The History of Piggery Pottery - 1971 to present

It all began in 1971 when Barbara Nixon, (as she was then known - she's in the picture over there!) was a young 21 year old student at Liverpool Polytechnic. Barbara had a dream of creating hand puppets, hand thrown jars, children’s tableware, musical instruments and coffee pots to name a select few of her ideas.

In 1972 part of the dream became reality and more added to it when Barbara met and married Ian Winrow after returning to the UK from a long trip to Scandinavia where she learnt more intricate details about her chosen craft. Together, Barbara and Ian settled, founded Piggery Pottery in the beautiful county of Yorkshire and developed plans to earn enough money to buy and convert an old farmhouse into a multi crafts centre.

In 1974 Barbara and Ian moved Piggery Pottery to a new premise in Epworth in order to allow the business to grow. Grow it did and Barbara, with the assistance of her team of employees, made over 1000 earthenware pottery pieces each week using the ancient craft of ‘Slipware’. These pottery products were produced to supply retail outlets across the world including the well known, UK household name, Debenhams! The Piggery Pottery collection at this time consisted of pots, mugs, candlesticks, lamp-bases, plates, salt pigs, chess sets and hundreds of other imaginative designs, all of which were readily in demand as collector’s items. Barbara had well and truly achieved her dream!

Not stopping at the dream, in 1985 after the miner’s strike, the husband and wife duo upped sticks and moved to North Wales. Piggery Pottery as we know it today was born. And then they moved again.

Deep in the mountains of the Snowdonia National Park, 2002 saw building work commence on grassland in a tiny little village called Llanberis. Piggery Pottery and Barbara’s dream was coming alive once again.

Now, rather than the vast amount of employees Barbara employed in Epworth, she now employs only one lady to assist her and makes everything by hand by herself, crafting a range of plates, piggybanks, mugs, and children’s nightlights because as Barbara says herself, “it’s so much more satisfying!”.