If These Pots Could Talk

9. Vase from Lincoln Cathedral, porcelain. Falcon Porcelain Factory, ca. 1910.

I expect he will be very trying when he is old.
Adeline Goss on her father, 1888

William Henry Goss (1833–1906) was the founder of the Falcon Works at Stoke-on-Trent and the inventor of the porcelain miniatures that came to be known as “heraldic china.” Specializing in reproductions of museum artifacts, William’s son Adolphus (1853–1934) developed a worldwide network of sales outlets, for which he made objects decorated with the badges of Harvard University (2), Florida (4), and New York (9). By 1914, however, other Staffordshire factories had entered the heraldic souvenir business and Goss’s revenues were in decline.

7. Model of Wedgwood’s copy of the Portland Vase, porcelain. Falcon Porcelain Factory, ca. 1895.

5. Miniature of the Great Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt, porcelain. Falcon Porcelain Factory, ca. 1912.

4. Reproduction of a Bronze Age cup, porcelain. Falcon Porcelain Factory, ca. 1903.

3. Reproduction of a fifteenth-century German stoneware “goblet,” porcelain. Falcon Porcelain Factory, ca. 1910.

2. Reproduction of a Bronze Age urn, porcelain. Falcon Porcelain Factory, ca. 1910.

1. Bust of William Henry Goss, Parian ware. Falcon Porcelain Factory, ca. 1906