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Yare Designs, the company responsible for Yare Dragons (known also as good luck dragons) started in Rampart Road in 1969, went on to Charles St Great Yarmouth, and finished at Upton in 1997 when Sue Turner retired. This is a short guide, and I am still collecting information. If anyone has factual information to contribute please send it to me. Meanwhile, as a taster, and all this being copyright Sue Turner 2008:
Some people think Yare dragons are stoneware, but in fact they are earthenware - a big difference. This means they have to be fired an extra stage, first as biscuit, then again after the glaze has been put on. For some (such as the early gold dragons with the gold leaf on, or the red christmas dragons) there was yet another, third, firing. Since everything was hand made they would be prohibitively expensive to produce now. With earthenware nothing can be painted which persists in great detail, as the glaze flows unpredictably in the kiln. It is not integral with the piece, as stoneware would be, but an extra external layer of glaze - and means that every piece is in some way unique.
Yare Designs began when Sue Turner graduated as an arts student. She did not want to become a teacher, so her brother (who had an electronics firm) persuaded her, with her mum, her aunt and her sister-in-law to start up the pottery business. These five people were the original directors. The building her brother converted was an old brewery, which had large cellars, at Rampart road. This small site by the river Yare in Gt Yarmouth started the history of Yare Designs from 1969. Unfortunately only Sue had the talent with the pottery, but one of them did stay to help with the books in the long term.
In the earliest days the unique pieces were entirely done by Sue. The first few pieces from the first kiln included both a dragon and a unicorn. It was these mythical pieces which would prove to be really popular.
Yare began by selling more than just dragons, there were also multiples made of owls, donkeys, persion lions, shire horses, and seahorses. A sales agent started to sell Yare all over the UK, and Yare were also supplying a large ceramic wholesaler based in Birmingham, who took 33.3% for the service! After roughly one year the firm was able to begin employing people.
Although most people would associate the later Charles St location as being the home of Yare, all the bases which made Yare unique were already developed at the beginning at Rampart Road - such as the details of the scratching, the scaling, and the glazing.
In the early days of Yare the modeller would scratch yd and their initial on the base. In some cases these initials can be used to identify the date of the piece and the place it was made according to when the modeller was employed. (eg this piece with a "BB" has to be Rampart Road or very early Charles Street).
The success of Yare had meant a chance to expand. So when Yare moved to Charles St in the mid 70s they were able to design a site with purpose built kilns, a shop, and a much bigger operation. Visitors to the Charles Street could see all the stages of the process of creating the mystical dragons, and had the chance to buy directly in the showroom.
The kilns at Charles Street:
At this stage Yare were doing their own sales, through trade shows and agents. Now, for commercial reasons, the base needed to be smooth so that the product could be placed on furniture without scratching it, and felt needed to be used. For the hatchling model with gold leaf (which was the first product to be boxed and was boxed in expensive, handmade, green boxes with gold linings), all the dragons were a set weight, and patterns were used to cut the bases, ears, wings, etc.. Sue changed the process so that the modellers would place the "yd" and their initials on the side, with felt on the base. This, however, turned out to take too long. Soon exporters would require the country of origin on every piece of Yare and labels would need to be used.
If Rampart Road could be described as the "cradle" of Yare, with the unique bases being developed, then Charles Street was the "finishing school" - developing the technique, the commercial finish and making it a more viable and commercial product.
The gold leaf model:
Eventually everything was now split by responsibility, and there was even a team who had to glue the felt on the bottom of the pieces - a horrible job! During the nearly thirty years in which Yare Designs produced pottery, many hundreds of employees would work for the company.The best workers were the local girls fresh out of school, who were generally much quicker than the older ones. They also had a big advantage if their hands were colder, as warm hands would make the clay just turn into a mess and make tricky details like scales impossible.
Sue did once employ a graduate potter, who she hoped would train all the others in time. Sue assumed the graduate knew what she was doing and was horrified one day to discover an entire kilns worth of contents had been completely destroyed by her work. When she asked .. "Didn't you wedge all your clay, to get all the air out of it?" the poor graduate had to admit that she didn't know about such things, as their pottery assistent had done all such mundane tasks for them. The unfortunate young graduate lost all her credibility with the staff due to this incident, and she left Yare Designs shortly afterwards
Around this time in the UK there were many private collectable shops selling different ranges of quality goods (Unlike now where many are all chains selling the same or similar painted resin products). For the buyers of these shops there was a regular meeting at the gift fair at the NEC Birmingham (in the 1st Week in Feb.) for which many new items were produced, and then again in July for the Harrogate Gift Fair. For these fairs, catalogue flyers were produced with items and product codes. Some products continued year after year, and other products were dropped. Many shops used to order their Dragons by using the item's stock code, rather than by name.
Around about the late 80s the number codes had become cumbersome and many had become discontinued items (leaving gaps in between), so that Sue decided to recode all the items for the '80s catalogue. Nowadays the most recent numbers from that catalogue are the ones in most common use - but for an item that was discontinued the original code number will be used instead. Needless to say some old favourites ended up two codes - such as HBD(Hatching Baby Dragon) 8 (original), and then 104(late 80s). There was originally only the green hatching dragon, but then with the introduction of the Gold Chinese Imperial dragon Yare produced a new yellow hatching baby dragon to match. These dragons were boxes in a "regular" Yare presentation box (see Good Luck Dragons message at the end for the writing on these) - and these were made in three sizes allowing the entire dragon range to be boxed.
At one stage Sue lost her supplier of clay (from Newton Abbott), and spent nearly a year desparately seeking another supplier of similar quality. They even tried to dig up clay at one stage, but it was too poor quality. In the end the original supplier very kindly gave her the recipe for the clay, and she was able to give it to a new supplier in Stoke who could get it made for her. It turned out to be a very popular recipe - such that they started to mass produce it and still sell it now (and Sue still has the recipe today). In fact, Yare Designs might have been much more viable if the pottery had been in Stoke, as there was a plentiful supply of skilled labour there which was much more difficult to find in Gt Yaremouth. At one stage Sue lost some key staff who left to go to Stoke (such as the chief moulder..). This problem in keeping good competitive staff was a significant factor in the cost of producing such good quality hand made earthenware.
A critical drain on the viability of the Pottery and Shop at Charles Street proved to be the fact that it was a prime target for the criminal elements in Gt Yarmouth. It wasn't long before the insurance costs started to climb. There were iron bars put on the windows, and iron bars across the doors - until it became like a fortress. This was still insufficient though, as they still kept breaking in by destroying the door with an axe.
Sue once got a reward from the police. There was a suspicious lady, who was obviously not going to buy anything, and only seemed interested in how much they were worth. There was a raid that night. Sue identified the lady to the police, and they realised it was the mum of a local suspect.. They raided his house and discovered a whole house worth of stolen valuables. That was near the end of Charles Street - as eventually the insurance went sky high. This, and Sue's desire to eventually retire, lead to the eventual downsizing of the operation and the move to Upton in the early 90s.
The picture below from the NEC Birmingham shows a Huge Dragon which was rumoured to have been thrown into the river Yare after a theft from Charles Street. The small boxed dragons to the left of this are the early gold hatchling dragons which had the initials on the side (see above).
From a box label:
Dragons are Good-Luck
Legend
" Dragons have, by tradition, been associated with many countries and culters over the aeons. In the Orient dragons have been linked with longevity and good fortune over many dynasties. England also has its own special historical association with these mythical beings by way of 'George and the Dragon' - Wales too has its own special, somewhat fiery version. In all forms the dragon is depicted as a prehistoric creature, prod and formidable, no doubt its seemingly macho aura reflects the strong fertility powers and influences that are purported to have been evidenced over the centuries in association with these creatures."
The Company:
"In 1969 I formed Yare Designs Ltd as a general pottery factory the name derived from 'Yare-mouth' or Yarmouth, England, the factory being sited beside the River Yare. Initially many different hand made ceramic artifacts were produced, covering a wide range from the mythical through classical to Art Nouveau. With the first decade of production the range was polarised, by customer demand, almost entirely to that of dragons. Over the years I have designed ceramic dragons in a wide range of poses illustrating their ferociousness and portraying them as affectionate and endearing creatures analogous to the Teddy Bear or Donald Duck. Yare Design Ceramic have now become a collectors item which renders the stamp of approval to my unique hand-made collection of dragon creatures. Susan Turner (Managing Director)"
(All information on Yare Designs written under copyright 2008, for Sue Turner).
Some fine examples of Yare Pottery:
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