Category:Shore and Coggins
From Mystic Tea Room
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- Patreon Release Date: December 21st, 2024.
- Public Release Date: December 21st, 2025.
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To place this work in context, please read the following introductory pages
Shore and Coggins
Shore and Coggins was a fine bone china pottery company located at the Edensor Works, New Street (now Greendock Street), Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, England. The building, erected around 1878, came to be occupied in 1887 by J. Shore & Co., china manufacturer, under the direction of the partners John Shore and William Coggins. From 1905 to 1910, with the addition of a new partner, John William Holt, the company was briefly known as Shore, Coggins, and Holt, but in 1911, Holt left and company became Shore and Coggins Ltd. Goods were backstamped S&C or S&C over L (the L standing for Longton), and some pieces were marked Superior.
William Coggins died in 1918, leaving the company's founder, John Shore, as the sole owner. He sold his interest to Thomas C. Wild and Sons, who purchased both the business and the Edensor Works, but retained the Shore and Coggins name. Neither the name nor the initials of Shore and Coggins appeared on backstamps after the mid 1930s. Instead, Shore and Coggins became known by its subsidiary trade names. Bell China was the first of these, inaugurated by T. C. Wild. During the late 1940s, the Queen Anne brand was introduced and the Princess Anne brand was added around 1959.
Under the Queen Anne brand name, Shore and Coggins produced a line called Lady Luck from the 1940s through the 1950s. Intended for bridge parties, these sets were not intended to be used in tea leaf reading, but their beautiful cartomancy designs have made them prized possessions among tasseomancers,
In 1964 T. C. Wild and Sons sold their interests to the Lawley Group. In 1964 the Royal Albert china company expanded its production by making use of the Edensor Works. In 1966 the Wild company, then under the control of Allied English Potteries, closed the business of Shore and Coggins Ltd. The Edensor Works buildings and grounds still remain, and in the 2000s was home to Glebe Engineering and Silvers Cresswell.
catherine yronwode
curator, historian, and docent
The Mystic Tea Room
Special thanks to Steve Birks of The Potteries for his impeccable research on the china ware manufactories of Stoke-on-Trent, and to my dear husband and creative partner nagasiva yronwode for illustrations, scans, and clean-ups.
