Samuel Alcock is known largely today for his finely detailed Staffordshire porcelain and earthenware pottery, parian and tea services, but the company in its final years also manufactured majolica. Alcock majolica has a distinctive look with its limited palette of brightly colored glazes, but unlike the decorated porcelain and earthenware produced during the pottery’s lifetime little has been written about their majolica work.
Samuel Alcock was born into a rural farm family in Kingsley, Staffordshire England in the first half of 1799, the child of Thomas Alcock and Katherine Locker (exact birth date unknown). On June 21, 1823 he met and married Elizabeth Haslehurst (1800-1879) who would, in later years, take a prominent position in his pottery business. Like Eliza Wardle after her, Elizabeth Alcock would become one of the unrecognized female innovators of Victorian majolica.
At the age of twenty-five Samuel joined the firm of Stevenson & Williams in Cobridge, operated by the two Stevenson brothers, Ralph and Andrew, and Augustus Williams. Within the year the firm changed its name to Stevenson, Alcock & Williams. By 1826 the partnership fractured with Andrew Stevenson and Augustus Williams leaving the business and Ralph Stevenson partnering with Alcock at the new firm of Samuel Alcock & Co.
Alcock & Co. proved wildly successful. Within two years Alcock rented the Hill Top pottery in Burslem. Alcock then purchased Hill Top from the owner two years later. In 1831 Ralph Stevenson left Alcock and opened Stevenson & Son. In 1839 Alcock expanded and rebuilt the Hill Top pottery in the Venetian style shown here.
For the next seventeen years Alcock produced some of the finest porcelain and earthenware in the country along with a wide range of beautiful decorative and utilitarian ware like the pieces shown below. Pattern books also have survived for many of Alcock's wares. A large firm, it employed 600-700 workers.
After a prolific career and twelve children, Samuel Alcock died at the age of 49 years old on November 10, 1848, in Stoke on Trent, Staffordshire, leaving the management of the pottery to his widow Elizabeth and two of his sons, Samuel Jr. (1826-1883) and Thomas (1829-1883). It was after Samuel Alcock Sr.’s death that the company began production of majolica.
A new style of pottery just introduced by Minton in 1851, it is not known precisely when Elizabeth Alcock brought her company into the majolica market. Marketed as ROYAL PALISSY, the company made a limited line of designs in the new Minton majolica style, many in imitation of Minton’s Palissy designs.*
Probably the most famous of Alcock's majolica pieces is the Palissy inspired frog and snake pitcher below.
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