City Pottery

James Couper, formerly of the Caledonian Pottery partnership Murray and Couper, erected this pottery adjacent to his successful glassworks in the north of Glasgow at Kyle Street. Couper appears to have concentrated on the glassworks leaving oversight of the pottery to his two sons.

Little is known about the pottery but it appears to have operated sometime after the glassworks opened in 1851 and produced transfer printed earthenware. One pottery mark is known from a Willow Pattern soup dish.

As the glassworks was profitable but had to support the pottery it was eventually decided to close the latter in 1855 and focus on glass. In that same year the pottery was leased to David Neill, a grocer with a shop in Cowcaddens, who switched production to stoneware.

Once again, little is known about the operations of the pottery but in early September 1856 it was offering to supply Edinburgh brewers John Jeffrey & Co with forty gross of stoneware beer bottles a week from the end of the month once it had satisfied existing orders.

A pottery mark is known from a part of a large handled stoneware flagon dredged from the Clyde and the same mark appeared again on another Bristol glaze flagon dug from a pit in Newark-upon-Trent, Nottinghamshire.

Unfortunately Neill could not turn a profit and closed the business in 1858. The structure was then incorporated into the glassworks.