Fairyland Lustre

The elves, fairies and fanciful wooded landscapes adorning Wedgwood Fairyland ceramics after WWI contrasted starkly to the sophisticated geometrical Art Deco designs that were all the rage at the time. Despite this, the Fairyland Lustre range, produced by Daisy Makeig-Jones (1881-1945) from around 1920, was hugely influential and has become irresistible to collectors today.

Born in Yorkshire, Susannah Margaretta ‘Daisy’ Makeig-Jones spent her early years surrounded by a rolling and varied landscape and, as a late Victorian child, was immersed in a culture obsessed by myths, legends and the supernatural. Her upbringing was to greatly influence her artistic career. After training in Torbay and London, Makeig-Jones joined Wedgwood as an apprentice paintress and was made designer in 1912. Turning her back on cutting edge design, she took inspiration from illustrations in children’s books by the likes of Kay Nielson and Edmund Dulac, as well as the rich scenes on old oriental Porcelain. Her Fairyland pieces were lavishly decorated with magical swirling landscapes and dainty mythological beings. Following the horrors of WWI, these enchanting pieces appealed to a public imagination in search of a more naive and innocent age. Patterns, such as ‘Candlemass’, ‘Ghostly Wood’ and ‘Lahore’ broke with Wedgwood’s own traditional style, but the brilliant colours and sumptuous designs made the range a great commercial success for the company.

The success of her fascinating designs also resulted from the use of shimmering, iridescent lustre – an effect particularly suited to her magical subject. Wedgwood had first used lustre in the 1770s and introduced a new and up-to-date Ordinary Lustre range towards the end of WWI. The technique, discovered over a thousand years ago, remains largely unchanged today: a mixture of metallic oxide pigments, such as gold, silver and copper, are suspended in oil and then painted onto the surface of Earthenware. The piece is then fired so that the metal reduces and forms a thin shiny film. The quality of the materials and the complex production methods made Fairyland Lustre expensive at the time.

As production increased, Makeig-Jones took on a supervisory role and stopped decorating her own pieces. She left the factory in 1931 and the production of Fairyland lustre ceased. Prices remain relatively high today and vases and bowls are typically worth around £2,000-4,000. Larger examples in good condition with particularly attractive designs can be worth far more. Pieces bear a Pattern number prefixed by a ‘Z’; occasionally initials are also found. When buying, check the lustre carefully for worn and patchy areas that have been damaged by cleaning. Other makers, including Crown Devon, Royal Winton and Carlton ware, launched their own versions of the range. Many pieces were hugely attractive, although the quality was often not as high. These examples are generally less valuable today, but are avidly collected and can provide a more affordable way of starting a modern lustre collection.