Susie Cooper

1 portrait by Susie Cooper

Photograph © National Portrait Gallery, London

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Susie Cooper

by Susie Cooper
ceramic mask, circa 1933
12 3/8 in. x 6 1/4 in. (315 mm x 160 mm) overall
Purchased, 1996
Primary Collection
NPG 6375

On display in Room 32 on Floor 1 at the National Portrait Gallery

Sitterback to top

Artistback to top

This portraitback to top

The mask was in the artist's own collection and hung at first in her London showroom, and later in her studio.

Linked publicationsback to top

  • Rideal, Liz, Mirror Mirror: Self-portraits by Women Artists, 2001 (accompanying the exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery from 12 September 2001 to 20 January 2002), p. 75 Read entry

    Susie Cooper was born in Burslem, Staffordshire, and worked in the Potteries for sixty-four years. She was the most influential and important woman in the British pottery industry of the twentieth century and in 1940 she became the only woman to be created Royal Designer for Industry. Her business motto was 'Elegance combined with utility'.

    Cooper studied at the Burslem School of Art, joining Gray's Pottery Hanley, in 1922. This led to her showing work at the British Empire Exhibition two years later. On her twenty-seventh birthday Cooper set up her own business, the Susie Cooper Pottery, and ran this in one form or another until 1980. Innovative in her approach to design and decoration, she was an exemplary employer who also knew how to take advantage of her skilled female workforce. This meant that certain decorative patterns were allocated to younger 'paintresses' and by 1933 she was employing more than forty women to reproduce her distinctive art-deco designs. During this period she also worked closely with the Universal Transfer Company, creating a type of multi-coloured lithographic printed decoration which was indistinguishable from hand-painting, a development that still benefits the pottery industry today. In 1950 she bought a porcelain factory and with the help of her husband, the architect Cecil Barker (whom she married in 1938), started to manufacture for the first time, but she continued to 'buy in' earthenware products to her design. Her work was shown at the Exposition Internationale, Paris, in 1937, and at the Festival of Britain in 1951.

    Cooper designed the 'Cooper's Can' shaped container, a classic that was in constant production for around thirty years, and she immortalised the 'Swinging Sixties' with a design called 'Carnaby Daisy'. Her ability to react to the changing times and styles around her and her business acumen were integral to her success. She joined the Wedgwood Group in 1966, becoming a Director and Senior Designer for them until 1972. She was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Royal College of Art in 1987, and the Order of the British Empire in 1979. In 1987 the Victoria and Albert Museum and the City Museum and Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, staged a retrospective of her work entitled Susie Cooper Productions.

    Cooper's self-portrait is one of four similar designs made in the early 1930s. Initially it hung in her London showroom and subsequently in her studio. The lustre-painted curls hark back to the lustreware of Gray's Pottery, where she learnt her hand-painting technique. The pierrot-like mask, with the obviously painted red bow lips, is reminiscent of a fragile, innocent ceramic doll's head, an appearance which belies Cooper's independence and productivity.

  • Rideal, Liz, Insights: Self-portraits, 2005, p. 91 Read entry

    This pouting face with carefully made up red lips has a certain Hollywood aura. Cooper’s red, bow-shaped lips emphasise the mask-like quality of her self-portrait, using the shininess of the glaze to great effect. The simplified modelling proclaims her precise control and knowledge of the medium; her lustre curls in glaze eloquently suggesting real life. A ceramicist and successful businesswoman, known for her company’s popular art-deco design, Cooper was recognised for improving standards of lithographic transfer decoration.

  • Saywell, David; Simon, Jacob, Complete Illustrated Catalogue, 2004, p. 143

Linked displays and exhibitionsback to top

Events of 1933back to top

Current affairs

Sir Norman Angell is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Angell was recognised for his book, Europe's Optical Illusion (or The Great Illusion) first published in 1910 and updated in 1933, which argued that war between modern powers was futile as neither the looser or victor would gain economically from it.

Art and science

British Art embraces abstraction with the establishment of 'Unit 1', the first group of British Artists dedicated to producing abstract art. The critic Herbert Read formed the group by bringing together the artists Ben Nicholson, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Paul Nash and the architect, Wells Coates.
The Duveen Wing extension at the National Portrait Gallery is opened by King George V.

International

The Nazi party comes to power in Germany as part of a coalition government with Hitler as Chancellor. Over the next year, the party consolidated its position through the Enabling Act (allowing them to pass legislation without the support of the coalition), by banning and purging opposition, and by making Hitler Führer in 1934: granting him the combined powers of Chancellor and President.

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