Sandwell Metropolitan Borough Council

William Howson Taylor was interested in pottery and even had a kiln in his garden. He studied ceramic manufacture with relatives who worked in the pottery factories at Stoke-on-Trent.

In 1904 Howson Taylor decided to re-name the factory after the Victorian writer and critic, John Ruskin. Howson Taylor held similar ideological beliefs to John Ruskin and felt that Ruskin’s ideals of quality and beauty matched his own aspirations for the factory. In 1912 Howson Taylor’s father died and he took sole control of the factory.

The Ruskin factory employed a small workforce, most of whom stayed throughout the factory’s fifteen years of production. Many of the workforce were related to each other, and had been recruited by Howson Taylor through his family connections to the Stoke-on-Trent ceramics industry.

The Ruskin factory produced small numbers of high quality pieces and received international recognition for the stunning array of glazes that were produced. Ruskin Pottery was expensive to buy due to the large number of firings that many of the glazes required. During the depression of the late 1920s sales dropped and the factory workforce declined.

In December 1933 a notice was posted on the factory wall stating that the works were to close within one week. Howson Taylor retired with his new wife to Devon but his retirement was to be short-lived. He died in September 1935 aged just fifty-nine. Howson Taylor took the secrets of the Ruskin Pottery glazes to his grave, and employees kept their promises and never revealed the glaze recipes.