & Sons ltd, T & S Green and Pilkington’s amongst several others, some of whom provided blanks or had shapes made for him, also took him to America, Spain, France and many other countries. The first inclining of his aptitude for reporting on ceramic research appears to have started as early as 1879 when Bernard wrote a report on the plasticity of debris from geysers in Rotorua, New Zealand for the government. Such was the regard and esteem he was held within the industry that in 1902, Bernard was appointed president of the North Staffordshire Ceramic Society (later English Ceramic Society). Bernard wrote numerous papers, some in conjunction with Dr. Joseph Mellor, on many technical aspects of the pottery industry published in the Transactions of the English Ceramic Society, which helped many potteries with manufacturing issues that were common at the time also with reducing the health risks of several manufacturing processes including changes in the use of lead in glazes.
Whilst the ceramic works produced at the Wolfe Street pottery by Bernard Moore and his decorators gained national and international recognition in the numerous exhibitions in which Bernard Moore participated, it is his long standing significant scientific contributions to the ceramics industry that deserve much wider acknowledgment.
Bernard Moore High Fired Flambé Vase, c1910, sloping shouldered form tapering to the base, with a viscous red and blue flambé streaked glaze with ferruginous speckling, painted monogram, 8 1/2.”
RPW00557 $3,800
Bernard Moore Flambé Vase, 1900-1905, by Cicely Johnson, the shouldered body tapering to the base, below a high flared neck, with a chinoiserie decoration of spiraling flowers and foliage, the neck with an overlapping lappet band above a greek key band, painted mark, Bernard Moore, C.J., 12.” (Remains of exhibition paper label script number 222.)
RPW00455 $1,800
Miniature Bernard Moore Flambe Vase, c1910, with a Japanese woman by a table with a screen, gilt painted mark, Bernard Moore, 3¾“. Excellent condition
RPW00396 $1000
From the collection of Lt. Col. Kenneth Dingwall. D.S.O. who was a friend of Bernard Moore, and handed down by descent.
Bernard Moore Flambe Peacock Vase, c1910, baluster shaped vase, decorated with an exotic peacock amongst pine tree branches in gilt and orange, painted mark, B.M., artists mark S, 5½“ high. Very minor surface scratches.
RPW00399 $600.
From the collection of Lt. Col. Kenneth Dingwall. D.S.O. who was a friend of Bernard Moore, and handed down by descent.
Bernard Moore Flambé Silver Overlay Vase, c.1910, painted with a peacock, the silver stamped Shreeve, Crump and Low Company, script mark, Bernard Moore, 7½”.
RPW00199 $2,500
Bernard Moore Flambé Double Gourd Vase, 1910-20s, decorated by E. Hope Beardmore, painted with cranes in flight amongst clouds, painted mark, Bernard Moore, HB monogram, 5¾“. Minor surface scratches.
RPW00228 $600
