Robert Wallace Martin was one of four brothers who ran the Martin Brothers pottery in Fulham (1873-7) and Southall (1877-1915). He was part of a movement of Arts and Crafts potters who, inspired by the simplicity and rustic appearance of medieval European and Japanese stoneware (a hard, dense kind of pottery), created salt-glazed stoneware, a strong, non-porous pottery with a distinctive ‘orange-peel’ texture. Martin’s output is characterised by groteque animals, vessels with faces, and rustic sculptural forms. Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo were all avid collectors of Martinware. However, despite the Martins’s success, they never made large profits and were only able to fire the kilns once or twice a year and the brothers lived in relative poverty. So-called ‘Wally bird’ tobacco jars such as this one were extremely popular. Similar examples exist in the British Museum and V&A.
