Wemyss Ware was launched in the late 19th century as the ‘studio’ range at Fife Pottery. The traditionally shaped items with naturalistic plant or animal decoration were a far cry from the pre-Raphaelite or Art Nouveau movements fashionable at the time.
Further, Wemyss was hand decorated, making production more time-consuming and expensive than the transferware made in vast quantities on the west coast. Nevertheless, Wemyss Ware flourished as a small, yet significant, part of the Fife Pottery output.
The individual most responsible for Wemyss’ success at the Fife Pottery was Robert Methven Heron (1835-1906), a descendant of the Methven family of the nearby Links, or Kirkcaldy, Pottery. He was heavily influenced by the standard blue and white transferwares and ‘chimney ornaments’ in the form of dogs, cats and cockerels, produced during his father Robert Heron’s reign at the Fife Pottery. Methven Heron then refined this output during the 1870s, with Wemyss emerging in 1882. He made two crucial decisions which cemented its success.
The first of these was to secure aristocratic patronage from the Wemyss family of Wemyss Castle, just north of Kirkcaldy in Fife. They encouraged the production and development of the venture, Lady Eva Wemyss being a regular visitor to the pottery. The cost of producing the intricately decorated wares necessitated wealthy potential buyers, a market unlocked by the connections and assurance the Wemyss patronage provided. Further, traditional wares owned by the family were prototypes for the shape of Wemyss products. As an article in The Fifeshire Advertiser of 28th October 1882 states, this resulted in ‘some… of the most curious shapes imaginable’, but also pieces upper class buyers recognised from their own homes.
Methven Heron’s second masterstroke was to bring in skilled decorators from continental Europe, the most celebrated of whom was Karel Nekola (c.1857-1915). Czech born Nekola came to Fife around 1880 and played a significant role in the success of Wemyss. His high quality, detailed designs, then replicated by other decorators at the factory, were praised in The Pottery Gazette on 1st May 1883 for being ‘on a more ambitious scale’ than their competitors. Thus, skilled decorators and elite patronage combined to produce a superior, sufficiently novel product and a readily available wealthy network through which to market it.
Scottish Wemyss Ware was a thriving enterprise until the First World War, produced at Fife Pottery and sold by their sole agents Thomas Goode & Co. in London. After 1918 however, a perfect storm of changing aesthetic tastes and the economic challenges posed by minimum wage restrictions, the General Strike of 1926 and the following depression had an irreversible impact on the fortune of Wemyss. On 30th May 1930 the remaining stock at the Fife pottery was advertised for sale and operations moved to Bovey Tracey in Devon, under Karel Nekola’s son Joe. Production continued there until the pottery closed in 1957, with the rights to Wemyss sold to Royal Doulton.
