Shelley Potteries, situated in Staffordshire, was originally known as Wileman & Co. which had also traded under the name ‘The Foley Potteries’. The first Shelley to join the company was Joseph Ball Shelley in 1862, and it remained a Shelley family business until 1966, when it was taken over by Allied English Potteries. Joseph’s son Percy employed first the designer Frederick Rhead then Walter Slater who had worked with Doulton. The design here, known as ‘Peaches’ or ‘Japanese Fruit’ may have been one of Slater’s, but there is no proof of this. It is, though, a particularly attractive pattern and examples of it seem hard to come by.