".........Interestingly Smethwick now gets regularly mentioned on "Flog it" and some of the other antique programes as it was the Home of the Ruskin Pottery. I must admit I had not heard of it until a year or so back but its wares are highly sought after being of ceramics coated with various compounds then fired at a high tempreture and forming some amazing colours. The pottery is marked "West Smethwick" and I assume this is more towards the Oldbury end of the town...."
I was trawling through this old thread as a former Smethwickian and thought my input here may be of interest. The site of the Ruskin pottery is now marked by an unadopted industrial road - Ruskin Place, which is 200 yards West of the junction of Spon Lane/West Park Road and Oldbury Road - according to Wikipedia, numbers 173 and 174. I was born and lived for 16 years in No. 285. Oldbury Road, almost opposite. The house had been occupied during the early 1900's by the Taylors, who were the founders and owners of the Ruskin pottery. At the bottom of the garden was a brick outhouse, which had contained a kiln and I believe experimental firings were carried out there. The garden soil was alliterated with test pieces of the Taylors' work - small oval, round, square and heart shaped tiles (approx 1.5"), which were unearthed evey time the soil was turned. Inside the house, in the front room, was a slate fireplace decorated generously with Ruskin tiles of various shapes and colours. I wish I had that fireplace now - it would be a real collectors item, and probably unique.
Whenever Ruskin pottery is mentioned on one of the antique programmes, I get feelings of nostalgia for the old house but not enough to make me want to live in a draughty old Victorian place again - with half gas lights and half electric, lead pipes and an outside loo prone to freezing in the winter:crushed: