Tag Archives: potter

FA Cup to US Vases: Lucien Emile Boullemier

This plate or plaque, made by the Maling company to commemorate the North East Coast Exhibition of 1929, depicts some of Tyneside’s most iconic bridges and industries. Unusually, it also bears the signature of the artist. Even more unusually the name is that of someone who, on the football field, scored one of the FA Cup’s biggest ever giantkilling goals. And he was a opera singer of some renown too. And, no, it’s not Colin Veitch!

Maling plaque with Boullemier artwork

But first the plaque. The North East Coast Exhibition, which took place in what is now known as Exhibition Park from May to October 1929, attracted over four million visitors. It succeeded beyond all expectations in its aim to be a showcase for NE industries. For the Maling company, in particular, it was a chance to finally shake off its old image as a mere producer of jam jars. And so the company produced a wide range of souvenirs to be sold at the event both on its own stand (shared with Townsend, a retail company) and for the famous Heaton tea company, Ringtons.

The plaque above is from a private collection but you can see one in the Laing Art Gallery. It was selected for inclusion in ‘A History of the North East in 100 Objects’, a project designed to show important examples of the ‘creativity and innovation which have changed the region and the world.’

Among the other souvenirs at the NE Coast Exhibition were a model of Newcastle’s castle keep and octagonal tea caddies depicting local bridges, cathedrals and castles.

Maling ware with Boullemier artwork

The artwork on all these items was by Lucien Emile Boullemier, who was living in High Heaton, having joined the company from the Soho Pottery in Staffordshire three years earlier.

Distinguished lineage

Lucien’s father, Antonin, had been born in Metz, France, in 1840, himself the son of a prominent decorator at the Sevres National Porcelain Factory. Antonin studied ceramic painting in Paris at various decorating establishments. He was also apprenticed as a figure painter at Sevres where he worked until in 1870 but in 1871 he and his wife, Leonie, fled to England during the short-lived Paris Commune. Antonin went to work at Mintons in Staffordshire, where his work received many royal commissions and was exhibited all over the world.

Antonin Lucien Boullemier (1840-1900) painted on ceramic by Lucien E Boullemier

By 1881, Antonin and Leonie, now living in Stoke, had six children: Blanche (aged 9), George (8), Leon (6), Lucien (4), Henrietta (3) and Alice (10 months). They were later joined by Antonin junior, Henri, Leonie and Jeanne. Another three children died very young.

Self portrait by Lucien Emile Boullemier

Like his father and grandfather before him, Lucien was destined to be a ceramic artist but first he had a general art education, which was to serve him well. In 1895, while a student at Stoke School of Art, he won £2 second prize in the Duchess of Sutherland’s Prize for Design for a ‘design in silk for dress purposes’. His painting of George Howson, owner of a sanitary ware company, now in the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, dates from 1897.

Cup Hero

But art wasn’t Lucien’s only talent. Like his older brother Leon, who played in goal with some distinction, mainly for Lincoln City (for whom he played home and away against Newcastle United), Lucien was a talented footballer. He played seven games for Stoke and 153 for Burslem Port Vale, among them a famous cup tie.

In the first round of the 1898 FA Cup, Sheffield United, who were at the time five points clear at the top of England’s top division, were drawn at home to Burslem Port Vale of the Midland League. A comfortable victory for the champions elect was expected but an early goal and spirited display by Vale shocked the home fans and only a controversial penalty awarded by Durham referee, Mr Cooper, allowed the Sheffield side back in the game. For the last half hour, Vale’s defence, which included Lucien Boullemier, had its back to the wall but held firm.

On the day of the replay, a gale was blowing and, at kick off, the low winter sun dazzled the players and many of the 12,000 mainly home fans in the ground. Vale won the toss and sensibly elected to play the first half with the strong wind and sun behind them and when Sheffield United’s huge keeper William Foulke’s first goal kick was blown almost back into his own goal, United knew they were in for a torrid half. Only two minutes into the match, the underdogs went ahead and they were unlucky not to add to their tally.

The second half was bound to be a different story but such was the league leaders’ commitment to attack that a hoofed Vale clearance found 19 year old right half, artist Lucien Emile Boullemier, bearing down on goal with only Foulke to beat. The keeper raced forty yards out of his goal and body checked the oncoming Vale player preventing a certain goal. But mainly the Sheffield team continued to swarm forward and in the eightieth minute, with goalkeeper Foulke continuing to join the attack, they were rewarded with a scrappy equaliser. A groan was heard around the ground as the home fans’ dreams of a famous victory faded.

The winter gloom was starting to descend as the game headed into extra time and many of the supporters, having no choice but to leave to catch their buses, trams and trains home, sadly missed the great moment when, with Foulke once more stranded upfield, young Lucien Boullemier had his second chance of the game. This time, there was no reprieve for Sheffield United, as Boullemier netted the winning goal in one of the biggest cup upsets yet seen.

In fact over 120 years later, the match still appears on a website dedicated to the biggest Cup shocks of all time. Vale lost to Burnley in the next round but were rewarded by a place in an expanded Football League Division 2 the following season. Sheffield United went on to win Division 1 and the following year, with six of the players who had been humiliated by little Port Vale, they actually won the cup.

As for Lucien, in the 1901 census, he described himself as a self employed painter and sculptor but he went on to captain Port Vale until part way through the 1902-3 season, when, aged 25, he suddenly announced his retirement to concentrate on his art: the Eric Cantona of his day! The photograph below shows him during a brief comeback for Northampton Town.

Lucien Boullemier is back row, third from the left. Leon Boullemier is the goalkeeper in the middle of the back row.

Trenton Vases

A few months later, on 30 January 1903, Lucien set sail from Liverpool to New York aboard the ‘SS Ivernia’. His first destination was Washington DC, where he stayed with his sister in law. (In 1896, he had married Mary Emma Sandland, the dressmaker daughter of Staffordshire pottery owner, William Sandland.) Four months later, he was joined at the home he had found for the family in New Jersey, by his wife and two children, six year old Percy and four year old, Lucien George. The young English ceramic artist must have made an immediate impression or perhaps he had been hired because of his growing reputation because soon afterwards, not only had he found work, but he was responsible for painting four vases ‘considered by some to be the best and most important decorative porcelain pieces ever created in America’.

The Trenton Potteries Company was known for its production of bathroom fixtures, but when the invitation came to create something special for the 1904 Worlds Fair in St Louis, Trenton Potteries submitted four ornamental vases, each standing four feet seven inches tall. The four magnificent vases, all painted and signed by Lucien Emile Boullemier, announced to the 19.7 million people who attended and to the watching world that the American ceramics industry, and especially Trenton, had arrived and were among the best anywhere at making fine porcelain (albeit with the considerable input of a lad from Stoke better known at home for his prowess on the football field). The vases can now be seen in New Jersey State Museum, Newark Museum, Brooklyn Museum and Trenton Museum. (But beware the last link which attributes its vase to Antonin, Lucien’s father, who had died before the vase was made).

Maling

Having enhanced his reputation in America, Lucien returned to England on 23 November 1904 and he spent most of the next 20 years working in Staffordshire first for Minton’s, the firm which had employed his father, and then the SoHo Pottery in Cobridge. He returned to football briefly to play alongside his brother at Northampton Town and made one final nostalgic appearance for his beloved Port Vale. But Lucien had lots of other interests too, both sporting and artistic. He swam for Staffordshire and captained their water polo team as well as playing cricket for Trentham. He also had many poems published and appeared in operas at the Theatre Royal, Hanley and elsewhere.

Lucien Boullemier as Squire Weston in ‘Tom Jones’, appropriately holding a ceramic jug.

But then in 1926, aged 49, Lucien made another bold move. He joined C T Maling and Sons ‘to take charge of the decorations department at the Ford Potteries, Newcastle’. The Malings believed they had pulled off something of a coup by enticing Boullemier away from the Staffordshire heart of the UK porcelain industry and when, as we have seen, the commercial opportunities occasioned by the North East Coast Exhibition presented themselves three years later, how lucky were they to be able to turn to the man who had already dazzled the world at an even larger event in St Louis nearly a quarter of a century earlier.

Boullemier’s influence over the next decade was huge. He updated many of the firm’s designs and is said to have introduced a new glamour into its products by printing in gold and using rich, lustrous glazes. You can see the plaque below in a cabinet in the Laing Art Gallery cafeteria, along with other fine examples dating from Boullemier’s time at Maling. It was purchased in 1989 with grant aid from the Victoria and Albert Museum.

Boullemierlaingdragonthumbnail_IMG_3269res

Maling ‘Oriental’ Dragon plaque, c 1929

The Boullemier designed plaques below are on display in the reception are at Hoults Yard, the former Maling Ford B works.

Boullemier plaques, Hoults Yard

Among the many other Maling products designed and executed by Lucien Emile Boullemier were large dinner services commisioned by both Prince Philip’s mother, Princess Victoria, and Sam Smith of Ringtons.

Heaton

During his time in Newcastle, Lucien lived first in lodgings with John and Lily Williams at 54 Simonside Terrace and then moved to a newly built family house at 36 Denewell Avenue in High Heaton. In Newcastle, Boullemier was remembered by co-workers as a ’character’ and ‘nice chap’. He was a ‘large, flamboyant and occasionally eccentric man who often dressed in a trilby and sang operatic arias while he worked.’

Lucien Emile Boullemier

Lucien Boullemier eventually left Newcastle in 1936 to return to the Potteries to work for the New Hall Pottery Company, where he produced a range called ‘Boumier Ware’, each piece of which carried his facsimile signature. He died in the other Newcastle (under Lyme) on 9 January 1949, aged 72.

Lucien Emile’s son, Lucien George, was also a talented artist and sportsman. He won an art scholarship to Italy but was unable to take it up because of WW1. He joined his father at Malings in 1933 (The pair were known as Old Bull and Young Bull) and succeeded his father as art director, working for Maling until, in 1963, the factory finally closed after 200 years.

Lucien G Boullemier, extreme right, at work at Maling.

In 1939, Lucien G and his wife Edith were living at 18 Martello Gardens in Cochrane Park. Their son, Tony, attended Cragside School and RGS before training as a journalist on the ‘Journal’, before joining the ‘Daily Express’ on Fleet Street. In 1975, he and his wife founded their own newspaper, the ‘Northants Post’. He is now a writer living in Northamptonshire.

Acknowledgements

Researched and written by Arthur Andrews and Chris Jackson of Heaton History Group. Thank you to Tony Boullemier for additional information on and for photographs of the Boullemier family.

Sources

American Porcelain 1770-1920 / Alice Cooney Frelinghuysen; Metropolitan Museum Ney York, 1989

British Newspaper Archive

Maling: a Tyneside pottery; 2nd ed; Tyne and Wear County Council Museums, 1985

Maling: the Trademark of Excellence / Steven Moore and Catherine Ross; 3rd ed; Tyne and Wear Museums, 1997

https://www.thegiantkillers.co.uk/1898burslemportvale.htm

Other online sources including Ancestry and Wikipedia

Can You Help?

If you know any more about Lucien Emile and Lucien George Boullemier, especially their time at Malings and in Heaton, or have photographs you’d like to share, we’d love to hear from you. You can contact us either through this website by clicking on the link immediately below the article title or by emailing chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org

Heaton Town Farm

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The photograph below is the only photograph we are aware of taken outside the farmhouses which once stood just North of Simonside Terrace and East of Heaton Road, from where Heaton Methodist Church stands now up towards Lesbury Road and Coquet Terrace. It portrays members of the last family to manage what was one of a number of farms in Heaton in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

From the 1870s to the 1890s, Heaton Town Farm, as it was then known, was farmed by the Edgar family and the photograph above seems to date from towards the end of that period. Can you help us date it more precisely?

But before we get to the Edgars, we’ve used old estate plans and census returns to give an outline of the farm’s history going back back to before 1800:

18th century

Newcastle City Library holds a map which was copied in 1800 by John Bell. The original can be dated to between 1756 and 1763. We can see what each field looked like, how big it was and what it was called. Heaton was at this time divided into two halves with East Heaton owned by Sir Mattthew White and West Heaton by Matthew Ridley. The land which became Heaton Town Farm was on the border but mainly in East Heaton ‘Grounds’. The Heaton estates were brought together first of all when Richard Ridley married Margaret White and then when, in 1742, Matthew Ridley married Elizabeth White. Field names at this time included Rye Hill, Benton Nook, East Hartley Tacks, East Huney Tacks and Whites Close.

1840s

In the 1841 census, 9 houses, recorded under the heading ‘Heaton’, seems to belong to the farmstead: one resident, George Cairns (or Carins, the spelling varies), is described as a farmer and an Edward Akenside at this time was an agricultural labourer. Other occupations to be found at the small settlement included: a gardener, a clerk, a tailor, a manufacturer (this was Joseph Sewell, who owned a successful pottery business), an agent, a grocer, a joiner, a millwright, a policeman (this was early days in the history of modern police forces following Robert Peel’s establishment of the Metropolitan Police so John Allan’s name is worthy of a special mention – he may well have been Heaton’s first ‘bobby’), 2 colliers, a 14 year old ‘shoe app[rentice?] and servants, mainly female. So not all the residents were engaged in agriculture.

1850s

In 1851, there were still 9 houses in the Heaton Farm complex. As ten years earlier, George Cairns lived in one. He farmed the majority of the land, 125 acres, employing 5 labourers. Edward Akenhead, a labourer 10 years earlier, farmed another 18, employing one labourer of his own.

George was a tenant farmer ie he leased land from the Ridleys and later William Armstrong rather than owned it but, nevertheless, his was a privileged position, demonstrated by the fact that he was entitled to vote.

List of only 17 voters in Heaton in 1851-2

George Carins (or Cairns) one of only 17 voters in Heaton in 1851-2

Poll books have even survived to show which way he voted in general elections – perhaps not surprisingly for the landowner, Matthew Ridley – no secret ballot back then!

The other houses were mainly occupied by the labourers and gardeners. Daughters and widows were employed as laundresses and dressmakers. One resident, Matthew Robinson was described as a ‘corver’ ie he wove ‘corves’, baskets used in coalmining: Heaton Colliery had closed by this time but there were plenty of other pits in the locality. There were also 2 engine fitters ie skilled mechanics, 2 blacksmiths and a joiner.

1860s

Ten years later in 1861, George Cairns was listed as the farmer of slightly more land – 145 acres and the employer of ‘4 men, a boy and women labourers’. He shared his house with four servants, described respectively as housekeeper, ploughman, dairymaid and cow keeper, evidence that Heaton Town Farm was a mixed farm. The cow keeper was a 14 year old boy called John Mains and the dairymaid a 19 year old woman from Ireland, called Martha Dalziel.

The second house was occupied by John Clark, a farm labourer, his wife, Sarah, and their young son. And the third by Jane Akenhead, Edward’s widow, described as farmer of 14 acres, perhaps what we would today term a smallholding. She lived with her 1 year old daughter, Isabella, along with her mother, her father, who was now managing the farm, and a gardener.

Jane had been born in Whitburn, County Durham in 1829 and by the age of 22 was employed as a servant to George Stabler, William Armstrong’s solicitor, who lived at Heaton Dean. Two years later, she married Edward Akenhead, the blacksmith son of an agricultural labourer, who had by this time acquired some land of his own. Sadly Edward died young, leaving Jane as head of household and the small farm. Her parents came from Co Durham to help her.

We know from records held by Northumberland Archives that in 1865 the land on which George Cairns and Jane Akenhead and later the Edgars farmed as tenants was put up for sale by its owners, the Ridley family. We don’t have evidence of an immediate sale but we know that just a few years later William Armstrong was the owner. The documents show how the configuration of the various farms in Heaton had changed over the years. Many of the fields are similar to those on the 18th century map but some have been further divided or their boundaries or names changed. The sales records show the name and size of each field, plus this time brief information about land use. There were pastures such as West and East Great Broom, Little Broom, Little Close and Long Pasture and arable fields with evocative names like Uncle’s Close, Well Hill, Seaman’s Close and East Honey Tacks. By this time, the farm was called Heaton Town Farm. You can see it marked on the plan below.

1870s

In 1871, Edward Edgar, who was born in Warkworth in c 1830 managed 27 acres of the land at Heaton. We have found records of just three houses on the farm at that time. One was the home of George Cairns, now retired.

Another house was occupied by John Brewis, his wife Margaret, their baby daughter, Mary, and Margaret’s mother, Sarah Atkinson. John was a plough engine driver. A steam driven ploughing machine was state of the art equipment in the early 1870s and operating one a skilled job.

The Edgars and their seven children along with Edward’s father and two nephews lived in the third and presumably largest house on the farm. In 1875, Elizabeth Edgar, Edward’s daughter, married Thomas Bell Kirsop, the son of a grocer from Heaton Bank.

Elizabeth Kirsop nee Edgar

Joan Cuthbertson, who has researched her family history, says that on the front row of the group outside Heaton Town farm, along with Thomas Kirsop (on the left), are William (b 1862), Edward (b 1860) and Robert Edgar (b 1864).

1880s

In 1881, Edward Edgar, now a widower, continued to live, with his sons, in one of the houses on Heaton Farm, with a house-servant and a dairy maid. He was now described as a contractor and dairy farmer of 27 acres.

Thomas and Elizabeth Kirsop and their children lived in a neighbouring house. Thomas was now a coal fitter ie an intermediary agent between a coal owner and shipowner or merchant – a responsible and respectable job. Next door to them lived David Kennedy, a dairyman, and his family.

There were 3 further houses with a Heaton Farm address, one occupied by a market gardener, a 24 year old widow, called Catherine Laws, along with her baby son and a servant; another by Robert Richardson, who farmed 28 acres and the last one by William Redpath, an agricultural labourer and his family.

By this time the terraced streets, most of which which still stand today, were encroaching ever closer to the farmhouse as William Armstrong sold more and more of his estate, encouraged by the huge demand for housing near the factories and railways of East Newcastle which drove up the price of land.

1890s

We don’t know the precise circumstances but by 1891 houses and other buildings were being built all around and on the former farm and the Edgars had moved out to Longbenton where Robert was still farming 10 years later.

However, John, another member of the extended Edgar family stayed in Heaton. In 1871 he had been living on Heaton Town Farm with his aunt, uncle and cousins. By 1891, he was living at 45 Seventh Avenue with his wife and children. His occupation was a foreman land drainer. His fifteen year old son was an assistant cricket groundsman, perhaps employed at Heaton’s cricket ground, for which William Armstrong had quite recently donated a field at the corner of what is now Cartington Terrace and Heaton Road and on which cricket is still played. The Kirsops were also living in the Avenues (36 Ninth Avenue) in Heaton when Thomas died aged only 43. His occupational status was given as ‘gentleman’. So Heaton Town Farm didn’t survive into the twentieth century. (By the way, watch out for our World War 1 project, Heaton Avenues in Wartime – and contact chris.jackson@heatonhistorygroup.org if you’d like to get involved)

In future articles, we’ll explore the history of Heaton’s other farms and see what became of more of the agricultural land and the people who worked it.

Can you help?

Thank you to Joan Cuthbertson for giving us a copy of the historic photographs and details of her family’s history. If you know more about Heaton Town Farm or any of Heaton’s farms or have any information or photographs relating to Heaton’s past, please get in touch.