Victor Skellern

Skellern was born in 1909, in Fenton, Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. From 1923,{{citation |url=https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib4_1219312537 |title=Victor Skellern ARCA |work=Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951 |publisher=University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII |year=2011 |access-date=18 January 2021}} he worked in design for Wedgwood at the Etruria Works, under the supervision of John Goodwin, while studying art at the Burslem and Hanley Schools of Art, where he was tutored by Gordon Forsyth and Percy Lloyd.{{citation |url=http://www.wedgwoodmuseum.org.uk/learning/discovery-packs/pack/working-at-wedgwood/chapter/victor-skellern-1909-66 |title=Victor Skellern (1909–66) |publisher=Wedgwood Museum |access-date=18 January 2021}} His earliest design for the company is documented in 1929.{{citation |url=http://www.wedgwoodmuseum.org.uk/collections/search-the-collection/object/plate-hand-painted-by-victor-skellern |title=Plate hand-painted by Victor Skellern – 1929 |publisher=Wedgwood Museum |access-date=19 January 2021}} He then studied stained glass with Edward Bawden at the Royal College of Art (1930–34). Information on his stained glass is limited; he painted the "Potland" panel in 1933, once in the Stoke-on-Trent Museum,{{citation |url=https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb193-ygt/ygt/2/2/stokeontrent/stokeontrentmuseum/1 |title=Correspondence |publisher=Archives Hub |access-date=18 January 2021}} and exhibited a stained-glass window in 1936.{{citation |url=https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/object.php?id=msib4_1220279628 |title=Stained Glass Window |work=Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951 |publisher=University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII |year=2011 |access-date=18 January 2021}}

In 1934, he rejoined Wedgwood as the company's art director, replacing Goodwin on his retirement, becoming the first person to hold the post with a formal education in design.{{citation |author=Diane Taylor |title=Keith Murray, Architect and Designer for Industry |year=1994 |journal=Twentieth Century Architecture |issue=1 |pages=45–54 |jstor=41859419 }} He remained in the position for the rest of his career, at first at the Etruria site and from 1940 at the new Barlaston factory. He is credited with helping to modernise Wedgwood.{{citation |author=Jonathan Woodham |title=Josiah Wedgwood & Sons (established 1759) |work=A Dictionary of Modern Design |year=2016 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780191762963}} This included collaborating with Wedgwood's production director Norman Wilson to develop novel glazes, as well as developing high-quality transfer printed patterns and advocating for their wider use.{{citation |author=Alan Swale |title=Screen Printed Transfers: Their impact on the decoration of ceramic wares 1946–2002 |journal=The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 – the Present |year=2008 |issue=32 |pages=54–71 |jstor=41809397 }} His design work has been cited as one of the reasons for the company's resurgence after 1935.{{citation |title=Wedgwood |encyclopedia=The Grove Encyclopedia of Decorative Arts |editor=Gordon Campbell |year=2006 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=9780195324945 }} He also developed Wedgwood's use of well-known designers from outside the company, including Keith Murray,{{efn|Murray was first employed by Wedgwood as a freelance designer in 1933, but Skellern continued the association until 1936, when Murray started to plan the company's new factory at Barlaston.}} Bawden, Eric Ravilious, Rex Whistler and Laurence Whistler.{{citation|author=Andrew Casey |title=Ceramics at the Festival of Britain 1951: Selection and Objection |journal=The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850 – the Present |year=2001 |issue=25 |pages=74–86 |jstor=41809315 }}

He was an associate of the Royal College of Art and a fellow of the Society of Industrial Artists.Casey, 20th Century Ceramic Designers in Britain, p. 179 Skellern retired in 1965, and died the following year.

In the 1930s, Skellern created Art Deco ware including "Persian Ponies", "Forest Folk" and "Seasons", in collaboration with other in-house designers such as Millicent Taplin. His early work features in Forsyth's 1936 book, 20th Century Ceramics.{{citation |author=Amy Gale |title=Review: 20th Century Ceramic Designers in Britain by Andrew Casey; Susie Cooper: A Pioneer of Modern Design by Ann Eatwell, Andrew Casey |journal=Studies in the Decorative Arts |volume=11 |pages=120–124 |jstor=40663087 }} His 1930s tableware designs were reasonably inexpensive and targeted at relatively young purchasers with "some taste but no money".Buckley 2019, p. 59 He remained in charge of the design department through the Second World War, designing "Victory Ware", a utilitarian range in earthenware described as "highly practical" and "austere". His notable post-war designs include "Strawberry Hill" (around 1957), with Taplin, a particularly popular design for printed and gilded bone china, which received one of the earliest Council of Industrial Design's Design of the Year Award in 1957.{{citation |url=https://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O170683/strawberry-hill-cup-and-saucer-skellern-victor/|title=Strawberry Hill |publisher=V&A Museum |access-date=16 January 2021}}{{citation |url=http://www.wedgwoodmuseum.org.uk/learning/discovery-packs/pack/working-at-wedgwood/chapter/millicent-taplin-1902-80 |title=Millicent Taplin (1902–80) |publisher=The Wedgwood Museum |access-date=15 January 2021}}

Cheryl Buckley describes the work of Skellern and other male Wedgwood designers of the period, including Murray, Ravilious and Wilson, as "simple, relatively unadorned, and rectilinear"; though she characterises it as more Modernist than that of women designers including Taplin, Star Wedgwood and Daisy Makeig-Jones, she also notes that Skellern's designs reflect traditional as well as modern influences.{{citation |author=Cheryl Buckley |title=Women Designers in the English Pottery Industry, 1919–1939 |journal=Woman's Art Journal |year=1984 |volume=5 |issue=2 |pages=11–15 |doi=10.2307/1357960 |jstor=1357960 }}Buckley 2019, p. 56 Diane Taylor considers the works of Skellern, Taplin and Star Wedgwood, another Wedgwood in-house designer, to present a "coherent stylistic approach... based upon simplicity and restraint".

Skellern's designs were exhibited at Grafton Galleries in London in 1936, and at the Council of Industrial Design's Britain Can Make It exhibition in London in 1946.Casey, 20th Century Ceramic Designers in Britain, p. 185{{citation |url=https://www.vads.ac.uk/digital/collection/DCA/id/6439/ |title=Alpine pink snow crystal coffee pot designed by Victor Skellern ARCA, MSIA, and made by Josiah Wedgwood & Sons Ltd. Shown at the Britain Can Make It exhibition in 1946 |work=VADS |publisher=University for the Creative Arts |access-date=19 January 2021}} Several of his designs are preserved in the permanent ceramics collection of the V&A Museum, including "Forest Folk" (1934),{{citation |url=http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O170334/avocado-plate-skellern-victor/ |title=Forest Folk |publisher=V&A Museum |access-date=19 January 2021 }} "Persian Pony" (1939),{{citation |url=http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O163569/persian-pony-cup-and-saucer-skellern-victor/ |title=Persian Pony |publisher=V&A Museum |access-date=18 January 2021 }} "Asia" (1956),{{citation |url=http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O170301/asia-cup-and-saucer-skellern-victor/ |title=Asia |publisher=V&A Museum |access-date=18 January 2021 }} "Lincoln" (1956),{{citation |url=http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O278653/lincoln-shape-plate-skellern-victor/ |title='Lincoln' shape |publisher=V&A Museum |access-date=18 January 2021 }} "Strawberry Hill" (1957), and "Avocado" (1959).{{citation |url=http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O170334/avocado-plate-skellern-victor/ |title=Avocado |publisher=V&A Museum |access-date=18 January 2021 }} Examples of his designs are also preserved at the Yale Center for British Art in New Haven, Connecticut,{{citation |url=https://collections.britishart.yale.edu/catalog/orbis:12998905 |title=Josiah Wedgwood & Sons, William Shakespeare commemorative ceramic mug, 1964 |publisher=Yale Center for British Art |access-date=18 January 2021 }} the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences in Sydney,{{citation |url=https://api.maas.museum/object/126871 |title='Persian Ponies' coffee pot |publisher=Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences |access-date=18 January 2021 }} and the Wedgwood Museum, Barlaston.{{citation |url=http://www.wedgwoodmuseum.org.uk/collections/search-the-collection/people/victor_skellern |title=Search: Victor Skellern |publisher=Wedgwood Museum |access-date=19 January 2021}}

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Sources

• Cheryl Buckley, "The decorated object: Gender, modernism and the design of industrial ceramics in Britain in the 1930s", in [https://books.google.com/books?id=lzmDDwAAQBAJ Women Artists and the Decorative Arts 1880–1935: The Gender of Ornament] (Bridget Elliott, Janice Helland, eds), pp 53–72 (Routledge; 2019 [2002]) ({{isbn|9781351761185}})
• Andrew Casey, 20th Century Ceramic Designers in Britain (Antique Collectors' Club; 2001) ({{isbn|9781851493524}})

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Category:1909 births

Category:1966 deaths

Category:Alumni of Burslem School of Art

Category:Alumni of the Royal College of Art

Category:English potters

Category:English ceramicists

Category:20th-century British ceramists

Category:Associates of the Royal College of Art

Category:Wedgwood pottery