Nantgarw Pottery

The Nantgarw Pottery was a noted pottery, located in Nantgarw on the eastern bank of the Glamorganshire Canal, 8 miles (13 km) north of Cardiff in the River Taff valley, Glamorganshire, Wales. It closed in 1920, when cigarettes replaced clay pipes. Collections of this pottery can be seen at the National Museum of Wales in Cardiff, and the V&A Museum, South Kensington, London.

Established in November 1813, when artist and potter William Billingsley and his son-in-law Samuel Walker, a skilled technician, rented "Nantgarw House" on the eastern bank of the Glamorganshire Canal, eight miles north of Cardiff in the Taff Valley, Glamorganshire, Wales, and set about building the kilns and ancillary equipment in its grounds, necessary to transform the building into a small porcelain pottery.

Billingsley had been instrumental in the development of the porcelain recipe for Flight, Barr & Barr at Royal Worcester, he and Walker, had signed an agreement not to disclose their new porcelain recipe to a third party, but there was no clause preventing them from using that recipe themselves. They had left Worcester in secret and started the venture at Nantgarw with only £250 to invest in the project between them. By January 1814, the Quaker entrepreneur William Weston Young had already become the major share-holder in their venture, having invested £630 into the first production period at Nantgarw, as his diaries at the Glamorgan Record Office testify, where payments are recorded to a Mr "Bealey;" an alias Billingsley travelled under since leaving Royal Worcester.

...
Wikipedia