Pottery People - the Dixon family

226 years ago today, Thomas Dixon was baptised in All Saints Church, Madeley, Shropshire.  The Dixons appear to have been a family steeped in the pottery industry.  We know nothing of Thomas's life up until his marriage to Sarah Ann Beddow, in 1825, in the nearby town of Broseley, but we can assume he had spent his younger days perfecting his artistic craft, for after he moved to Broseley (or possibly before) he began work as a china painter specialising in porcelain.  This meant Thomas would be carefully adding the colour and patterns to the pottery product.  It's likely that this is how Thomas met Sarah Ann Beddow, for she was also employed in the industry, as a burnisher of gold.  This fascinating job saw her applying loose sheets of gold onto clay, and polishing it to obtain a smooth and shiny effect.  Such a job would have taken great skill, and with costly materials, her employer clearly had strong faith in Sarah's abilities. 

There's no documentary evidence to support this conclusion, but the couple's location in Broseley puts them on the doorstep of the famous Coalport pottery works, and given the skills involved, it seems very likely that this was where Thomas and Sarah worked.  The Coalport works sprung up in 1795, when Thomas was a baby, eventually absorbing other local pottery manufacturers, so that by the time Thomas was an adult, the Coalport pottery works were the main players in the area.  Coalport became the market leader in decorated porcelain at this time, and Thomas and Sarah would have been turning their hand to all manner of patterns and techniques - this included rococo shapes and flower-encrustation, as well as "Japan patterns" with a deep underglaze blue, with overglazed red, green and gilt embellishments.

Engraving of the Coalport pottery works in 1820

Thomas and Sarah had eight children in the course of their marriage - my family line runs through their eldest child, Eliza Ann Beddow Dixon.  Artistic flair clearly ran in the family - in her early 20s, Eliza also began work as a pottery burnisher, polishing clay pots to reduce porosity.  This would probably have been done with other women and children, working under the watchful eye of the superintendent.  Eliza was joined in this work by two of her sisters, E. Ann and Sarah (aged only ten when she began this work).  Meanwhile, one of their brothers, William, was busy learning his trade as an artist and a sculptor.

We don't know ever so much more about Thomas and Sarah Dixon, but they have made for some fascinating research, and hold a unique position in my family history for being line of work, when many others were still employed as general agricultural labourers.