Introducing the Majolica Project

When I began my role as the Majolica Project Cataloguer at the V&A Wedgwood Collection in April this year, the world of majolica was completely new to me. Throughout my career I’d worked with a wide range of specialist museum collections, covering topics from fine art to natural history, from chair-making to Dracula. Museum work encourages you to be interested in anything and everything so, although I didn’t know much about majolica yet, I was very excited to learn more.

My early research taught me that majolica is a type of brightly coloured, lead-glazed pottery that gained popularity during the Victorian era. Developed in the 1850s, majolica’s eccentric designs often reflected the Victorians’ interest in the world around them. Pottery manufacturers produced a wide range of products shaped like animals, plants, and shells, or inspired by the design traditions of other countries such as Japan and Egypt. Majolica itself was inspired by the Italian ‘maiolica’, a vibrant style of pottery that was produced during the Renaissance period.

My role as the Majolica Project Cataloguer is focused on a series of five majolica pattern books, three of which belonged to Josiah Wedgwood & Sons. The other two pattern books were made by George Jones & Sons Ltd, a company famous for producing high quality majolica during the latter half of the 19th century. They ceased production in the 1950s, were sold to E. Brain & Co and later acquired by Josiah Wedgwood & Sons.

What are pattern books?

Many ceramics companies recorded their designs in pattern books, which were used as reference tools for artists on the factory floor. The pattern books showed what each design should look like, which helped keep the final products consistent. Additionally, some pattern books were used as catalogues for potential buyers. Customers would order ware by picking their favourite patterns from the illustrations in the books.

Today, pattern books like these are invaluable research tools that provide further information about the pottery in the V&A Wedgwood Collection. Pattern numbers that correlate to the pattern books were often painted onto pottery during production. These numbers create a link between the product and the pattern book which can be used by modern researchers to find out further details such as pattern names, production dates, product specifications and designers. Researchers can use the information in the pattern books to paint a clearer picture of the entire production process.

What is the Majolica Project?

In 2023, the touring exhibition Majolica Mania: Transatlantic Pottery in England and the United States 1850-1915 arrived at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent after a successful run in the Bard Graduate Centre in New York City and the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore. As the first major exhibition of majolica in nearly forty years, it sparked new conversations about majolica and helped to introduce the pottery form to a wider international audience.

The Majolica International Society visited Stoke-on-Trent in 2023 to see the exhibition and explore the rich ceramic history in the surrounding area. During this time, they visited the V&A Wedgwood Collection where they noticed the damaged condition of the majolica pattern books. They were very concerned that crucial details or even whole pages would be lost due to the books’ structural issues and were keen to find a way to bring this fascinating material to a wider audience.

The Majolica Project, generously funded by the Majolica International Society, was developed as a way to repair, and provide improved access to the five majolica pattern books in the V&A Wedgwood Collection’s archive. The project took place in three stages: Conservation, Digitisation, and Cataloguing.

Stage one: conservation

Conservation, in a museum and archive context, is the act of repairing or preventing the further damage to objects in a collection. It is an essential part of collections care that allows historic objects to remain accessible to the public. During this project we worked with specialist Archive Conservator, Lisa Williams.

The three Wedgwood volumes were fragile, but in good condition for books that had been in use for so long. Their pages were grubby and their covers were peeling, but the books were structurally sound thanks to previous conservation work that had taken place in the 1950s. The conservator cleaned the pages and added new backing support to make the patterns clearer to view and safer to handle.

The two George Jones volumes were completely falling apart when this project began. Their bindings had broken down and the glue holding the photographs in place had deteriorated. Pages and patterns were at risk of falling out and getting lost whenever the books were handled. The conservator removed the pages from their original binding which were then deacidified and placed into see-through pockets in a new folder, allowing the pages to be handled without any further damage.

Stage two: digitisation

The next stage of the project was Digitisation, which meant taking high-quality photographs of each page of the pattern books. Having these photos allows us to make objects available online, which is a brilliant way of helping our collections reach new audiences, as well as preventing fragile objects from being damaged by unnecessary handling.

It is uncommon for us to be able to digitise books of this length due to the expensive and time-consuming nature of the digitisation process, so we were very excited about this step in the project.

The pattern books were sent to the V&A’s South Kensington site to be digitised using their specialist equipment. We worked with photographers Charlotte Stanley and Louie Morris, who used an overhead camera to photograph the volumes one page at a time. The books were propped up on foam cushions to support their spines, and black velvet was used to absorb light, creating a pitch-black background for the images.

Our team in South Kensington really enjoyed working on this project, since the variety of the designs in the books makes them very exciting to go through. They even made a note of a few of their favourite patterns.

Stage three: cataloguing

Museums and archives use catalogues to keep track of the objects and documents in their care. On the most basic level, catalogues describe the collection with a view to providing staff and researchers with enough information to decide if a document or file is relevant. Our catalogue is recorded on a Collections Management System which we can also use to track locations and record object condition.

Cataloguing can be done to different levels of detail, and part of the role of the cataloguer is ensuring the catalogue will be valuable to the people using it. Since April 2026, I have been cataloguing the majolica pattern books to a high level of detail, summarising their contents, and listing the pattern numbers and recurring elements in each book. My aim is to make the catalogue entries useful to people researching specific objects or themes, from tortoise sardine boxes to mythology in majolica design.

When the catalogue entries are complete, they will be made available online through Search the Archives along with the high-quality photographs taken of the pattern books. This will allow everyone to view and learn about the majolica pattern books in more detail, without needing to visit the archives in person.

The majolica pattern books are works of art and I am very excited to be taking the time to go through and uncover all the hidden treasures they hold. From unseen to familiar, beautiful to strange, the majolica pattern books are a joy to explore, and I can’t wait to share whatever comes next.