September 26, 2013

Finest Hour 104, Autumn 1999

Page 43

BY DOUGLAS J. HALL

A Short List of Arthur Shorter’s Chinaware; A Longer Short List of UK Churchill Pubs, Hotels and Restaurants

Arthur Shorter worked as an artist for Minton before establishing his own workshop in Hanley in the year of Churchill’s birth, 1874. The business became Shorter & Son in 1906 and Shorter & Sons Ltd. in 1933.

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Shorters specialised in middle market novelty wares and Mabel Leigh’s work as an adventurous designer during the 1930s has become very collectable. In 1939 Shorter’s were one of the first potteries to commemorate Winston Churchill’s reappointment as First Lord of the Admiralty in the form of a large size character jug with an anchor for a handle. Although quite crisply moulded, the jug was very inaccurately painted with jet black hair and eyebrows.

Later S. Fielding & Co., another Shorter family company which used the trade name “Crown Devon,” reissued the jug with a musical movement incorporated in the base. Fielding’s version was much more sympathetically decorated with Churchill given reddish-brown hair and eyebrows.

Fielding’s closed down in 1982 and many of their moulds were acquired by Staffordshire Fine Ceramics. The latter specialise in exporting to the USA and in 1989 they marked the 50th anniversary of the commencement of World War II by reissuing the Churchill jug in a limited edition of 1000!

Making the most of their purchase Staffordshire then adapted the Shorter moulds to make a quite grotesque teapot in their collectors’ range.

But sixty years on and Shorter’s original moulds are still seeing service. From an unknown source, freshly potted and often crudely painted in a variety of colourways, or with an “aged” finish (illustrated), the Churchill character jug bearing Shorter’s impressed mark is widely available. It is usually priced at a probably reasonable £20-30 but, for the unwary, sometimes as much as £225.

PUBS, HOTELS, RESTAURANTS

This list is not necessarily exhaustive.

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL,
Annersley Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire.

CHURCHILL’S BAR and WINSTON’S RESTAURANT,
Babbacombe, Devon.

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL,
Bamford, Lancashire.

CHURCHILL’S,
Bingham, Nottinghamshire.

THE WINSTON CHURCHILL,
Madingley Road, Cambridge.

CHURCHILL’S, Chatham, Kent
(has ‘Winnys Bar,’ ‘Randolph’s Room’).

THE CHURCHILL,
Churchill, Somerset.

THE WINSTON CHURCHILL,
Debden, Essex.

WINSTON CHURCHILL,
High Street, Dunstable, Bedfordshire.

CHURCHILL’S,
Wharf Road, Grantham, Lincolnshire.

WINSTON’S,
Osborne Street, Grimsby, Lincolnshire.

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL,
Rayleigh Road, Hutton, Essex.

WINSTON’S,
Henrietta Street, Leigh, Lancashire.

THE LORD WARDEN,
London Road, Liverpool. (Fine portrait inn sign).

THE CHURCHILL ARMS,
Kensington Church Street, London.

WINSTON’S,
Coptic Street, Bloomsbury, London.

THE CHURCHILL HOTEL,
Portman Square, London.

CHURCHILL’S,
Silvertown, Woolwich, London.

THE CHURCHILL ARMS,
Long Crendon, Oxfordshire.

WINSTON CHURCHILL,
Chorlton Street, Manchester.

THE CHURCHILL INN,
Paxford, Gloucestershire

WINSTON CHURCHILL,
Ide Hill, Sevenoaks, Kent.

THE CHURCHILL ARMS,
Sturminster Marshall, Hampshire.

THE CHURCHILL,
West Lavington, Wiltshire.

CHURCHILL’S,
Wisbech, Cambridgeshire.

THE SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL,
Wretton, Norfolk.