Designer |  Wembley |
Maker | Wembley |
Marks | Faint circle with “Wembley Ware” impressed. Flat base with rhomboid shaped body. Curved sides, angled outwards from base. Curved overhead handle. Part of set of four. Described as a ramekin but more accurately a small serving dish. |
Description | |
Number | |
Production Date | Approximately 1960 |
Width | 175mm |
Depth | 30mm |
Length (with handle) | 130mm |
Weight | 290gm |
Volume | 230ml |
Acquisition | E-Bay |
Like some of the Sylha suff, these are not really ramekins, but most advertisers on internet auctiob sites think they are. They were originally Hors d'ouvres sets and were set into a shallow wicker tray. They are Wembley and are definitely worth getting.
If you look up Ford, you will see myriad marks for the various incarnations of the entities that once were Wembley Ware and allied companies. For the purposes of this entry, I will only refer to the one mark impressed into these ramekins. It is a circle with the words “Wembley Ware” inside. Wembley began in 1938 when the Wunderlich Company merged with H L Brisbane & Co who had taken over Westralian Potteries Ltd in Subiaco in 1927.
The area now known as Ascot Island had been a clay quarry for Perth since the early 20th Century. Wunderlich was a family business started by Ernest, Julius and Frederick Wunderlich. The firm grew into a highly successful company with branches in all Australian States and in Wellington, New Zealand. Wunderlich Ltd was the first Australian firm to introduce a 44 hour week without a pay reduction (1908) and in 1914 started a profit-sharing scheme for employees. Between 1940 and 1944, Asbestos Mines Pty Ltd was owned by Wunderlich Ltd.
Homewares were first developed pre Wembley around 1927 when Flora Landells established her Studio Pottery, learning from Frederick Piercy, owner of the Westralian Pottery Company. During World War II they catered for shortages of domestic ware. Her husband Reg died in 1960 and her pottery was closed, and Wembley only survived another 12 months.
In 1946 Brisbane and Wunderlich created a range of decorative homewares called Wembley Ware. The range was H.L. Brisbane’s idea. Their first product was the cruet set. To avoid paying a high sales tax the piece was fashioned into a salt and pepper shaker and a mustard dish. Post war tax on utilitarian pottery was lower than decorative ware. These sets proved to be very popular, and many more pieces of tableware and other wares made.
Brisbane and Wunderlich were then based in Subiaco and were the biggest commercial ceramics company in Australia at the time, even exporting to New Zealand. The company, also owned Bristle Tiles. Over the next three decades Lance Brisbane built the company into a large and diversified manufacturing enterprise, moving into stainless-steel products, clay sewer-pipes, porcelain, high temperature refractory bricks, aluminium fabrication, building cladding and plastics. In the 1990s Brisbane and Wunderlich sold out to Australian Fine China. This was long after its Wembley Ware range ended in 1961.
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