If you work with clay every day, it’s difficult not to feel something when a pottery that has been making for more than 200 years suddenly stops.
Denby has been making pottery in Derbyshire since 1809. Generations of craftspeople have worked on the same site, producing ceramics that have ended up in kitchen cupboards and on dining tables across Britain, probably in quite a few homes where nobody has ever really thought about the hands that made them.
In March 2026, Denby entered administration after 217 years of making. For us, sitting here making pots in our little corner of Devon, it felt particularly close to home.
Habulous is obviously a very different business. We’re small, independent and make our ceramics in batches in our Dartmoor studio. But the fundamentals are the same. Clay still needs to be shaped, glazes still need to be applied, kilns still need to get very, very hot and people still need years of practice to become genuinely skilled at doing all of it.
So when somewhere like Denby struggles, it isn't simply another British brand disappearing. It raises a much bigger question: if we stop supporting the places that craft things in Britain, who will be left with the skills to make them?
What actually happened to Denby?
There isn't one simple answer.
Denby entered formal administration on 31 March 2026, putting hundreds of jobs at risk. Around 350 of its 500 employees were based at the Derbyshire factory. The company had previously pointed to rising employment costs and soaring industrial energy prices, alongside reduced consumer spending and difficulties securing further investment.
You can read more about Denby's administration and the pressures facing the pottery.
The energy problem will be painfully familiar to almost anyone working with ceramics. Making pottery takes an enormous amount of heat. You can make a studio more efficient, improve firing schedules, invest in newer equipment and try to waste as little energy as possible, but ultimately clay still has to be fired. For stoneware, that means temperatures well above 1,000°C.
At Habulous, firing our kilns is already a significant part of the cost of making what we make. Scale that up to an industrial pottery producing thousands upon thousands of pieces and the energy requirement becomes enormous.
Denby certainly isn't alone in feeling that pressure. In May 2026, the UK Government announced a £120 million support package for the British ceramics industry, aimed at helping the sector invest in energy efficiency and decarbonisation while improving its long-term competitiveness.
That matters because this isn't simply a story about one company struggling or people suddenly deciding they don't want pottery anymore. It's part of a much bigger challenge around whether we can continue to make energy-intensive products like ceramics competitively in Britain.
And we'd really quite like the answer to be yes.
The skills we can't afford to lose
You can buy another kiln. You can order more clay. You can build another studio. What you can't do is instantly create an experienced potter.
There is an enormous difference between learning to throw a lovely bowl at a pottery class and being able to sit at a wheel and throw the same form repeatedly, accurately and efficiently enough to make production pottery commercially viable. Throwing is only one part of it too.
There's knowing how clay behaves at different stages of drying, when something is ready to turn, why something cracked or whether a glaze is too thick before it ever reaches the kiln. There's opening a firing and knowing what has happened when something doesn't look quite right. Then there's being able to make the same thing for the hundredth time without it somehow losing the character that comes from being handmade.
A lot of that knowledge isn't something you can properly learn from a book. It comes from doing it, getting it wrong, working out why, and doing it again.
That is why the current state of British pottery skills is so concerning. Heritage Crafts now classifies industrial pottery as critically endangered, highlighting declining skills and material knowledge, limited opportunities for training and work experience within industrial settings, and fewer routes into specialist ceramic work.
Importantly, there is a distinction between industrial pottery and studio pottery. Studio pottery is thriving in many ways. People want to learn ceramics, pottery classes are enormously popular and there are brilliant independent ceramicists working all over Britain.
Production pottery requires a slightly different set of skills. It is craft at repetition and scale, and there are fewer places where somebody can learn to do that professionally.
The wider picture for British craft isn't particularly comfortable either. Heritage Crafts' 2025 Red List assessed 285 traditional crafts, with 72 classified as critically endangered and another 93 endangered.
These crafts rarely disappear overnight. Usually, somebody retires. A workshop closes. An apprentice isn't taken on. A piece of machinery nobody else knows how to use gets sold. A technique stops being commercially viable. Eventually, we look around and realise hardly anybody knows how to do it anymore.
What Spode can teach us about preserving pottery
There is another ceramics story we've been watching with a lot of interest.
Spode began making pottery on its Stoke-on-Trent site in the eighteenth century. Production eventually stopped there in 2008, leaving behind a huge historic pottery complex and centuries of ceramic heritage.
Now, the site is being given a new future. Plans are moving forward to regenerate the former Spode Works, restoring important historic buildings while introducing homes, creative spaces, independent businesses and public areas. You can read about the plans to regenerate the historic Spode pottery in this BBC report.
We genuinely love seeing it.
These places deserve to survive. The buildings matter, the bottle kilns matter, and so do the archives, moulds, pattern books and stories of the people who spent their lives working there. Bringing creative businesses back into a historic pottery feels particularly fitting.
But it also makes us think about something slightly uncomfortable.
We are often very good at recognising the value of a pottery once it has stopped being a pottery.
We preserve the buildings, create museums and tell people about the incredible skills that used to exist there. All of that is important, but wouldn't it be even better if we could keep more places making in the first place?
Preserving the building where somebody once threw pots isn't the same as preserving the ability to throw them. You can't preserve a craft entirely behind glass. It needs people doing it, and it needs new people being given the opportunity to learn.
Why local potteries matter now
When we talk about British pottery, we naturally think about the huge names and the industrial history of places like Stoke-on-Trent.
Habulous isn't that.
We're not a factory employing hundreds of people. We're a small independent pottery in Devon, making in batches with hands involved at practically every stage of production and usually a dog or two wandering around the studio making themselves considerably less useful than they think they are.
But Habulous has grown.
What began as a very small pottery has gradually become a proper production studio, making thousands of pieces across our handmade tableware, ceramic flowers, vases, plant pots and kitchenware. Despite still feeling small to us, we've become one of the larger independent production potteries in Devon.
That feels slightly strange to say, and we're incredibly proud of it. But it also says something about how the landscape of British pottery has changed.
As larger British manufacturers have disappeared or moved production elsewhere, independent and regional potteries increasingly have another role beyond simply making lovely things. They create places where pottery skills can exist professionally.
When we need another production potter, that's a job where being able to throw consistently and efficiently actually matters. When experienced makers work alongside other members of the team, knowledge gets shared. When we invest in another kiln or piece of studio equipment, we're investing in our ability to continue making ceramics here in Devon.
And every time somebody buys something we've made, that cycle gets to continue.
That's the bit that can get lost in the phrase “support small businesses”. Supporting craft isn't really about keeping a cute little shop alive. It's about keeping an ecosystem of skills, jobs and knowledge alive.
The latest Crafts Council Makers Survey heard from more than 1,000 makers across Britain and found a sector full of creativity but facing serious economic pressure. Rising operating costs, competition from cheap mass-produced goods and limited access to funding were among the threats identified to the sustainability of craft businesses.
Those businesses need customers if they're going to survive, and craftspeople need viable businesses if they're going to remain craftspeople.
That doesn't mean anybody should buy handmade pottery because they feel guilty. Handmade pottery still has to earn its place. It should be well designed, it should work and it should make your home nicer. It should be something you genuinely want to use, not something you buy because you feel like you're doing a good deed.
We know people will always own mass-produced things too.
But handmade and mass-produced products aren't competing on equal terms when it comes to price. When you buy a mug made in Britain, you're paying for British wages, energy, materials, equipment and the time somebody physically spent making it.
You're also paying for something you can't see: the years it took that person to become good at it. The wonky pots, the handles that fell off, the glazes that looked absolutely nothing like they were supposed to and the kiln openings where everybody stared silently for a moment before accepting that something had gone very wrong.
Then there are the hundreds, probably thousands, of repetitions that eventually make a difficult skill look easy.
That knowledge has value.
And if there isn't a market for the things skilled people make, eventually there isn't much reason for someone new to spend years learning those skills.
The future of British pottery
There are reasons to feel hopeful.
The regeneration of Spode shows that people still care deeply about our pottery heritage. Organisations such as Heritage Crafts are identifying vulnerable skills before they disappear completely, and the Government's recent support for the ceramics industry is at least an acknowledgement that British ceramics is worth protecting.
People clearly haven't stopped caring about handmade things either. Pottery classes continue to introduce new people to clay, craft markets remain an important way to discover makers, and independent studios can now reach customers across Britain and around the world from places that might once have relied almost entirely on local trade.
Perhaps the future of British pottery simply looks a little different.
Hopefully there will still be historic manufacturers, but alongside them there might increasingly be smaller production potteries, independent studios, specialist makers, shared workshops and regional businesses making locally while selling nationally.
Places like ours.
And that is why what has happened to Denby matters even if you have never owned a Denby plate. It isn't only about one company. It's about whether Britain remains somewhere that makes things, or somewhere that eventually only remembers making them.
Supporting that doesn't have to mean replacing everything you own with something handmade. Visit your local pottery. Go to the craft market. Take the pottery class you've been thinking about. Buy the handmade mug you really love when your budget allows. Ask where something was made, and tell somebody when you discover a brilliant local maker.
Because when you choose something made by a working craft business, you're supporting more than the object sitting in front of you. You're giving somebody a reason to keep practising that skill, and you're giving businesses like ours a reason to train another pair of hands.
Here in Devon, we'll keep doing our little bit. We'll keep throwing pots, making flowers, mixing glazes and loading kilns. We'll probably keep complaining about electricity bills too.
And hopefully, we'll keep creating opportunities for people to make a living from being very, very good at making things from clay.
Because we'd quite like Britain's pottery story to have a next chapter.
Not just a museum.