Several people have asked how our interest in Furnivals began. Well, like so many things, it was purely by accident ...
I am a retired headteacher and my husband, Terry, has recently retired from his job as an electronics engineer. We both have an interest in history and in crafts - and are looking forward to pursuing these more, now that the 6 a.m. alarm doesn't beckon us to work every morning!!
It was my curiosity, really, which led to our Furnivals collection and research. Terry has collected Furnivals' Old Chelsea for many years and one day, about five years ago, I asked him whether they made any other patterns (in hindsight, a very naive question!). Of course, the answer was yes. So, I started looking on the internet to find other designs .... and found loads!
That got my curiosity going even more ... who were Furnivals? How was the pot made? Where was it made? What was the history of the company? But I couldn't find very much information about them at all. Despite contacting museums in Stoke on Trent, the only answer seemed to be, "No-one has done very much research on Furnivals as everything was destroyed when they closed down in the 1960's. There's nothing left out there to research.". Well, that was like a red rag to a bull! Researching something that not many people know about was just TOO tempting! So I started trawling the net, bought books, visited Stoke-on-Trent and The National Archives and began to track down the story of this fascinating company. As more information came to light, it seemed a shame to keep it all to myself - hence starting this website.
As I started to learn more, our interest in collecting Furnivals pieces followed. We will never be able to achieve our goal of owning one example of every pattern which the company produced ... that would be impossible! But we're doing quite well - and even if we don't own a physical piece in every design, we are managing to gradually compile a useful collection of pictures of a large number of the patterns. And the search continues!
We hope you enjoy exploring this website. And if you have any questions - or information about Furnivals - we would be very pleased to hear from you!