Vintage storage jars from the 1960s.

Just a quick blog-post to show three nicely textured vintage storage jars.

They're from the Portmeirion Totem range designed by Susan Williams-Ellis and were first produced in the 1960s.

The textures are great but I like the colours too.

More Portmeirion on Potshots: here and here and here

Anyone for coffee? Portmeirion Totem from the 1960s.

As a follow-up to the last blog-post, here are the coffee pots from the Portmeirion Totem range, designed by Susan Williams-Ellis in the 1960s.

I don't think people use coffee pots as much as they once did but the shape and surface texture on these pots make them worth keeping, even if it's only to have on display.

Textured surfaces from the 1960s. Portmeirion Totem.

Some time ago, I did a blog-post on a range of Portmeirion pottery with a wonderful printed design called Tivoli, remember this: Tivoli

Here is some more Portmeirion but this time the pottery is decorated with a series graphic motifs in raised relief and very pleasing it is too.

Designed by Susan Williams-Ellis, the range is Totem, it was first produced in 1963. The range was available in several colours including blue, green and white and was very popular.

The brown items shown here are from a coffee set. The set also had a very distinctive tall coffee pot (I hope to do a blog-post showing that soon).

Printed surfaces or textured? I'm not sure which I prefer. So as I can't decide, it's nice to have both in the collection. Susan Williams-Ellis designed other interesting surface designs for Portmeirion and I'll be doing further blog-posts on those in the near future. In the meantime, there's lots more information on Portmeirion here: Portmeirion pottery

Portmeirion storage jars. Simplicity is the key.

Made by Portmeirion Pottery in the late 1960s or early 1970s, these two large storage jars were designed by Susan Williams-Ellis.

The pattern is Greek Key. As regular visitors to Potshots will know, I'm a bit of a sucker for cylinder-shaped pots, like these: Cylinders on Potshots and these: more cylinders, I think I must be attracted by the simplicity of them. Another nice feature of these vintage storage jars is the way that the bands of black printed borders are confined to the very top and bottom of the jars - leaving lots of that bright coloured body showing in between. The nicely turned wooden lids fit snugly and the contrasting bright orange and lime green colours seem to work well when displayed together.

Portmeirion Tivoli Storage jars 1964

It was a sunny day so I took these colourful pots outside into the sunshine to photograph them. I think this printed pattern is fabulous – it's so typical of the design style and the graphics of the the 1960s.

These storage jars are part of a larger range of tableware designed by Susan Williams-Ellis for Portmeirion Pottery, Stoke-on-Trent. They were produced in 1964. The pattern name is Tivoli, apparently inspired by a visit to the Tivoli Gardens in Copenhagen. Up to now, I've only seen these two colour schemes. One scheme is in chocolate brown and turquoise, and one is in olive green and turquoise.

As far as I've been able to discover, this range was only in production for a few years, it wasn't as successful as had been hoped. I can't think why. If it was available in the shops today, I'd buy it.

More on Susan Williams-Ellis