Retro is as difficult to define as kitsch, but in general it refers to popular culture and commercial design of the 1950s to 1970s. It doesn't have the negative connotation of kitsch, which is synonymous with cheapness, poor design and bad taste. In fact, retro is often considered cool. I list retro styles on the main Style Finder page.

For this website, the term 'retro' is used in the broadest sense for modernist designs appearing after the second world. These were a reaction against traditional ceramics that were considered dated and dreary. And so to understand retro, you first have to understand what traditional was.

Traditional

Traditional ceramics were decorative in an old-fashioned way, often with motifs and references to historical styles that date back decades, even centuries. The inevitable backdrop to traditional teaware is a table laid with a lace doiley. Not everything pre-war is traditional (art deco, for example, was a modernist style). Traditional tableware has fluted edges and gilding, often with floral patterns or landscapes. The words 'dainty', 'fussy', 'frilly', 'pretty', 'vintage' 'lovely', and 'fine' come to mind. I tend to ignore items on eBay that have these words in the title.

Traditional ceramics are what I call 'dead granny' antiques. They have come onto the market, very sadly, because somebody old has died and their house has been cleared. Traditional wares are to me, depressing. Most of the ceramics that come up on TV shows such as the BBC Antiques Roadshow fall into this category (and when retro pieces do come up, the experts don't know much about them). I can't think of a TV show that I enjoy so much, but that has such an air of the funeral parlour about it. It desperately needs a retro sister-show which has some contact with the modern collecting world.

It is important to remember that traditional ceramics were not wiped off the face of the earth by retro designs. In fact, most factories continued to produce at least some traditional ceramic ranges - and many still do today. Wedgwood, for example, has always catered mainly for the Hyacinth Bouquet market and has produced practically nothing of any interest to retro collectors (except Eric Ravilious' pieces from the 50s). The truth is, many consumers simply don't like modern styles, or feel more comfortable having traditional designs for their 'best' occasions.

Traditional: gilding, flowers, crimped edges and oriental landscape. (Royal Princesses cup and Copeland bowl; apologies to Her Majesty and my Mum, respectively)		Transitional: a traditional shape with retro pattern (Sadler)	Throwback: modern cylindrical shape, antique print (Portmeirion)

Retro designs

It is difficult to find any single design element which is a uniquely post-war innovation, although the boomerang shape may be one (Marcus, 1998). The artist's palette is another common fifties shape. I give a list of retro styles on the main style-finder page.

Modernism was around before the Second World War, as in Art Deco pieces with bright colours and angular shapes, or the 'streamlined' knops on teapot lids that persisted into the 1940s. Organic forms are not a fifties innovation either, being seen for example in Art Nouveau from the late 19th Century onwards. Some traditional design elements were borrowed by modern designers. Polka dots, common before the war, appear on many fifties and sixties pieces.

Transitional pieces, halfway between traditional and retro, may have a mix of elements. Meakin's Midnight Star has traditional gilding and body shape, but retro atomic stars. It was much easier to redesign decoration than it was to redesign the body shape, and so Midnight Star is an example of the new applied to the old. Some of Midwinter's innovative new patterns were applied to the old-fashioned Stylecraft body shape.

From the late sixties onwards, ceramics factories produced what I call 'throwbacks'; modern shapes with antique, especially Victorian, prints. Retro died somewhere in the 1980s, when English factories started churning out bland shapes and patterns. We know retro is dead because the designs are no longer cool. 80s pieces are typified by soft, sensuous shapes, and pastel shades of pink, yellow and blue (a colourway influenced by the Memphis group) on a beige ground.

The future of retro? Just as the fifties designs were hated by many (including me, as a teenager), and then loved again, it is possible that the 80s may be a retro boom of the future.

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