In the 1820s Ralph Stevenson entered into partnership with Samuel Alcock and Augustus Aldborough Lloyd Williams. Indeed there may have been two partnerships, one between all three parties to make bone china and one between Stevenson and Lloyd Williams to make earthenware and stone-china. Ralph Stevenson converted a “Colour Manufactory” that he owned into a factory for the use of the china-making partnership. The arrangement continued until 1826 when the London Gazette announced that the Partnership carried on by Ralph Stevenson, Samuel Alcock, and Augustus Aldborough Lloyd Williams, at Cobridge … as Manufacturers of China, under the firm of Ralph Stevenson, Alcock, and Williams is this day dissolved by mutual consent; and that in future … is intended to be carried on by the said Samuel Alcock and Ralph Stevenson under the firm of Samuel Alcock & Co… Dated this 11th day of August 1826.
When the partnership agreement finally ran out in 1831 the London Gazette of August 16, 1831 announced that the Partnership lately carried on by us the undersigned Samuel Alcock and Ralph Stevenson, at Cobridge in the Parish of Burslem … as Manufacturers of China, under the firm of Samuel Alcock and Company, expired on the 12th day of August instant by effluxion of time and was then dissolved. Alcock went on to acquire the Hill Pottery in Burslem where he was in business until his death in 1848.
That there was a separate partnership between Stevenson and Lloyd Williams for making pottery seems to be indicated by an 1824 notice in the Staffordshire Advertiser of a fire at Stevenson & Williams counting house in Cobridge and an 1827 notice in the London Gazette that The business heretofore carried on by Ralph Stevenson and Aldborough Lloyd Williams as Potters, of Cobridge, Staffordshire, is this day agreed to be dissolved on 18th day of November instant.— Dated this 5th day of November 1827. Augustus Aldborogh Lloyd Williams is an anomaly in the story of 1820s Staffordshire Pottery. He was born in 1791 in Benaris, an East India Company post in Uttar Pradesh, India. How he came to meet and marry a woman from Staffordshire is a mystery still waiting to be solved. But in February 1826 he married Mary Ann Glover in her home town of Uttoxeter, Staffordshire. When their first child was born in January 1827, the Lloyd Williams were living in Burslem, but their next two children were born in Mayfield near the county town of Stafford. By this time the partnership with Stevenson was over. It was a busy 3-4 years from 1824 to 1827, when Ralph Stevenson and Williams produced a wide range of pottery, including high style stone-china dessert wares and many blue printed dinner, tea and coffee service. Frequent use of blue-printed marks that include the initials RSW suggests that both partners were proud of their products For more information on Ralph Stevenson click here |