Description:Pottery factory interior showing cup makers in a jolleying workshop. Taken at Mayer and Sherrat's pot bank, King Street, Longton, Stoke-on-Trent.
The four people are identified on the original copy of the photo. They are, left to right;
George Byatt, Mrs. Pritchet, Mr. James Hammersley and Mrs. Stanley.
A jolley was a machine for making shapes out of solid blocks of clay. It consisted of a rotating wheel and a levered profile tool.
A clay-filled mould would be placed on the rotating wheel and the levered profile tool would be pulled into the solid clay.
The outside of the cup would be formed by the pressure of the profile tool and centrifugal force on the inside of the mould.
The inside of the cup would be formed by the action of the profile tool.
Terminology
The terms jolleying and jiggering are often used to describe the same thing.
Jolleying is the older of the two terms and has regularly been used to describe any pottery making using rotating moulds and profile tools.
However, large sections of the pottery industry have made distinctions between the two terms. These seem dependent on whether hollow or flat ware is being made.
Jolleying - where the profile tool forms the using side of the ware, such as the inner suface of a cup.
Jiggering - where the mould forms the using side of the ware, such as the upper surface of plates and saucers.
Taken from the Gladstone Pottery Museum Photographic Collection.
This photograph is part of the collections at Stoke-on-Trent Museums.