Ridgway Potteries

As with other factories, a great amount of good quality earthenware was transfer-printed with heavily elaborate designs, mostly in a durable underglaze cobalt blue.

[3] In later periods, the many branches of the family businesses maintained a similar position in the market, and followed design trends at a rather safe distance.

From the 1950s Homemaker tableware, was a cheap brand that introduced the mass market to fashionable contemporary design, initially only sold in Woolworths.

Job at least had trained in pottery; in fact, he records in a memoir that their father Ralph, of Great Chell had "erected a Pot-works, but being dissipated and thoughtless, he was soon involved in misfortunes, and reduced to the necessity of working for a livelihood" to support his ten children.

On ending the partnership with his brother, Job began a new factory at Shelton, Staffordshire, now a suburb of Stoke, called the Cauldon Place Works.

In 1808 he gave John and William, then in their early twenties, shares in the business (which became "Ridgway & Sons"), and also began to make bone china.

[8] The two brothers decided to go their own ways in 1830, by which time they were also running their uncle George's Bell Works, which William took, while John stayed at Cauldon Place.