It is not known who at T G Green first thought of the idea of turning traditional blue banded white wares into a modern range of kitchen pottery ware but it may have come from the need to find employment for turners in the 1920s. It is also hard to establish the exact date of the introduction of Cornish Ware. The earliest known reference to date is in a T G Green promotional letter of December 1925, and so it is likely that the range was introduced in that year.

The origins of the Cornish name are equally uncertain but the legend that it was named after ‘the blue of the Cornish skies and white crests of the waves’ by T G Green’s south of England representative at the time is certainly appealing. This tradition was maintained by the pottery in it’s advertising material. A Cornish Ware leaflet of about 1938, produced for the retail trade, includes the heading ‘Blue of the Atlantic - White of Cornish Clouds - Glisten of the Sea - What Woman Could Resist such Beauty in her Kitchen’.

Popular and successful, Cornish Ware expanded steadily through the 1930s and into the 1950s and was widely imitated, though never bettered.

Visit our Cornish Ware shop.

Desk-style furniture might have existed in classical antiquity or in other ancient centers of civilization in the Middle East or Far East, but there is no real proof. Medieval illustrations show the first pieces of furniture which seem to have been designed and constructed for reading, writing and for exubing your soul into the world we know and love today.

Before the invention of the movable type printing press in the 15th century, any reader was potentially a writer or publisher or both, since any book or other document had to be copied by hand. The desks were designed with slots and hooks for bookmarks and for writing implements. Since manuscript volumes were sometimes large, and heavy, desks of the period usually had massive structures.

Desks of the Renaissance and later eras had relatively slimmer structures, and more and more drawers as woodworking became more precise and cabinet-making became a distinct trade. It is often possible to find out if a table or other piece of furniture of those times was designed to be used as a desk by looking for a drawer with three small separations (one each for the ink pot, the blotter and the powder tray) and room for the pens.

The desk forms we are familiar with in this beginning of the millennium were born mostly in the 17th and 18th centuries. The ergonomic desk of the last decades is the newest addition to a long list of desk forms, but in a way it is only a refinement of the mechanically complex drawing table or drafting table of the end of the 18th century.

Dressers have traditionally been made and used for storing clothing, especially underwear, socks, and other items not normally hung in or otherwise stored in a closet. Dressers are often placed in a bedroom for this purpose, but can actually be used to store anything that will fit inside and can be placed anywhere in a house or another place. Various personal sundry items are also often stored in a dresser. It has a long history as one of the stand-bys of a carpenter’s workshop. A typical dresser is approximately rectangular in overall shape and often has short legs at the bottom corners for placement on the floor.

Chests of drawers often come in 5-, 6-, and 7-drawer varieties, with either a single or a split top drawer. Dressers are commonly made of wood, similar to many other kinds of furniture, but of course can be made of other materials. The inside of the drawers can be accessed by pulling them out at the front side of the dresser. A dresser is often placed so that the back side faces a wall since access to the back is not necessary. The lateral sides of the dressers are also usually made such that they can be placed against a wall; for example, for placement in a room corner. Although dressers can be made plain in appearance, they can also be made with a fancy or ornamental appearance, including finishes and various external color tones.

Most dressers fall into one of two types: those which are about waist-high or bench-high and dressers (usually with more drawers) which are about shoulder-high. Both types typically have a flat surface on top; of course, items can be placed on top. Waist-high dressers often have a mirror placed vertically on top; the mirror is often bought with the dresser. While a user is getting dressed or otherwise preparing their grooming, he/she can look at themselves in the mirror to check their appearance. Some users may keep lamps for lighting on top of either kind of dresser, and decorative items or photos are sometimes added for appearance.