Susie Cooper; Acclaimed British Ceramics Designer

Susie Cooper, 92, an acclaimed British ceramics designer whose tableware and teapots were purchased by royalty and prized by collectors. She combined utility with elegance in the products she designed from the 1920s through the 1960s for use in ordinary households. King Edward VIII purchased a set of her dishes for his future bride Wallis Warfield Simpson in 1936. When Miss Cooper received the Order of the British Empire in 1979, the Queen Mother remarked that her first tea set had been a Cooper design. London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has a large collection of Miss Cooper’s work, and some of her individual pieces have sold at auction for more than $1,600. The designer was born in Burslem, Staffordshire, the heart of England’s pottery producing region. After attending art school, she began her career at Gray’s Pottery near her home. She set up her own business in 1929, which was eventually taken over by Josiah Wedgwood & Son, for whom she became senior designer. On July 28 on the Isle of Man, England.