Agnete Hoy

Her technical expertise related to glazes and firing was gained on the factory floor and used to produce her distinctive designs for production at both the art studio of Buller's in Milton, Staffordshire and Royal Doulton in Lambeth, London.

In common with other families of the same social standing she and her two elder brothers, Svend and Eric, were looked after by a nanny and the household also supported a cook and maid.

The next year, Agnete set up her own studio in her home at Acton, West London, and in the early 1960s began lecturing and teaching at various art colleges, including Hammersmith, Farnham and Richmond.

In 1939, Agnete and her mother left Denmark on holiday to visit her brothers who had returned to England a few years earlier to work.

With the onset of war, they were unexpectedly exiled in England and Agnete went to Liverpool to be near her younger brother, Eric, who was working in the food canning industry.

Unable to find suitable employment there, she decided to join her other brother Svend, who lived and worked in the heart of the pottery manufacturing area of Stoke-on-Trent and look for a pottery-based job there.

[2] Many of her pots were experimental in nature and with no specific brief or restraint on her ideas, some one-off ceramics were produced, as well as designs for mass production.

They liked the pots but immediately asked her to produce a range of porcelain animal models in similar colours, explaining that there was a market for such items in the USA.

Over the years Agnete invited influential studio potters such as Bernard Leach and his son, Michael and Rosemary Wren to visit.

In the aftermath of the 1951 Festival of Britain, managers at Doulton's had decided to revive the production of decorative wares, and under Hoy's direction, the studio would be run along similar lines to Bullers, although little of the work was ever mass-produced, except for the Coronation pieces outlined below.

Indeed, many of Hoy's pots were probably unique, a throwback to the earliest days of the Lambeth studio (i.e. the early 1870s) where again, virtually all the output was on a one-off basis, largely produced at the artist's whims.

In 1956, Doulton consolidated their business in Stoke-on-Trent and closed the Lambeth Studio, prompted in part by the passage of the Clean Air Act of the same year.