Archie Milne Robertson • King of Lustre Ware

Archie’s LifeLines

Born in Kirkcaldy Fife, Scotland in 1884 the eldest of a family of eight, son of a weaver. At 12 years old, Archie goes to work in the Methven Linktown Pottery in Kirkcaldy, one of dozens along the Firth of Forth on the east coast of Scotland employed in turning out creamware and earthenware.

1902 • Archie goes south to work for William Burton who runs the Pilkington’s Royal Lancastrian pottery in Clifton outside Manchester, England. His pay is £2 6d a week.

1906 • William Burton produces a brilliant range of industrial lustres. Platinum is now available for the first time and reds, golds, silvers and greens are now available for large quantities of industrial ceramics. As a rising star, Archie’s pay rises to £1 15s a week

1911 • A reinvention. Archie is sent by Burton to Vienna to train under Michael Powolney, later tutor to Lucy Rie. He is known as Der Schöttiche Varieté Keramiker because of his penchant for brightly coloured waistcoats and extravagant and flamboyant personality.

1914 • War. Archie joins up, first to the Manchester Regiment, then by a quirk of fate to the 5th Battalion of the 1st Staffordshire known as the Potters Battalion, where he met workers and pottery owners’ sons from all over the Stoke On Trent area. Archie sees action at Arras and Loos. In later life he calls the bits of metal shell which come out of his hair into the clay slip as the ‘Kaiser’s Revenge’

1920 • Archie leaves William Burton’s employ and returning to Scotland, sets himself up as a studio potter buying Carnforth House in the village of Loanside East Lothian. Throughout the 1920s he becomes famous for his parties, importing the first jazz band into Scotland, and running up special trains from London for his the beau monde. His work is hugely admired throughout Europe.

1922 Archie marries Isobel Ritchie, a Church of Scotland minister’s daughter from Musselburgh, East Lothian Scotland. Two children, a son Donald and a daughter who dies in infancy.

Claims to fame. Archie invents a new red lustre, of a brilliance not seen since renaissance Italy. He calls it the red Poppy lustre name in honour of his fallen comrades. Yet his lustres hark back not to Italy but to tenth century pre Islamic Egypt for inspiration where potters gave their masters the illusion that, like Midas, they were eating off pure gold.

Archie is a huge glamorous peacock of a man, over 6’3" in height. He loves women, reputedly fathering several children around the county of East Lothian. In 1938 he dies in debt shortly after his possessions have been sold to pay debtors. He was buried in Loanside.

Hot News.

At a recent sale in New York a piece of Archie’s work achieved a record $10,000, one of the highest prices ever achieved for a single piece of 20th century ceramics by a non-American. His work endures in museums and private collections world-wide.

Where is Archie Milne Robertson’ work? Just where is Loanside?

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What is Lustre?



Legend has it that pre - Islamic Egypt in trying to turn base metal into gold, alchemists discovered the secret of lustreware. Lustre was a pigment of metal mixed with acid which were painted on glazed pottery which would then be fired in a kiln while the oxygen was burned off by adding broom or willow. this reducing atmosphere would break down the compounds of silver copper and gold and if the firing were successful there would be an iridescent layer on the glaze. Lustreware became popular in renaissance Italy under the great master, Georgio Andreoli

Links

"Lustre Ware"

A paper delivered by William De Morgan to the Society of Arts on 31 May 1892. The paper was published in the Journal of the Society of Arts on 24 June 1892.