Fancy a Brew? Look to the Brown Betty for your perfect pot of tea!

The Re-engineered Brown Betty is the culmination of a seven-year PhD undertaken by ceramicist Ian McIntyre, exploring the history of this iconic object. For this new edition, lost original features have been re-introduced including patents from the 1920’s. The Rockingham glaze has been preserved and new design details implemented. Great care has been taken to not only preserve, but to renew and improve this enduring and much-loved British design classic.

For the first time, the Re-engineered Brown Betty teapot will be available in two sizes – a new 2-cup version alongside the classic 4-cup. With updated design features including a non-drip spout, a locking lid that stays secure while pouring, and a stackable form suited to hospitality environments.

The ritual of tea drinking has remained largely unchanged for centuries. All over the world people choose a teapot as their preferred apparatus and the humble Brown Betty is often heralded as the archetypal example. This affordable, utilitarian and unpretentious object has largely gone unnoticed, disappearing into the fabric of everyday life. While many a break-room debate has been sparked as to what makes the best cup of tea, there is one thing we can all agree on, the Brown Betty is the undisputed champion of teapots.

We popped the kettle on and caught up with Ian to talk about the Brown Betty’s extensive history, collective identity and the challenges faced in English manufacturing.

You have committed a lot of time to researching the Brown Betty Teapot, can you tell us about it history, its cultural significance and your experience of re-engineering it?

I started this research as part of a PhD back in 2015, I looked at the history of Stoke on Trent and the emergence of the Staffordshire pottery industry, which is seen as a key aspect of Britain's period of industrialisation.

I’d been introduced to the design of this teapot as an intern at Studio Levien on my MA at the Royal College of Art in 2008. Robin Levien has a habit of challenging his interns to design a better teapot. But I discovered a much wider history about the object by looking at early industry of Staffordshire and starting to understand that the red clay was the only native clay to the area. Often, Stoke on Trent is associated with white clays, Wedgwood and Spode, really high end, prestigious manufacturers. But in actual fact, those white clays are made up of many materials coming from outside Staffordshire itself and these come later in the story. The red clay, was the origin material and is seen as the catalyst for the industrialisation of the six towns referred to as ‘The Potteries’. There's a huge seam of red clay and long flame coal running through the area, ideal for firing the clay. The redware teapots made from this clay are examples of some of the first objects that were being made in the area and the Brown Betty teapot comes from this tradition.

So, prior to the 1690's, this red clay was being used to make quite crude pottery that farmers would use and utilitarian objects for rural communities. Around 1695 this began to change. Two Dutch brothers (amongst others) moved to Stoke on Trent and started working the red clay to make redware teapots to a quality that hadn't been seen before. This refinement is seen as a moment of major importance for Staffordshire. Redware teapots during this period were primarily made in imitation of Chinese teapots that were being imported through the East India Trade. They were small, unglazed and could only be afforded by the upper class - tea was expensive then. The Staffordshire potters began to imitate these pots. Gradually this practice evolved from producing imitations of East Asian objects to becoming its own distinct visual language. By the 1750’s the price of tea had come down and it became commonplace in English homes. Around the same time Lead Glazing was developed and the glazed redware teapots became known as Red China, so I imagine that these pots were the first to resemble a type of Brown Betty teapot. I found little mention of these pots for some time beyond this period, and I believe it’s because it coincides with the rise of Josiah Wedgwood who developed a Cream coloured earthenware in 1760, using materials imported from the West Country - this material became the standard of the Staffordshire Pottery industry from this point.

Fast forward to the 1920's and the making of redware teapots had reached its peak, it was said that over half a million were being made each week! These teapots were imported all around the world; going to North America, Canada and the Commonwealth countries and there's a huge production base in Stoke on Trent. Now this wasn't one maker, the teapots were being made by hundreds of different makers that had proliferated all around this seam of red clay. Each maker was refining their own visual language and adding to innovations in material and form that had been built on years prior. Redware teapots in this period are affordable, everyday, functional objects. So it's a really interesting history of, at one point, these little red teapots being quite an elite object and then as tea becomes cheaper, a new market develops for really accessible, cheap redware teapots to supply the working classes.

Because these teapots became cheap and functional, they haven’t really been recorded in the way that a lot of the more expensive whitewares would have been documented and protected. The knowledge around the Brown Betty, even in terms of making it, would have been passed down in a very localised way, maker to maker rather than a documented prescriptive process. Many people would recognise its shape and colour instantly, but you might not necessarily be able to place it or know very much about it or where it came from. But because it’s so embedded in everyday life, it crops up in popular culture. You see it in the kitchens of period dramas like Downton Abbey, popular children's books like ‘The Tiger Who Came To Tea’ or ‘Pepo!’ and even famous paintings.

What makes the Brown Betty different from other teapots - both in function and design?

The thing that interests me most about the brown betty is that it became cheap and accessible and wasn't particularly fashionable or trendy, it was more like a tool. It evolved to do a job and therefore most of the focus of the period was all about expediency, efficiency and functionality. So you get a very cheap object that is incredibly good at what it does - from the globe shape of the pot seen as being really good to infuse the leaves as the water's poured in, to the handle of the pot being this quite specific shape that holds your hands away from the hot body of the object allowing you to lever from the spout. The spout in particular in the early editions is really interesting because it actually looks quite badly made. It looks quite shonkily trimmed at the edge and hasn't been softened by the maker on the factory floor, but it's actually cut quite sharply in order to try and cut the water as you pour tea out of the spout. That sharp edge is designed to try and cut the water and stop it dribbling back down the outside of the teapot; what you don't really want is a soft edge that encourages the water to run back down the outside of the pot and potentially onto the table or surface.

The Brown Betty evolved out of the qualities of the red clay, they became quite thick walled and sturdy out of utility - terracotta is traditionally quite weak in thin sections. So you get these heavy utility objects where the styling is accounting for the quality of the clay rather than looking to produce an aesthetic. It's functional through and through. The red clay was also useful in hiding tea stains. The Rockingham glaze was developed as an even darker treacle colour to be incredibly good at hiding those tea stains too. Tea stains on whitewares build up over time and can look quite aged and, particularly on earthenware and low fired ceramics of the period, it can really age quite badly. But on the Brown Betty, it only seems to heighten its beauty. The patina that develops adds to the teapots character and if it chips, you're chipping into a red clay rather than white, which can be a lot more garish and draws attention to the fault. So you end up with a hyper functional object whose origin can’t quite be pinpointed, with hundreds of different versions emanating from a very specific region. It’s a very beautiful thing.

Where did the name 'Brown Betty’ come from?

I actually can’t tell you. I did a lot of research into this name. Surprisingly the earliest use of Brown Betty that I could find was as recent as 1978 in marketing material – perhaps a marketing invention - someone trying to find a familiar, gentle name for the teapot. Before this they were described as Samian or Rockingham redware teapots and today, all these teapots in their many variations fall under the colloquial name Brown Betty. But there is really no clear indication why it’s been named that way. Obviously the ‘brown’ part of the name is because it’s brown - but Betty is a bit of mystery.

I did find in my research that there is an American Brown Betty pudding, which was quite appetite inducing.

Can you tell us about the manufacturing of the Brown Betty - the clay, the Rockingham glaze?

Historically, the majority of early glazes on terracotta were transparent. The Rockingham glaze was developed to be used over the terracotta, potters would combine a small amount of iron and manganese to the lead resulting in a slightly red tint. In the factories, Brown Betty teapots would be made in really high numbers and sold at quite low prices. Because of this, makers and customers weren't as particular about perfection so if the pot got a little bit knocked on the factory floor, as long as it worked well it would be approved. I've got loads of early Brown Betty’s that have got dents and scuffs in. The Rockingham glaze was really good at covering up a lot of that. One of the best examples of that is seam lines from a mould. When they are fettled away, where a potter uses a little knife and cuts away the seam, you don't have to touch that up very carefully, you can just throw a Rockingham glaze over it and it hides the seam line. What fascinates me so much about the making of these Brown Betty teapots is this consideration of efficiency and expediency on the factory floor as well as the experience for the user.

Have you had to make any adaptations in the manufacturing of this second edition of the re-engineered Brown Betty?

I’ve spent the last several years trying to get the Re-engineered Brown Betty manufactured in England, after the factory it was being made with in Stoke-on-Trent closed down at the beginning of 2024. It is very difficult to manufacture redware in any numbers in a British context, especially using the slip casting process which this object requires. The labour time and now energy costs are really very high and the red clay contaminates other clay bodies so that rules out the majority of potteries in Staffordshire. Add to this the ever-changing constraints and regulations faced in British manufacturing, it has become that much harder to produce, and we’ve had more doors close than open. I've often had long chats with Simon and Rachel about whether we try to continue to make this or not. We reached the point where the conversation was about wether manufacturing of the re-engineered edition should cease to exist, or be made further afield. We really feel we have exhausted all avenues available for making the Brown Betty in any meaningful numbers in the UK and, what I really want is for it to remain an everyday object. As it stands it appears that the best way for us to do that is to manufacture outside of the UK. This has its benefits, in so much that the clay the teapot is now made from is much hardier, resulting in a much more resilient object.

In fact, one of the best things that's come from this newest addition is being able to make it in a more labour intensive way - the handle and the spout are added after the body of the pot has been cast which has enabled us to reintroduce the perforated grill in front of the spout. There’s now a series of perforations in the body of the pot that becomes this inbuilt strainer which the early traditional versions had and we have been able to re-introduce. We've got rid of the metal infuser and gone back to a much more traditional way of making, which allows us to make it with the one material. So that's one of the things that I'm most happy about.

How do you take your tea?

Milk definitely goes in after.

But apparently milk went in first when we were dealing with lower fired earthenware cups because you didn't want to shock the cup with boiling water. So you’d pour the milk first and then you would pour the tea from the pot into the mug.

So, yes, it's just a straight builders for me, with milk. Quite a milky builders.

When I did work experience in high school at a local business I actually made my first cup of tea. I'd never made tea for my mum and dad before and I’d been asked to make tea for the entire office and didn’t know how to. So I ended up making nine cups of tea with one tea bag, just lifting it from one cup to another and giving it a stir. I remember very vividly the manager of the business looking at the tea, tasting it and then in this really beautiful Yorkshire accent, just saying, ‘tastes like bloody witches piss’. Once they'd ascertained what I'd done, they decided that I'd go quite far because I was unbelievably frugal.

A big question for me would be how many teabags people are going to use for the 2 and 4 cup Brown Betty, if they use a tea bag at all. I can get away with only using one bag and filling the 2 cup pot, but it depends on how strong you like your tea.

What hopes do you have for the future of the Brown Betty?

I would just like to see it lasting a long time in people's homes. I see this object as something that has defied fashions and trends, so the best thing for me is seeing these pots that were bought back when I first started this project, and they're still using it every day. I would like to hope that this isn't one of those objects that is launched and then discontinued. This is a kind of evergreen object that people will keep for a very long time.

The re-engineered Brown Betty will soon be available in both its 2-cup and 4-cup form across all of our shops and online.