This article was published in the Burnley Express in 1974. Winifred Bose was a journalist for the newspaper with a regular page featuring local women.
Friends to mould a new Future – how college classes blossomed into a business dream
Two local women, skilled in the same craft, have pooled their abilities as potters and hope to go into business if their dreams come true.
Mrs Joyce Ross and Mrs Joan Bideau are producing beautiful hand-thrown pottery, and if their goods do not find a ready market at home and overseas, I shall be greatly surprised.
Joan and Joyce, separated in years by almost a generation, met when they worked together on the Prestige evening shift, became friends, and decided to join Municipal College classes in pottery.
Housebound
Judging by the work they are now producing, they must have had natural aptitude for the craft, for they pursued it for about eight years together, before deciding to share their skills.
They became almost obsessed with the desire to make more and more pottery, but waiting to use the kiln at the college held up production so they decided to go it alone.
The Bideau car is now left out in the cold, for its former garage home has been turned into a potter’s shed complete with kiln and wheel and all paraphernalia connected with the craft.
Joyce works full-time, but spends most evening with Joan turning out pieces of pottery. Joan is housebound with a young family, but manages to make it garage-bound most of the time.
They started their venture in March, and now have shelves full of witches, ashtrays, bowls, snails, owls, mugs and enchanting figures, each one an individual piece.
Variety
Two of the Bideau children are involved – Andrea who is 14, specialises in snails and hedgehogs; and Richard, who is three, tries his hand at the wheel.
If wishful thinking has anything to do with the venture, it will become ‘Rosseau’, the name chosen by Joan and Joyce for the firm of the future because it incorporates parts of both their names.
I was certainly impressed by what I saw.
Joyce said: ‘We don’t like to repeat anything often, but would prefer to experiment with different things. We are changing the variety all the time. We both love what we are doing; it is a disease rather than a hobby.’
After seeing what they have made, there seems little doubt that ‘Rosseau’ will one day be a name to remember, for what I saw was more than dedication and determination. It was the creation of really beautiful items which must have a future.
A second article from 1976
Pottering about has led couple into business
By Ann Knowles
When two Burnley housewives fluttered their eyelashes at their bank manager to ask him for a loan to buy a kiln little did they realise just how successful their work would prove to be.
Now, two and a half years later, Mrs Joan Bideau and Mrs Joyce Ross are selling their ‘Rosseau’ figurines faster than they can produce them.
But their success story in the field of pottery, has not been without its ups and downs and for six months after buying the kiln and installing at the garage at Mrs Bideau’s home in Brunshaw Road, Burnley, they were often on the verge of tears.
‘For about six months, nothing seemed to go right, and we got very disheartened. We thought we knew a lot about glaze firing but we discovered we didn’t and got some horrible effects,’ said Joan.
The girls met met when they started pottery classes at Burnley College of Arts and Technology and over a seven – year period learned all the basic things about clay throwing.
‘We became so enthusiastic that we couldn’t wait until the next class and started taking clay home with us. But then we had to wait quite a long time to get it fired, which gave us the idea of buying our own kiln,’ said Joan.
‘When we first started, the kiln and the wheel were the only things we needed to buy. We used kitchen knives, wooden spoons and nail files,’ said Joyce who lives in Emily Street, Burnley.
Adaptations
After many unsuccessful attempts with their own glazes, Joan and Joyce finally decided to buy some and they have stuck with them, apart from making their own adaptations.
‘I have a book full of recipes and things to add to china clay, but everything has to be weighed very carefully. Half an ounce can make all the difference,’ said Joyce, who has four grown up children.
Working together, they believe, is beneficial for them both. ‘We are really good for each other,’ said Joyce.
‘If Joan brings out a new idea, I rack my brains for what I could do. We work in friendly rivalry and it keeps us on our toes.’
Their figurines are made from general purpose stoneware clay, which they buy in quantities of 5 cwts. from a supplier at Pilling, near Fleetwood. They describe their work as a combination of modelling and carving.
The first figures they produced were witches, small Lancashire figures in clogs and cloth caps, tramps and owls. Now their range has been extended.
It includes quire-boys, six figures at a bus stop, Sadie the cleaning lady, grandpa and grandma in their fireside chairs, a picnic scene, chimney sweeps, and Tom and Diana on a bench seat based on Joyce’s Aunt and Uncle. All the figures are in natural colours, such as earthy browns and mellow yellows.
After a successful exhibition at the annual Higham arts and crafts exhibition, Salmesbury Hall, where they joined a craftsmen’s week in July demonstrating their skills, and at Ingleton, they are now turning their sights further afield and hope to exhibit at Macclesfield.
But prestige-wise, they are delighted at having been asked to stage a two man show at Samlesbury next year.
‘We will need about a year to prepare for it,’ said Joan. ‘We are hoping to do something more complicated and more ambitious. We are not quite sure exactly what yet, but probably more groups of figures.’ she added.
Joan and Joyce could have more than enough work from orders taken at exhibitions and just keep repeating the figures they already make.
‘But we don’t want to just keep churning out the same and we are determined to resist it. We never turn anything down that anyone asks us to make, but they might have to wait six months for what they want,’ said Joyce.
Patience
Joan’s 16-year old daughter Andrea has already tried her hand at pottery and five-year-old Richard likes throwing on the wheel, but Jeanette, 17, and Mark, 14, have so far shown no inclination to follow in mum’s footsteps.
The partners advise anyone wanting to start making models to attend classes like they did, to learn the use of clay.
‘From then on it is just practice and patience. Even now, we sometimes get a bit disheartened when something won’t go right,’ said Joyce.
Neither of them say they had any particular artistic talent before they started.
‘We used to sew quite a lot and make things without patterns and were quite interested in drawing and painting, but when this came along, everything else was dropped,’ said Joyce.