The Martin Brothers are commonly thought of as the most inventive and idiosyncratic potters of the late 19th century. Founded by the fiercely independent Robert Wallace Martin, the four brothers worked together at their pottery in Southall to produce a distinctive form of art pottery and grotesque sculpture. Each brother took responsibility for a different part of the process, working together in ways that situate the Brothers as the direct antecedents to the 20th-century studio pottery movement in Britain. Using salt-glazed stoneware as their primary material, their pottery embraced a range of 19th-century styles, drawing inspiration from Medieval and Renaissance Europe, the arts of Japan, and the natural world. The ‘Wally birds’ for which the Brothers are so famous were modelled by Robert Wallace, whose talents as a sculptor of absurd and captivating grotesque birds and creatures were unmatched.

Infused throughout much of the Martin Brothers’ work is a dark sense of humour and wit, often revealed in the expressions of Robert Wallace’s eccentric anthropomorphic creatures. This ‘marred’ pot extends the Brothers’ brand of humour to the more conventional pot, presenting a misshapen mishap as a work of art in itself. In exposing the potter’s mistake, the squashed pot also speaks to the Brothers’ respect and fearful reverence for the act of making pottery, and to the unforgiving unpredictability of the making process, to which they often fell victim. Robert Wallace’s first pieces of sculptural work at Southall were small-scale figures depicting ‘The Thrower’ (modelled as a portrait of his brother Walter), ‘The Bench Boy’ and ‘The Wheel Boy’, elevating the status of the potter and the process of making by hand, without the intervention of industrial machinery.

Walter Martin was the chief thrower and became incredibly skilled at producing a variety of classical and ‘oriental’ shapes. The ‘marred’ pots are a result of Walter throwing the clay so thin that the pots would collapse under their own weight . The result was then manipulated and the pot frequently inscribed with a quotation from the Book of Jeremiah, ‘And the vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter. Jer. XVIII.4’, as seen in C.18-2020. These ‘marred’ pots capture a specific moment in time, revealing the ‘hand of the potter’ in a way that we do not usually see and can be easily lost in a finished, highly decorated work. The amusing and unexpected shapes of the pots reveal the potential misfortune of the making process to the viewer, and uncover the playful spirit of the Martin Brothers in keeping and firing these deformed pieces, instead of destroying them.