Cork & Edge

Earthenware and ironstone manufacturers at the Queen Street Works and the New Wharf Pottery, Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, England

Benjamin Cork had previously been in partnership at the Queen Street Pottery with with a Mr Condliffe under the title Cork & Condliffe.
c.1846 Joseph Edge, jun., entered business as earthenware manufacturers with Benjamin Cork, under the style of Cork and Edge. Their factory standing on the site of the present Art School in Burslem.
They exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855.
In 1846 Joseph Edge is listed as living in St. John's Square and Benjamin Cork at Newport Road - both in Burslem. (Williams Directory; Staffordshire potters, R. K. Henrywood).
Benjamin Cork served on the Burslem Local Board of Health from 1855 to 1860. (People of the Potteries)
Cork and Edge supplied a large number of other manufacturers and merchants in the Staffordshire region including prestigious manufacturers such as Davenport, Copeland, Minton & Co. See: other manufacturers and merchants supplied
In 1860 James Malkin joined the business which then operated as Cork, Edge & Malkin. In 1861 they were employing 325 people.

Staffordshire manufacturers and merchants supplied by Cork and Edge with ceramics from 1848 to 1860.
The names provided are manufacturers, unless otherwise stated.

"Cork and Edge supplied a striking number of other manufacturers and merchants in the Staffordshire region (fig. 7) — prestigious manufacturers such as Copeland and Minton and Company of Stoke, and even the Seacombe Pottery, Liverpool, the Wear Pottery, Southwick, Sunderland, and the St. Peter’s Pottery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne."

Selected by the Committee for the Staffordshire Potteries
to exhibit at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855

"Newport Pottery. — These works were established at the close of last century by Mr. Walter Daniel, and about 1810 passed into the hands of Mr. John Davenport.

The manufacture was afterwards carried on by Messrs. Cork and Edge, and is now continued by Messrs. Edge, Malkin, & Co., a firm which, with various alterations in partnership, dates back to the beginning of the present century.

Messrs Cork and Edge, in their ordinary earthenware, introduced many years ago a process of inlaying the patterns in the ground body, but of different colours. These were intended for the cheapest markets, but were produced in good taste. Three of these designs, two teapots and a ewer, shown at the Great Exhibition of 1851, are engraved on Figs. 381 to 383. The productions of the firm at the present time are dinner ware ; jet, enamelled, lustre, and other fancy goods ; and all the ordinary wares for the home and foreign markets."

Figs. 381 to 383

Jewitt, The Ceramic Art of Great Britain, 1878

In Chinese 'Chang' can be a surname meaning "lasting forever" or "constant" - it can also be a given name with meanings like "flourish," "prosper"

Cork & Edge, printed mark from a blue-printed
earthenware Willow pattern deset plate

mark used ware for the American market
- it incorporates the motto of the United States:
E Pluribus Unum and the eagle, olive branch and arrows of the Great Seal

Jewitt (1878) records Cork & Edge (& subsequently Edge, Malkin & Co) as operating the Newport Pottery. He differentiates this manufactory from the Newport Works 'established in 1866 by Malkin, Edge & Co.' pp 259, 260 - NOTE: this works is probably the New Wharf Pottery.

Various directories list Cork, Edge & Malkin as operating from the New Wharf Potteries.

The London Gazette (Jan 1855) lists Cork & Edge, Queen Street, Burslem as selected for exhibition at the Paris Exhibition of 1855.

In the Staffordshire Advertiser (21 April 1860) it is recorded that a site in Queen Street, opposite Cork & Edge's manufactory has been bought for the Wedgwood Institute. (Rodney Hampton - Pottery References..)

Queen Street was named after the ware Josiah Wedgwood made for Queen Charlotte in 1765.

Opposite the Cork & Edge Queen Street Works is the Wedgwood Institute which was built on the site of Wedgwood's Brick House Works