Interview
Elise Adams
by Pam Neville
The managing director of old English pottery Moorcroft is not the grey-rinsed
doyenne of posh china you might expect. Elise Adams looks more like a model than a matron, and her Moorcroft collection lives on window ledges and the kitchen bench rather than in a china cabinet. She’s in New Zealand to launch art pottery designs featuring New Zealand flowers.
Your chairman calls you the Great High Priestess of Moorcroft. He reckons you’re an encyclopaedia of Moorcroft pottery old and new. Well, I love talking about it. I have lectured at the V&A (Victoria & Albert Museum) in London.
I love the story of how William -Moor-croft walked out of the McIntyre pottery in Stoke-on-Trent to start up his own place in 1913 and took most of the staff with him. But it is the modern Moorcroft I like most. It’s handmade every step of the way, and the quality is even higher now than it was in the early days.
What’s the appeal? It’s the form, the designs, the rich colours. Moorcroft is unique in that it’s decorated before firing. It’s fired for the first time after tube-lining and painting, and again after glazing. Tube-lining is what we call the raised clay edges which are piped around the designs – like icing a cake. It’s very tactile, like Braille. People with sight issues love Moorcroft.
Is it mostly for older folk then? No! When I first joined, our target market was probably 50-plus, but we’ve introduced more contemporary shapes and designs, including a black-and-white angular vase which is very in vogue with younger buyers.
But aren’t the Staffordshire potteries closing down? Those are mass--production potteries which make dinner plates and teapots. We are an art pottery. We were on the brink of closing in the 1980s when we tried to go down-market and mass-produce. People don’t want that from Moorcroft: they want high-value collectors’ items. We produce 600 to 800 pieces a week and export a quarter of it. That’s more than ever before.
Do you collect it yourself? There is hardly anyone among the 120 of us who work at Moorcroft who doesn’t collect. I have 150 pieces sitting around the house so I can touch them all the time. I also have Moorcroft ginger jars on either side of my bed for my earrings and rings.
How did a girl like you get a job like this? Sometimes I have to pinch myself. I came here straight from university in 1997 to be secretary of the Moorcroft Collectors’ Club. I did an honours degree in Art History at the University of Leicester, and studied art at the University of Bonn in Germany. Ten years later I’m the first woman MD at Moorcroft, and the youngest. I guess I just worked my way up. But we work as a team. It’s not unknown for the managing director to pack the pots. People love to visit us because they can tour the factory and meet the painter who decorated their vase, and the man who turned it on the lathe.
What’s the story with the New Zealand designs? We first did some New Zealand designs 20 years ago. They are collectors’ pieces now. We decided the time was right for more and our most successful young designer, Emma Bossons, came up with creative interpretations of the pohutukawa and the Mt Cook lily. To launch them, we’re touring the country from November 6 to 19 with one of our artists, Lesley Cartlidge, demonstrating tube-lining and painting.
It’s expensive stuff. The 25cm pohutukawa plate is going to sell here for $400, and apparently a New Zealand collector has just paid $15,000 for a Moorcroft jardinière on a stand. The jardinière and stand was from a limited edition of 15 released worldwide. They all sold on the first day.
What happens if you break something? Breakages happen. A poor gentleman in our shop at the pottery in Stoke-on-Trent knocked one plate and a whole row went down, like dominoes. When it’s a genuine accident we are very understanding.
Future plans? We have a project afoot which is a bit hush-hush. We’re looking at putting the takahe on Moorcroft.
It will be in conjunction with a conservation organisation as a fund-raiser.
I can’t say any more yet, but we’re hoping the takahe idea will take flight, so to speak.
For New Zealand tour dates and -locations see ‘events’ at www.moorcroft.com
