When you visit major cities around the world the chances are that you will come across something Doulton. There are lists published by collectors of all the many places around the world you can visit to see architectural Doulton. Living in London, I am lucky that there are many places to visit on the door step so to speak; from the façade of the great department store Harrods, to the interior tiles of its food halls, to the clock above the main entrance to Selfridges, to the remaining Doulton factory building in Vauxhall that I pass on the train going into Waterloo.

These are just the tip of the iceberg as Doulton’s of Lambeth had its own architectural department which flourished in the early 20th Century. Alas many places have inevitably disappeared but there are still plenty to visit. 

Even when Doulton was known as Doulton & Watts at the beginning of the 19th Century, advertising items were already being produced in the form of containers with either impressed names of manufacturer, the items they contained or else simply bearing a paper label advertising their contents. These early containers held everything from caviar to ginger beer to ink, and a wide variety of things in between. In the early 20th Century the names of the companies or contents therein would often be simply impressed on the base of the item or else incorporated artistically into the design of the piece. It is recorded that over 100 firms used Doultonstoneware to advertise their whiskey, beer and mineral waters.

Some firms such as Dewars favoured Doulton vessels for such a long period that you can find examples of stoneware and also items produced at Doulton’s factory in Burslem, the heart of the Potteries. Doulton’s famous Kingsware was a perennial favourite of Dewars and Doulton created many individual flasks for them, which today are highly collectable. 

The advertising wares produced by Doulton in Burslem have an equally interesting history and perhaps chart the last chapters in the production of advertising wares as the fashions for such items evolved further. The Edwardian style biscuit casket for Huntley & Palmer from 1905 looks incongruous next to items produced in the 1930’s and 1940’s that have much simpler lines and decoration reflective of this period. 

All industries had items produced by Doulton to advertise themselves from ash trays, to jugs, to match strikers, to wall plaques and a whole host of other advertising items. Perhaps one of the most fiercely fought after fields in advertising wares today are those that Doulton produced for themselves! Once again jugs, vases, ash trays and the like can be tracked down featuring the Doulton emblem as its principal feature. 

The advertising figures produced by Doulton have long captured collectors’ imaginations and famous groups such as the Yardley’s figure is a straight adaptation of the same image featured in their advertising. Other more unusual figures include the Grossmiths’ perfume girl ‘Tsang Ihang’ and ‘Steve’ produced for the road builders Wettern, Beadle & Bristow in the UK in 1923.