BOSSONS
WELCOME to the BOSSONS Information and Appreciation Page.
About eight miles from the northern border of Stoke-on-Trent, just inside the County of Cheshire, is the little township of Congleton, England. This was the home of the W.H. Bossons, Ltd. Company for a little over fifty years. It’s founder, Mr. W.H. Bossons studied pottery making in Stoke-on-Trent, was a graduate of the Burslem School of Art and an honors student at the Stoke-on-Trent College of Ceramics. Following a career in the ceramic tile industry, he retired to Congleton in 1944. It was then that he began to make lead soldiers and Christmas figures out of metal and plaster, merely as a hobby. But as people began urging him to make these objects for them personally, and paid him for them, what started as a hobby in his Congleton home gradually became a profitable business. He decided to develop and improve the production of his plaster ornaments and figures. Early in 1946, Mr. W.H. Bossons acquired two rooms at Brook Mills in Congleton. The buildings took their name from a flowing brook adjacent to them, which was essential for power at the time. He trained half a dozen artistic girls as paintresses and a few boys as molders and began in earnest to develop the production of plaster plaques. The very first entirely Bossons originated model was a 14" plaque entitled "Village Scene" followed by "Moreton Hall" and other British scenes.
In October of 1946, W. Ray Bossons, the son of W.H. Bossons, returned to Congleton after six years of service in World War II. Like his father, he had also learned pottery making but also brought another asset to the enterprise: professional training in advertising and publicity. Mr. Bossons Sr. now concentrated on the technical and managerial side of the business while his son developed the designs, modeling and marketing aspects. Ray Bossons was and still is an extremely talented artist with an intuitive ability to anticipate market trends. He was a perfectionist with regard to the anatomical detail, artistic excellence, and historical accuracy of each item of art the company created. He was the creative genius and, without question, the designer extaordinaire of the W.H. Bossons companies following his fathers’ death in 1951. The companies’ reputation spread within a comparatively short period of time to all the principal markets of the world. Most of the original ideas and basic concepts came from Ray Bossons fertile imagination with input from the other Directors of the company, often a combined effort. He would sketch the ideas for the wall masks and figurines after much research on each character to be portrayed, and relied on his rather extensive library from which much of the resource material was obtained. Beginning with these detailed sketches, several people coordinated their efforts to eventually develop the wall mask or figurine. The original "models" were executed in clay by highly talented sculptors, such as Fred Wright and Alice Brindley, with no limit set on the time it took to create an original model; it just had to be perfect in the end, or as near perfect as possible. The modeling program was always a vital part of the factory schedule and information and research was done well ahead to ensure that all necessary information was available at the time the next model was begun. Ray Bossons would "set the standards" for the pieces and then turn them over to the staff painters to complete. In 1958, then the head of the company, he designed the first of the internationally recognized "Character Wall Masks", the "Snake Charmer", followed closely by "Mandolin Player", "Drummer", "Caspian Man" and "Caspian Woman". The success of these first masks led to the rapid introduction of many wall masks and wall figurines of great variety, remarkably fine detail and considerable aesthetic merit. The factory produced its artworks until December 6, 1996, when much to the chagrin of Bossons collectors worldwide, it closed its doors and ceased operation.
- Collette Peartree
