(b Burslem, Staffs, 29 Oct 1902; d Douglas, Isle of Man, 28 July 1995). English ceramics designer and manufacturer. She trained at Burslem School of Art, Stoke-on-Trent, first at evening classes and then full time on a scholarship. Gordon Forsyth (1879-1952), the Superintendent of Art Education, who had also produced designs for hand-painted lustrewares, found an industrial experience placement for her at A. E. Gray & Co. Ltd, Hanley, in 1922, as a prerequisite to a place at the Royal College of Art, London, where she hoped to study fashion design. At Gray's Pottery she had her own backstamp, designing surface patterns in lustre pigments and enamel colours for the white ware that Gray's bought in and decorated. Frustrated by the limitation of not being able to conceive the form and the pattern as a whole, Susie Cooper left Gray's in 1929 to start her own hand-painting ceramic decorating business in rented rooms at the George Street Pottery, Tunstall. By 1932 she was designing her own shapes, which were being made for her at Wood & Sons, Burslem, where she had her own production unit called Crown Works. The earthenware tableware body shapes of the 1930s were named after birds
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