Martin Brothers

Although the Martin brothers had extremely modest beginnings, their ceramics firm rose to great heights by the 1890s. Eldest brother Robert Wallace Martin, known as Wallace, began working in London as boy of eight or nine, running errands and doing simple tasks in exchange for a few pennies. Determined, intelligent and artistically talented, he learned about the business world while helping to support his financially needy parents and eight younger siblings. Like a boy from a Horatio Alger novel, he would eventually rise from rags to riches and a prominent position in the world of art pottery. However, the story would end with Wallace declining into gloom, eccentricity, and alienation.

At the age of 15 (in 1858), Wallace fell from a loading dock and broke his wrist. Forced to rest at home, he spent many hours sketching. He had been inspired in this regard by the craftsmen working on the renovation of the Houses of Parliament; their shops were across the street from his home. The elder Martin was sufficiently impressed by his son's work to bring in a friend (an employee of sculptor J.B. Philips) to evaluate it. The friend passed on his positive comments within the sculpture studio and soon Philips's foreman offered Wallace a job as an assistant, to begin when his wrist was healed.

From that moment on, Wallace took every opportunity to learn the art and craft of sculpture. He attended classes at the Lambeth school of Art, which brought him in contact with other young sculptors and art employers such as Royal Doulton Pottery. He also worked his way into influential circles, using the fact that his father was employed by the brother of famed architect Charles Barry to the greatest possible advantage. He became known as a proficient medallion portraitist, which brought him further into the sphere of affluent art fanciers. For several years he worked in a shared studio as a sculptor and when necessary took casual day jobs as a laborer in the Lambeth area.

Having worked with terracotta clay as a sculptor, Wallace began thinking about the possibility of opening a pottery with his brother Walter, who had also worked at Royal Doulton Pottery. He began by negotiating for studio space at Bailey's pottery in Fulham (a district of London). After a short time before Wallace began to search for a place for a business of his own, a pottery where he would employ his brother Walter. In 1873 he rented the Pomona House, located in a rural area near the Fulham Pottery. It was large enough to accommodate all of the Martins and also had a second kitchen that could be converted for use as a ceramics laboratory. After several disastrous kiln accidents, Wallace and Walter Martin began making their own pottery, which they fired at Bailey's under a none-too-advantageous financial agreement.

Wallace and Walter Martin were soon throwing and decorating salt-glazed stoneware pots, working hard to give aesthetic coherence to each piece. Their forms followed the fashions of the time, borrowing from the vocabulary of the Near and Far East and from antiquity. Ornamentation favored stylization as advocated by Christopher Dresser and illustrated by Owen Jones.

At the same time, Wallace became a merchant par excellence. Because the Pomona House was located on a road often traveled by fashionable travelers on their way to visit local estates, Wallace devoted a front drawing room to sales. Pottery was prominently displayed in the window. This simple tactic brought clients to the door and the Martin Brothers to the attention of the Prince of Wales and his circle. Beyond that, Wallace called on anyone he thought had potential as a client and his name was quickly passed from one ceramics collector to another.

A series of factors caused Wallace and Walter to relocate in 1877. After months of scouting, they settled on a disused soapworks on the canal in Southall, a short distance from London. A great deal of work was necessary before the living quarters were made comfortable and the workplace productive. A few faithful investors helped pay the bills while the brothers faced one setback after another. By 1878, the firm was in operation and selling its wares from a shop in Brownlow Street (London). By this time Wallace acted as the artistic director, Walter became a specialist on the wheel, and Edwin created most of the fish and flower designs. Charles ran the shop and, as a result of his knowledge of clients preferences, dictated design changes to Walter and Wallace. In this way, the Martins' clientele helped formulate their style.

The company continued to produce salt-glazed stoneware but gradually moved away from historical styles and conventionalized ornamentation to embrace the more fluid shapes, naturalistic decorations, and complex colors of the Art Nouveau era. In 1879 / 80 they developed their famously satirical "Wally-birds," a series of jars (or hollow sculptures) with movable heads, bizarre face jugs, and grotesque spoon warmers. All of these items were sculpted by or under the direction of Wallace in a spirit that seems to be more akin to John Tenniel than John Ruskin.

The 1880s and early 1890s were busy successful years for the brothers, who were joined by young Edwin after he had acquired training and experience at Doulton's. Toward the end of the '90s, the business began to falter as a result of changes in the economy and in taste. The brothers began to bicker and the atmosphere grew increasingly gloomy.

In 1898 Sydney Greenslade, a young architect, introduced Edwin to French art pottery at an exhibition held at the Guildhall. Edwin, younger by a generation than Wallace, had already begun to move in the direction of abstraction and was now inspired to express his ideas more forcefully. In 1900 Edwin, Walter, and Charles accompanied Greenslade to the Exposition Universelle in Paris. They went immediately to see the work of Bigot, Delaherche, Lachenal and others. Although they were suitably impressed, there was little immediate evidence of French influence in their work. It seems to have been constant pressure from Greenslade that caused the Martin Brothers style to evolve in the direction of vegetal abstraction. A group of their vases from this period look like a field of whimsical gourds, ripe for the picking.

Sadly, this great advance did not save the Martin Brothers. The new work was not popular with their most ardent supporters and each man became increasing depressed. When Brownlow Street shop burned in 1903, destroying most of Charles's stock and the "best pieces" that he had been stowing away for years. He became psychologically paralyzed, increasing hypochondriacal, and unable to work. Meanwhile, Wallace had become something of a reclusive religious fanatic. When Walter died in 1912, Edwin was already suffering from what he would later learn was cancer of the jaw. Wallace and Edwin were continually at odds with each other, causing Edwin to look to other potteries for employment. But he stayed with the family firm while suffering the effects of radium treatments and surgery, working feverishly until his death in April 1915. Afterwards, the kilns were almost idle. Wallace made a few pieces and lived to see his work avidly collected on the auction market. He died in 1923, secure only in the knowledge that he and his brothers had made a contribution to the history of British ceramics.