Two jugs and a Watch-holder by the Fishley Family of Fremington

The Fishley family from the village of Fremington between Barnstaple and Bideford, have always been recognised as an inventive and prolific dynasty of potters.

From the early 19th century until the First World War, members of the family worked in the same small rural pottery producing a wide variety of domestic and ornamental wares, made from the clay found near their village. Their rich traditional country wares include small and cheap jugs, to the large cloam oven which was made to be built into the chimneys of farmhouse kitchens. The ornamental pieces sometimes follow the traditional North Devon sgraffito decorated harvest ware jugs, or the more inventive, elaborately sprigged, or relief decorated jugs, jars and mantel ornaments made by George and Robert Fishley. At the end of the 19th century, the talented Edwin Beer Fishley made an extraordinary range of 'Art' pottery, and bizarre copies of all sorts of pottery from other lands.

Our knowledge of the workings of this small pottery is greatly enhanced by the book 'Fifty Years A Potter'. The biography of William Fishley Holland, the grandson of Edwin Beer Fishley, which, together with contemporary drawings and watercolours, show how a country pottery was organised in the days before industrialisation.

All the necessary materials were readily available to Bideford Potters. Good clay and wood for firing kilns from the locality, Galena glaze imported from South Wales, tidal waterways to transport the clay to the potteries and the finished pots to their destinations.