79 
MIDDLESBROUGH POTTERY. 
The Middlesbrough Pottery was established in 1834, when the 
population of the place was only about two hundred. It was the 
first of the public works, and was started by Richard Otley, Joseph 
Taylor, John Davison, Thomas Garbutt, and a few other local 
men, and at first made a better class earthenware chiefly for export. 
The first oven was fired in April 1834, and the first order shipped 
to Gibraltar in September of the same year. From 1834 to 1844 
they traded as the Middlesbrough Pottery Co., and from the latter 
year to 1852 as the Middlesbrough Earthenware Co. From 1852 
until the pottery was closed in 1887 the firm traded in the name 
of the proprietors, Messrs. Isaac Wilson and Co. 
The early specimens of the ware bear the mark of the anchor, 
with or without the cable, with the words MIDDLESBRO 
POTTERY surrounding it in horse-shoe form, letters and anchor 
all impressed. 
Fig. 74. Middlesbrough Mark. 
Mr. Baker Hudson, the Museum, Middlesbrough, to whom I 
am indebted for most of this information, tells me that he had a 
talk with Mr. Lincoln, who for some thirty years was an employee 
of the firm, and according to the latter the firm had a warehouse 
and agent at Hamburg, and their trade there suffered a very 
definite eclipse when the Germans imposed a tariff upon English 
earthenware, whilst they could send their manufactures in here 
free. The same old story. 
Two plates in the Dorman Memorial Museum, Middlesbrough, 
bear as a marking, an angel or well-grown cherub blowing a 
trumpet which bears a scroll on which appears the set or pattern 
number, and below this “ I. W. & Co.’’ beneath which, in horse¬ 
shoe form, MIDDLESBRO POTTERY appears in the same 
