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Maps

The maps designs found on Wileman and Shelley china were introduced and registered, not by the pottery, but Arthur J. Potts of Ventnor, on the Isle of Wight. In 1880, at age 24, he opened a china and glass shop at 13 Mill Street, Ventnor, later to be renamed Pier Street. Noted in records at the Ventnor Heritage Museum, the shop sold not only china and glass, but stationery and novelty goods. He was an enterprising trader and living on the busy holiday resort island, saw the value of tourist souvenirs. He formed a trading relationship with Wileman and on 3 January 1903 he registered a design for a map of the Isle of Wight, with a banner ribbon proclaiming the “Garden Isle”, to be used on a variety of china shapes. These were produced with either a green map with a pink ribbon or a pink map with a green ribbon. Becoming a distributor, taking orders from novelty ware sellers in other resorts, the Channel Islands and South Coast attractions quickly followed.

Seeing the success of this experiment, Potts went on to eventually register 87 maps, across the United Kingdom, the last on 27 June 1904. Most items were small souvenir pieces but table ware is known and each piece bore the registration number and either “A.J.P. V. and N.I.W.” – short for Arthur J. Potts, Ventnor and Newport, Isle of Wight, (he also had premises at Newport), and/or the name of the local trader. 15 maps are known without registration numbers, some UK and others for Canada and USA. It has been noted that many pieces have the wrong registered number applied to the base. The maps and their numbers illustrated have been verified from Registration records and the Shelley pattern books.

Some Maps were used for other locations in the same geographical area and are marked with an asterisk (*). Please see Notes below.

 

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Complete database of Maps & Registration details