Wedgwood Museum:
In 1916, Susannah Margeretta (Daisy) Makeig-Jones, introduced an extensive range of some of the most extraordinary ware ever produced by Wedgwood. It was called Fairyland Lustre and adorned a large number of shapes, some of which were made especially for the purpose. Daisy’s fairies came from many cultural backgrounds and the articles they decorate often tell complex tales... Some [pieces of Fairyland Lustre] needed as many as six firings. Daisy’s Fairyland remained popular until well into the 1920s when the Wall Street crash and a change in taste saw that it was gradually discontinued. According to factory history, Daisy was asked to leave in 1930 but flatly refused to do so. She felt like a member of the family. Not long afterwards, she herself decided to leave, making the dramatic gesture of smashing her pots as she went.
Victoria & Albert Museum:
Daisy Makeig-Jones's fascination with fairies, following such illustrators as Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and the Danish artist, Kay Nielsen, proved very popular in the 1920s. Wedgwood have always produced a huge range of styles to capture different market tastes. The cosy drawing room and nursery atmosphere of the decoration of these works, and the monumental forms, contrast sharply with the modernist works being produced at Wedgwood's in the same period.
Targeting the luxury end of the market with these pieces, they represent one of Wedgwood's most extraordinary technical achievements in the ceramic industry. The richly coloured ornament of Fairyland Lustre was extremely popular throughout the 1920s as expensive collector's pieces. But by the 1930s the appeal of lustre was waning and the collapse of the American market had a noticable effect on the demand for ornamental wares. Fairyland was gradually phased out in the 1930s as Keith Murray and Norman Wilson were taken up. Fairyland was considered too expensive and old-fashioned.
Walters Art Museum:
The Wedgwood factory gave Susannah Margaretta (Daisy) Makeig-Jones (1881-1945) her own design studio in 1915. Drawing on her early love of fairy stories, she introduced an imaginative line of decorative wares that remained popular throughout the 1920s... Engravers transferred Makeig-Jones's designs to copper plates for printing onto paper sheets known as pottery tissues. While the ink was still wet on the pottery tissues, the images were rubbed onto the ceramic surfaces. Women painters then applied the colors to these designs on the ceramics, a process that necessitated several firings, and then added the colorful glazes. The gold details were added last.
Antique Marks:
The impact of Fairyland Lustre ware on the public was phenomenal and all the best shops clamoured to obtain pieces for sale. At first, decoration featured butterflies, dragons, fish, birds and other naturalistic designs in stunning, even garish, colour schemes that were such a welcome relief from the drab war years. However, these earlier pieces should not be confused with true Fairyland Lustre, which first appeared in 1915.
By this time Daisy's imagination was beginning to run riot. Rich blues, purple, orange (her favourite colour) yellow, green and gold, were all worked together with pixies, elves and sprites in ways reminiscent of book illustrations by Edmund Dulac and Arthur Rackham.
And, like all clever, well constructed pictures, the harder you look, the more you see: elves playing leapfrog; spiders spinning evil webs; gaudy rainbows over romantic castles; ghostly woods and apparitions in the Land of Illusion. Interestingly, rather than being figments of an over active imagination, many Fairyland Lustre designs have strong links with folklore, legend and tradition, though clearly, Daisy's fairy people did things their way.
The website of M.S. Rau Antiques has many good photographs of Wedgwood Fairyland Lustre. Click on the images to navigate to their source.