J. & M. P. Bell & Co. Ltd.

J. & M. P. Bell & Co. Ltd., Earthenware Manufacturers, the Glasgow Pottery, Stafford Street.—

    In the extensive operations conducted to-day by the concern whose title heads this sketch there is presented an instructive indication of the very creditable development accorded in Glasgow to the ancient art-industry of the potter. The house of Messrs. J. & M. P. Bell & Co., Limited, has had a prosperous career of more than forty-six years in connection with this highly important department of manufacture, and has during the whole of that time pursued a course of action which has identified its name with with some of the highest attainments of the industry in Scotland, and has caused it to be associated in the trade with an unsurpassed degree of excellence in all its earthenware productions. The concern is now a limited liability company, trading under the style above specified, and the important office of managing director is filled by Mr. James Murdoch, a gentleman qualified by long experience to sustain the old-time reputation of the firm.

    The premises occupied by the company, and known as the Glasgow Pottery, cover an area of four acres of ground, round the outer parts of which extend the large warehouses, stores, offices, packing-rooms, &c., while the interior of the property is covered by the numerous and varied structures devoted to the different branches of manufacture. Every mechanical and general facility is here in evidence for the proper and satisfactory conduct of a thoroughly representative industry of this kind ; and the working staff, which numbers five to six hundred hands, is composed of workers of the highest practical skill. The perfection and the economy of production are remarkably well reconciled in these admirably appointed works, and it is manifest that no effort is spared to perpetuate the celebrity of the place as a centre from which has proceeded work that has never been other than excellent.

    Messrs. J. & M. P. Bell & Co., Limited, make vast quantities of domestic and fine sanitary earthenware of genuine worth and quality, and they are particularly noteworthy as the only manufacturers of porcelain in Scotland. Their goods have a world-wide reputation, meeting with an extensive demand in all the home, colonial, and foreign markets and their entire business to-day stands as a proof of the excellent enterprise and energy that have made it a credit to the national industry it so honourably represents.

Back to Index of Firms (1888)