Pink Saturday Hand Made Staffordshire Bone China flower pin

I am joining Pink Saturday with How Sweet The Sound.


I wanted to share something pink and reminding me of spring and hope, so I chose this little vintage hand made English bone china flower brooch or pin called a Staffordshire Posy pin.

I absolutely love these pins and Staffordshire Posy flower arrangements or paperweights. The skill needed to make these is really incredible. The sad part is all the places we used to visit annually just to watch these made in England have all closed. The artisams started with white bone china clay and then, like a potter or a pastry chef with dough, pushed, prodded, flattened, rolled and flormed each individual flower petal and leaf. They are then assembled, fired to a bisque state then hand painted and fired again. We loved watching them. 


The photos next are from the last visit we made to Royal Doulton in Stoke-on-Trent, England before they closed the venerable and historic pottery there and went to the now Ross-like warehouse in a shopping mall of mostly foreign made items that is the only store now.

This lady, Karen, had worked for Doulton for 25 years, having started right from school and learned the skill of making bone china flowers, both life size and miniature and had become a shop foreman making the Staffordshire Posies and flowers for the Royal Doulton figurines and then their main demonstrator at the pottery on visiting days. The pottery closed the visitor center and shop there in 2005 and I have wondered often since what happened to her and the other talented artisans when the china production move to Indonesia and other places begun in 1992 ended in 2005. Sigh...the end of an age of hand crafted beauty.


To see the Staffordshire Posy paperweights we have at Time Was Antiques click on the photos of Karen at Royal Doulton.