The museum’s ceramics and glass collection features almost 2500 items of British and European pottery, porcelain and glass. The museum’s ceramics collection ranges from earthenware and stoneware to English and Chinese porcelain. In the glass collection, there is a range of English drinking glasses and a rare and beautiful seventeenth-century posset pot.
Objects of particular interest include seventeenth-century tin-glazed chargers, eighteenth-century Staffordshire figures, a nineteenth-century Davenport supper set and colourful Castle Hedingham ware from Essex. A large proportion of the collection was donated to the museum in the late nineteenth century by two local benefactors, William Murray Tuke, a member of the Quaker banking family, and Dr Henry Stear.
Objects in our ceramics and glass collections are on display in the Ceramics and Glass gallery. Many more objects are kept in storage and can be viewed by appointment.
Other Contacts:
Teapot (SAFWM – 1900.54)
English earthenware teapot, with a transfer print with enamelled flowers, dating from 1800 to 1810 (Current location: Ceramics & Glass gallery)
Mug (SAFWM – 1888.7.B)
White earthenware mug made to commemorate the Jubilee of Queen Victoria in 1887 (Current location: storage)
Jug (SAFWM – 1961.53)
Jug, with an inscription reading ‘Around ye Mulberry bush’, made by Edward William Bingham at Castle Hedingham about 1870 (Current location: Ceramics & Glass gallery)
Puzzle jug (SAFWM – 1897.43)
Eighteenth-century puzzle jug, made in Spain. It was a challenge to drink from this jug as the person using it had to cover all the spouts (apart from the one they were drinking from) simultaneously, so it was a difficult challenge! (Current location: storage)
Posset pot (SAFWM – 1899.49.59)
Late seventeenth-century English glass posset pot (Current location: Ceramics & Glass gallery)
Vase (SAFWM – Loan no. 546.6)
Vase with Claremont pattern, made by Moorcroft at their pottery in Burslem Staffordshire in 1916 (Current location: Ceramics & Glass gallery)
Plate (SAFWM – Loan no. 387.18)
Plate of Chinese armorial porcelain showing the coat of arms of the Walker family (Current location: Ceramics & Glass gallery)
Candlestick (SAFWM – 1920.201.1)
Jasperware candlestick with applied moulded white figures of Judith and Holofernes, made by Wedgwood between 1862 and 1866 (Current location: storage)
Figure (SAFWM – 1920.168)
Staffordshire figure of a seated male figure entitled ‘Elijah’, dating from the early 1800s (Current location: storage)
Charger (SAFWM – CCXXXIII)
Tin-glazed earthenware charger, dating from the early 1700s (Current location: Ceramics & Glass gallery)
Jug (SAFWM – 1899.68)
Sixteenth-century jug, decorated with a male face, from Raeren, Belgium (Current location: Ceramics & Glass gallery)
Chamber pot (SAFWM – 1892.22)
Green chamber pot made of lead-glazed earthenware, dating from the 1500s (Current location: Ceramics & Glass gallery)
