A true British classic, Botanic Garden was designed by the celebrated designer Susan Williams-Ellis. Botanic Garden's delightful mixture of herbal motifs set a new trend for casual dining in the 1970s and today Botanic Garden looks as fresh and exciting as it was when it was launched in 1972.

• History
• Shapes &  Motifs
• Care and Use

History
In the early 1970s Susan and Euan visited an antiquarian bookseller in London called Weldon and Wesley. Susan had been looking for 18th century engravings of sea creatures to use to decorate her pottery, but as she was searching for these engravings, the bookseller showed her a book published in 1817 called The Universal Herbal by Thomas Green.

This book was full of bright and detailed botanical illustrations and the vivid African Daisy instantly caught Susan’s eye. As she flicked through the book Susan’s inherent design talent kicked in and she began to imagine a beautiful range of casual tableware that featured different flowers on each piece.

Susan remembered how she adored her grandmother’s porcelain coffee set where each piece was a different colour and recalled a recent conversation she’d had with a supplier of transfer prints who had commented that he could now manufacture high quality and detailed prints.

She bought the book for 50 guineas and spent the journey back to Portmeirion Potteries envisaging this new design. By the time she returned to Bank House, her home next door to the factory at Portmeirion Potteries, she had decided that this collection would be manufactured on a variation of meridian shape – a shape she had only recently designed.

Susan began searching for more botanical motifs that could be used in her radical tableware range. Again, she stumbled across another book. The Moral of Flowers was dated 1835 and inscribed ‘To Julia’ - a gift from her brother on 24th February 1835. The author, Mrs Hey, had put together poems and prose for 48 different plants from oak trees to daisies and had obtained the help of a highly regarded draughtsman and former employee of the prestigious Horticultural Society, Mr William Clarke, to illustrate those plants.

Clarke’s illustrations were just perfect for what Susan had in mind and she later purchased more books that featured his illustrations: Morris’s Flora Conspicua and 3 volumes of Medical Botany by Stephenson and Churchill.

Susan decided to add butterflies and other insects to the motifs to improve the fit of the motifs on the tableware shapes and to add a little more variety. The, to bring the range together, Susan developed the triple-leaf border.

Susan named the range Botanic Garden after an eighteenth century poem The Botanic Garden written by Erasmus Darwin – another Staffordshire legend, acclaimed poet, inventor, dedicated botanist and grandfather of Charles Darwin. The name was perfect. Not only did it show that, when laid on a table, the ware would give the impression of a garden setting, it also allowed Susan to introduce more motifs.

Botanic Garden was launched in 1972 and since then has become loved worldwide and recognised by many as synonymous with great British design – a classic that, with new shapes and motifs, has remained as fresh and exciting today as it was in 1972.