Burleigh Pottery | Collection One

Burleigh Pottery has recently unveiled a new collection of beautiful tableware – Collection One and we are in love! A new pattern from Burleigh is rare, because let’s face it why fix something that’s not broken?

However, Burleigh has gone all out and created a whole new collection (something unheard of in the company’s 169-year history in fact) designed to be mix and matched or used on its own. Here’s what we know…

Handcrafted by Burleigh Pottery’s own artisans at Middleport Pottery (the company’s home), the new collection is infused with their already unrivalled style and most definitely celebrates the way Burleigh has been decorating its process with traditional tissue transfer since it began in 1851.

Designed to be combined, layered and curated Collection One actually tells a story of a floral lifecycle. Beginning with plant cell structure, then following on to abundant flowering blooms and ending with the industrious bee that pollenates from flower to flower.

“To design Collection One, I started by stripping everything back and looking at Burleigh’s DNA.

Everything from that point on was designed to amplify the skills and techniques that we have been practicing since 1851.

From giving the transferrers more autonomy over pattern placement, to combining multiple pattern and decorating styles, we have explored our techniques and pattern history in a way not done before.

To celebrate this new way of working we have also added to the family of signature Burleigh blues. Pollen, Palisade and Hibiscus are all decorated in Ink Blue; a rich dark hue created to exemplify the virtues of tissue transfer”.

– Alison Howell, Design Development at Burleigh Pottery

The first of the distinctive designs is Palisade. An ode to Victorian design and inspired by Christopher Dresser (an eminent Victorian designer and professor of botany, it represents the beauty and symmetry of microscopic cell structures in the design.

The Palisade pattern was acquired by Burleigh in times past as a copper plate engraving and has remained in their archive ever since.

When it was rediscovered the fine details were adapted into a more contemporary shape that resulted in what you see today.

The second design in the collection is Hibiscus. A modern Burleigh classic, it has become an important part of Burleigh’s current collection and can be seen in some of the world’s leading clubs, hotels and restaurants.

This much loved design has been highly popular since the beginning of the century and follows the great floral tradition of Burleigh Pottery with a bold, all over cover of double hibiscus flowers and foliage.

For the big finale is Pollen. The first new Burleigh design in a generation, Pollen is an unequivocally industrious and productive pattern.

The significance of this geometric honeycomb backdrop interspersed with bees is that the layout of each item differs and is asymmetrical, as the exact position of the pattern is in the hands of our skilled tissue transfer decorators.

Each bee is placed according to the whim of the decorator, emphasising the hand decoration method and imbuing each piece with energy and personality.

To find out more about Collection One click here, or to peruse the other items in the Burleigh Pottery inventory click here.

Images: Burleigh Pottery