Bourne Denby Pottery Marks: Dating Denby Stoneware

Most Bourne Denby marks can be placed within a few decades by reading three things: the words in the mark, whether Ltd appears, and how the mark was applied.

The words come first. Marks from the nineteenth century onward carry some combination of Bourne, Denby and England, frequently enclosed in a circle, an ellipse or a triangle. Derbyshire appears in the earlier impressed marks. The presence of England follows the general rule for English pottery, where the word was added to satisfy American import requirements and was not used before 1891.

Then the company form. The business was incorporated as Joseph Bourne and Son Ltd in 1916, so any mark including Ltd dates from after that. A mark reading J. Bourne & Son without Ltd usually belongs to the period from about 1850, when Joseph Harvey Bourne joined his father as partner, up to incorporation.

Finally the method. Early marks were impressed into the clay, often deeply, on the back or base. Later marks were stencilled in black. Both fit a factory whose wares were hand-thrown or turned rather than cast, which is why printed transfers are comparatively late here.

The Denby works began because of a road. Clay was found during the building of the Derby to Alfreton road in 1806, the bed was leased, and pottery production started in 1809 under the Bourne name, with Joseph Bourne running the operation. Joseph Bourne himself was born in 1788.

The business made salt-glazed stoneware bottles and utilitarian wares, not porcelain, and its output later widened into oven and table wares, decorative pottery and industrial ware. The Science Museum Group records Joseph Bourne and Sons Limited as English, based at Denby in Derbyshire, operating from 1809 until 1976, when it was bought by Coloroll Tableware. Its collection includes Bourne stoneware jugs of the 1809 to 1900 period and a cream jug made for the Great Northern Railway refreshment department.

The trading name then changed repeatedly, which is useful for dating late twentieth-century pieces: Denbyware Ltd on going public in 1970, Denby Tableware Ltd in 1981, and Denby Pottery Co. Ltd after a management buyout in 1990.

Some Denby marks carry a range name, and those names are the tightest dating evidence the factory offers.

• Danesby Ware in script appears on ornamental ware from about 1930 to 1941. If your piece carries that name, you have an eleven-year window without needing anything else.
• Bourne's Warranted is a rarity. It has been recorded only three times, on a four-ounce, a three-pint and a four-pint jug, and probably dates from the 1840s or 1850s. The word warranted descends from claims on early stoneware bottles that they were warranted not to absorb.
• Scroll marks on tableware belong to the 1950s to 1970s period, alongside stencilled or painted designer signatures: Albert Colledge on Greenwheat tableware, Glyn Colledge on Glyn Ware and Glynbourne Ware.
• From the 1960s onward the word Denby is prominent and is accompanied by a large or small lower-case d, with a stencilled version used from the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s.

Most Denby jugs are unmarked. Impressed and printed marks do occur, sometimes with a date, but absence of a mark on a brown salt-glazed jug is normal rather than suspicious.

Two habits cause most Denby misdating.

The first is treating a shape as a date. Denby produced utilitarian forms for well over a century and some shapes barely changed. A brown salt-glazed jug is not datable by silhouette alone.

The second is reading a range name as a production date. A named range tells you when the pattern was current, and popular Denby ranges stayed in production for many years, so the name gives the start of a window, not a year.

Beyond that, remember what the factory was. This was a stoneware works, not a porcelain factory: nothing from Denby should be translucent at the rim. If a piece marked Denby is thin and translucent, look again at the mark before you look again at the body.

For how the same dating levers work across other British factories, see pottery marks identification.

Impressed marks in stoneware are shallow and often filled with glaze, so lighting matters more here than on printed ware.

Hold a single light low and to one side so the impression throws a shadow, and turn the piece slowly until the letters appear. Do not scrub the base; the darkening in the recesses is what makes an impressed mark legible. Take one frame filled by the mark, one of the whole piece, and one of the unglazed foot, which on Denby often shows the body colour clearly.

Photograph it and the app identifies it. Then use the wording, the presence or absence of Ltd, and any range name in your own photograph to place it against the periods above.