Mick Woodhouse found the perfect occupation at Royal

Doulton's once-bustling Nile Street works and, for him, it

became a way of life. The talented artist looks back on the

glory days

I LEFT Biddulph Secondary Modern School when I was 15. So

what do you do when you leave so young with few prospects and

little chance of further education?

“I have clubfeet and this restricted many employment

opportunities for me, so I knew I had to work with my brain and

hands and not my strength. At school I'd always enjoyed

painting and drawing so I applied for a job at Royal Doulton. I

took some work along to show what I'd done and I was set on in

the figure-painting department almost straight away.”

I don't suppose this is a typical story of the hundreds of

thousands of people who have passed through the lodge gates of

Burslem's Nile Street works over generations.

But for Mick Woodhouse, now aged 68, of Sneyd Green, it was,

like many former Doulton employees, the beginning of a job that

was to define his whole life.

“I travelled each day from Brown Lees, arriving as hundreds

of workers did to begin my shift,” recalls Mick. “There must

have been some 2,000 employees on the bank at any one time

during the period I worked there from 1956.

“Of course, this declined rapidly before closure in 2005.

I'd only just retired by then but it was really sad to see the

place where I'd spent all my working life slowly

deteriorating.

“Working for Royal Doulton meant a job for life. It wasn't

just a workplace, it had built-in social and welfare levels of

every kind. It had sporting teams and a choir. It organised

dances and outings, and it even had art classes in break time –

as if you hadn't had enough of painting!

“The closure of Royal Doulton was not only bad for the

workforce, it was bad for Burslem. Watching it decline was

awful.”

But let's get back to the beginning. Mick tells me he is a

self-taught painter and only started going to art classes at

his employer's instigation.

“Like all beginners, I began painting on glaze figures,

moving between people-pieces to animals and Toby jugs. There

were so many different departments each doing a bit of the

work. But you could always tell if someone worked as a painter

by their smell, which was a permanent mixture of aniseed,

cloves, camphor and pure turpentine. What memories those smells

bring back.”

Aside from on-site training, Royal Doulton sent Mick to

Burslem School of Art to be taught to mix and use colour in the

correct way. But he wasn't taught art or design, for it was

presumed the students from Royal Doulton knew all about that

side of things.

“There were many superb Doulton teachers,” reflects Mick.

“Edwin (Tim) Leigh was a master. It would take Tim a few flicks

of his brush and, like a miracle, there would instantly appear

a perfect rose or some other exotic flower. Some other artists,

like Mike England and Gordon Henry, would give demonstrations.

Training was ongoing and always welcome.”

Mick calls to mind many of his colleagues from Doulton's

heyday.

“I worked with many first-class artists including Mick

Pepper, Terry Abbotts, Pete Southall, Pete Turnock, Keith

Harrison and Tim Ally. Arthur Perrins was an amazing artist.

Another Royal Doulton painter whose work hangs in many

Potteries living rooms is Anthony Forster.

“The man in charge of our department was Reg Brown, an

artist with authority, you might say.”

Of course, making a single figurine wasn't the job of one

person. It would leave the designer to become the modeller's

piece of clay, passing through a range of specialist actions

until it was packed for the shops.

“The conception that one person painted a single figure

couldn't be further from fact,” says Mick. “I wasn't allowed to

paint faces until I'd completed 10 years. Painting faces, you

see, was a specialised job. And when I started it was also a

man's job. I think gender division in the workplace and in

skills goes back to Victorian times. Traditionally women were

paid less than men and yet we were all doing the same job with

the same end result.

“During the war, women had to do men's work to replace the

conscripted painters. But when the men returned from service,

the women were sent back to their own workbenches. No more

face-painting for women until equal pay and gender equality at

work changed it all.”

Royal Doulton was among the first to grasp this important

1970s' legislation. With women now on a par to their male

counterparts, quality and output improved and Royal Doulton's

name signalled excellence. As someone famously said, it is

easier to sell expensively-made produce expensively than to

sell a cheaply-made product cheaply.

So what happened to Mick after his retirement?

“I went back to school,” he laughs. “I always wanted to

paint watercolours and found a course at Burslem School of Art

and started to paint again.”

The result of this extra-curricular pastime has found Mick's

work in great demand. His landscape pictures have sold well in

exhibitions and his portraits on glazed tiles are especially

popular.

More proof that in spite of the decline of the industry, art

in the Mother Town is soaring.