My family have been throwing pots since 1610.

Thanks to the last ice age clay was deposited at Ewenny. The earliest record of clay being dug on the pottery’s site is 1427.  There was local limestone to build kilns; coal and wood to fire the kilns and locally found ores and galena that once glazed the pots.

Folklore tells us that my ancestors would have been farm labourers and during the winter months turned to pottery to subsidise their income.  We can only assume that their knowledge and skills would have been passed down to them.

At this time they would have been making pots for the kitchen, agricultural use, flowerpots and commissions like puzzle jugs and wassail bowls, which still survive today.

At the start of the 1800s a man called Evan Jenkins married Mary daughter of John Morgan and thus started the Jenkins Dynasty.

The industrial revolution rolled on in Wales and Ewenny became a hub of small potteries, there were twelve in Ewenny village and three in the surrounding area starting up and closing down due to the decline in demand due to tin ware and cheap mass-produced china.

Ewenny Pottery continued. In 1883 at the height of the Arts and Craft Movement, a gentleman from London called Horace Elliot arrived at the pottery and continued to visit over a 30 year period staying a few weeks at a time.  He was a designer and decorator and a supporter of the Arts and Crafts Movement.  He was very fond of working with the welsh speaking potters at Ewenny; he was responsible for bringing Ewenny Pottery wares to a wider public.

This is a quote from his memoirs

“My craving for the simple joys of peasant life dragged me down there when ever my dear wife could carry on without me, all this time I was living as a peasant potter in the cottages either of one of the potters or small plot holders and became well known to all the countryside for many miles around so that I became practically welsh as an English born man can make himself.”

During this time my great grandfather David John Jenkins would have been a small boy.  He would have served an apprenticeship preparing clay and turning big wheels – Journeymen potters came and went.

David John Jenkins is within living memory and was a great mentor to Alun his grandson, my father and through him to me and his influence remains in how we run our pottery business today.

David John Jenkins worked in various potteries in Ewenny at the beginning of the1900s.  He worked with his father and Uncles at Ewenny Pottery and in Claypits pottery with his Uncle William.  He married a lady called Martha Arthur whom came from another long line of potters from the Corntown Pottery.  He worked with his father-in-law there and in 1921 bought Ewenny Pottery from his cousin - Edwin II who was in debt.  He paid off Edwin’s debts and continued to run Corntown Pottery for three years by putting his two sons Glyndwr and Walter to work.  At this time not long after the great war there was unrest in the world but David John saw potential in buying Ewenny Pottery as he observed people could travel more easily and visitors to the area were increasing.  It was here that he developed a technique to glaze his decorative wares.  This is a technique we still use in the pottery today.  We make our glazes dipping the pot in one and splashing on the other and in the kiln the glazes melt together to create Ewenny’s distinctive mottled finish.

David John had seven children whom all worked in the pottery at some time including my grandfather Thomas Arthur Jenkins - known as Arthur.  World War II came and my grandfather and his brothers went off to war leaving their father alone to run the pottery.  He continued to make flowerpots and small pieces only firing when given permission, as the kilns would have been lit up like a beacon.  As the war went on he made special jars for Bridgend arsenal and one of his sons David was given leave of absents from the air force to help his father fire the kilns.

After World War II Arthur and David worked with their father at Ewenny while the others went on different career paths. As tourism increased a school trip or day out to the seaside would include a trip to have a look at the potters working at the pottery, passing the two big cats on the roof would mean you weren’t far from the sea.

In 1958 economic pressures meant they could no longer afford to fire the big kilns. The kilns were dismantled in the early 1980s and re-erected in the National Museum of Wales St Fagan’s. Eventually they stopped digging their own clay and bought very similar clay from Devon and Staffordshire.

Also at this time Alun was growing up. He spent a lot of time with his grandfather David John who taught him to throw and worked in the pottery during school holidays with him.

In 1961 David John Jenkins died and my grandfather and David became partners.  Of Arthur’s six children only his eldest, Alun, decided to make a career in pottery so after graduating from a degree in Ceramics at Cardiff College of Art in 1969 he went to work with his father and Uncle David.

When Arthur and David retired it became untenable for Alun to continue to run the pottery on the old site.  The future of Ewenny Pottery after hundreds of years looked very bleak.

Forced into making a decision Alun and his wife Jayne with two very young children in tow risked everything and made that brave decision to continue the tradition of Ewenny Pottery.  As luck would have it one of their first commissions was making mugs for the 1977 Queen’s Jubilee and not many people know but these were made in the garage of their home not so much a cottage industry but a garage industry.  This early commission set them on their way to build the pottery as we know it today.  Alun and Jayne developed the business and with Alun’s eye for form and Jayne’s stringent critique it proved to be a success.  Not only do they continue to sell Ewenny ware they also serve the community with commemorative and bespoke commission pieces. 

I was born in 1976 and by the time the heat wave was over I was doing my first shift behind the counter at the pottery!  I know this because my mother was there and one of my earliest memories from childhood was thinking everybody’s father was a potter.

By the time I reached my teenage years I already knew I wanted to follow in my fathers and grandfathers and great grandfathers and so on footsteps.  Following my Masters at the Royal College of Art in 2003 I joined my parents as a partner in the business.

Ewenny Pottery today operates, in many ways, the same as it did hundreds of years ago.  Although modern machines and kilns help us, the process remains the same.

A pot is handled at least 23 times during the process of making it.

From start to finish through the various stages of this pots life can take up to six weeks.

Pugging, Benching,Weighing,Ball making, Throwing, Turning Handling,Drying,Cleaning, Writing, Packing, Firing, Unpacking Glazing, Packing, Firing, Unpacking, Polishing, Pricing Displaying, Wrapping, Ching ching!

This process helps make Ewenny Pottery unique - every piece thrown and decorated by hand ensuring no two are ever identical.

Caitlin Jenkins