FANTASTIC & RARE WILLETS BELLEEK SMALL DRAGON HANDLED PITCHER OR CREAMER – CIRCA 1890
Measures approximately 4 ½” high by 2 1/8” in diameter.
Excellent condition – no chips or cracks.
Signed “Belleek Willets” on the underside.
Willets Manufacturing Company
In 1879, three brothers, Joseph, Daniel and Edmund R. Willets, bought out the Excelsior Pottery built by the William Young & Sons Company. The company started with four kilns but by 1882 had successfully expanded to fourteen kilns and 300 workers.
Around 1884, William Bromely, Sr., after successfully helping Ott & Brewer make Belleek wares, went to Willets to help them do the same. As a result, Willets began producing Belleek wares around late 1884 or early 1885. During that period, they hired many competent artists, including Walter Lenox, to design their wares. In less than ten years after they first began making their white eggshell wares, Willets' American Belleek was compared favorably with industrial leaders in both the U.S. and in Europe. After the industry, as a whole, began to decline, Willets stopped its production in 1909 and ended its 24 year history of making American Belleek.