Burslem in Staffordshire was one of the famous six ‘pottery towns’ and immortalised in the novels of Arnold Bennett as ‘Bursley’. The firm Thomas Ford and Sons began its production there in the late nineteenth century, continuing until 1938 when the business was purchased by Oswald Shufflebottom who renamed it Ford & Sons (Crownford) Ltd. The trade name ‘Crownford’ had been adopted quite early on by the Ford family and was kept by the Shufflebottom family until the late 1980s. The ‘Crownford Burslem’ wares were mostly produced in the fashionable Art Deco style during the late 1920s and 1930s and this coffee pot is a fine and representative example of their work.