Daisy Makeig-Jones – Wedgwood Fairyland Lustre

Daisy Makeig-Jones – Wedgwood Fairyland Lustre. Susannah Margaretta “Daisy” Makeig-Jones (1881–1945) was a pottery designer for Wedgwood. She is best known for her “Fairyland Lustre” series.

Susannah Margaretta “Daisy” Makeig-Jones (1881–1945) was a pottery designer for Wedgwood. She is best known for her “Fairyland Lustre” series.

Makeig-Jones was born in Wath-upon-Dearne near Rotherham, Yorkshire, the eldest of seven children. Her father, K. Geoffrey Makeig-Jones, was of Welsh descent and was a medical doctor, and her mother was the daughter of Thomas Reeder, a solicitor. Makeig-Jones was taught by a governess at home, then attended a boarding school near Rugby. After her family moved to Torquay, she entered the Torquay School of Art. After an introduction from a relative to the managing director of Cecil Wedgwood, Makeig-Jones joined the firm as an apprentice painter in 1909.

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.
[Susan McCormack, ‘British Design at Home’, p.113] Reference Victoria and Albert Museum