Karel Nekola (ca.1857-1915), Griselda Hill Pottery, ca. 2009
Title
Karel Nekola (ca.1857-1915), Griselda Hill Pottery, ca. 2009
Category
Glass and Ceramics
Description
This modern, hand-painted plaque embodies the decorative spirit of nineteenth-century Wemyss Ware whilst depicting its most celebrated decorator Karel Nekola. The painter and ceramic decorator Griselda Hill acquired the Wemyss Ware ® trademark in 1985 when she came to live in Scotland. This commemorative plaque was commissioned specially for Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery where it has held pride of place since the centenary anniversary of Nekola’s death in 2015.
Karel Nekola arrived in Fife from his native Bohemia in the early 1880s to take up a post at the Fife Pottery then owned by the Heron family. Robert Heron is thought to have travelled to the Continent specially to secure the services of talented decorators because Bohemia’s craftsmen were highly regarded for their skills particularly in the fields of ceramics and glass. Large-scale floral designs were Nekola’s signature style, including the distinctive cabbage rose pattern featured on this plaque. Its central portrait is based on a family photograph of Nekola in his workshop. He is seen decorating an umbrella stand which was one of a range of large-scale ceramics that were particularly associated with Nekola’s years at the pottery. Decorative jugs, ewers and basins, and ceramic jardinières were popular forms of furnishing in middle-class Victorian and Edwardian interiors, and the Fife Pottery specialised in producing cheerful ceramics that appealed to a broad popular taste.
The 1891 census list Nekola living with his wife Isabella and three children at 7 Brandon Avenue, Gallatown. He was a supporter of friendly societies and a valued member of the Gallatown community where he was involved with the Young Men’s Improvement Association and taught gymnastics at the local Boys Institute. In 1915, Nekola bequeathed £150 to the Lily Lodge Free Gardeners, a local branch of The Order of Free Gardeners which was a friendly society founded in Scotland in the seventeenth century and popular with artisans who used representations of flowers in their work - most notably Paisley’s weavers.
In the tradition of handing skills from one generation to the next Nekola trained his sons Joseph and Carl who both became successful decorators. Joseph worked at the Fife Pottery under his father until his early death in 1915. He later took his skills to Bovey Tracy in Devon where he and then his apprentice, Esther Weeks, made Wemyss-style ceramics until the pottery closed in 1957. Esther Weeks is now a regular visitor to Griselda’s pottery in Ceres, Fife, where she has passed on the traditional skills and techniques of Wemyss Ware first perfected by Karel Nekola at the end of the nineteenth century.
Karel Nekola arrived in Fife from his native Bohemia in the early 1880s to take up a post at the Fife Pottery then owned by the Heron family. Robert Heron is thought to have travelled to the Continent specially to secure the services of talented decorators because Bohemia’s craftsmen were highly regarded for their skills particularly in the fields of ceramics and glass. Large-scale floral designs were Nekola’s signature style, including the distinctive cabbage rose pattern featured on this plaque. Its central portrait is based on a family photograph of Nekola in his workshop. He is seen decorating an umbrella stand which was one of a range of large-scale ceramics that were particularly associated with Nekola’s years at the pottery. Decorative jugs, ewers and basins, and ceramic jardinières were popular forms of furnishing in middle-class Victorian and Edwardian interiors, and the Fife Pottery specialised in producing cheerful ceramics that appealed to a broad popular taste.
The 1891 census list Nekola living with his wife Isabella and three children at 7 Brandon Avenue, Gallatown. He was a supporter of friendly societies and a valued member of the Gallatown community where he was involved with the Young Men’s Improvement Association and taught gymnastics at the local Boys Institute. In 1915, Nekola bequeathed £150 to the Lily Lodge Free Gardeners, a local branch of The Order of Free Gardeners which was a friendly society founded in Scotland in the seventeenth century and popular with artisans who used representations of flowers in their work - most notably Paisley’s weavers.
In the tradition of handing skills from one generation to the next Nekola trained his sons Joseph and Carl who both became successful decorators. Joseph worked at the Fife Pottery under his father until his early death in 1915. He later took his skills to Bovey Tracy in Devon where he and then his apprentice, Esther Weeks, made Wemyss-style ceramics until the pottery closed in 1957. Esther Weeks is now a regular visitor to Griselda’s pottery in Ceres, Fife, where she has passed on the traditional skills and techniques of Wemyss Ware first perfected by Karel Nekola at the end of the nineteenth century.
Image copyright
Griselda Hill Pottery Ltd
Item Location
Kirkcaldy Museum and Art Gallery
Files
Citation
“Karel Nekola (ca.1857-1915), Griselda Hill Pottery, ca. 2009,” Artisans in Scotland, accessed April 26, 2025, https://www.artisansinscotland.shca.ed.ac.uk/items/show/17.