This a pic of Basil Birch the warehouse manager plus Winnie and Elsie who packed the teachests to be sent to the department stores we supplied. We all had a lot of fun at Phoenix in those days.
This must have been taken in about 1962 after we demolished the top storey of the frontage, which was dangerously leaning over by 2ft and we were then left with the old single storey frontage which we had to replace later on due to water ingress. There was also an enormous roof light just visible on the three storey section which became dangerous and had to be removed later. It was obviously installed by Thomas Forester to create more light into the showroom which was on the top floor of that section. Mr Ridgway had not yet installed the large windows in the building on the left for his motor car business. We bought that property in 1993 to incorporate it into the Phoenix site.
Wonderful blog! Do you have any recommendations for aspiring writers? I am planning to start my own site soon but I am a little lost on everything. Would you suggest starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a paid option? There are so many options out there that I am completely overwhelmed .. Any ideas? Thank you!
Thank you for your comment re my blog. My idea was to create a central reference point for people interested in Majolica generally and Thomas Forester specifically. I had the initial site done by Digital Balance, who live in phoenix works for 400 quid. They have been really helpful including helping me to create the twitter and facebook pages. Everyone advised me to use WordPress as the basis for the site and the blog. I am now attempting to learn a bit more about wordpress. To do your own site, I guess you have to have something interesting to talk about, you first get a domain name related to your subject, I used godaddy for this and then you have to find a hosting company which is about 6-10 USD a month. I have been recommended to use hostgator as they are more flexible than godaddy. One thing I quickly found out was to resize my images to 450 pixels wide. That’s about as far as I have got. I am also trying to get a wikipedia mention about Thomas Forester. That’s not as easy as I thought it would be. Good luck with your project. I have found it very stimulating and a great deal of fun.