Portmeirion "Totem" Coffee Set — Susan Williams-Ellis, 1963

Portmeirion Pottery's story begins not in a factory, but in a Welsh village. Susan Williams-Ellis, born in 1918, was the daughter of architect Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, who created the fantastical Italian-style resort village of Portmeirion in North Wales. After Susan married Euan Cooper-Willis in 1945, the couple took over running her father's small souvenir shop at the village — a shop that, despite the site's growing fame, was losing money.

Susan's design instincts weren't accidental. She trained at Chelsea School of Art under Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland, and moved in creative circles that included potters Bernard and David Leach. When she set out to improve the gifts sold in her father's shop, she had a genuine artist's eye behind the decision — not just a retailer's. She began by commissioning the Stoke-on-Trent firm A.E. Gray to produce ceramics to her own designs, and they sold so well that a second Portmeirion shop opened in one of London's smartest districts.

That early success convinced Susan and Euan to go further. In 1961 they bought A.E. Gray outright, followed by a second Stoke pottery, Kirkhams, merging both into what became Portmeirion Pottery in 1962. Working from her father-in-law's philosophy that good design is good business, they turned two struggling potteries into one of Britain's most successful ceramics companies — a rare feat for a woman-led business at the time.

Totem, launched in 1963, is where Portmeirion truly found its voice. Its bold geometric motifs — pressed directly into the clay rather than painted on — had never been seen before, and the pattern is now considered a genuine design icon of the 1960s. It propelled the company to international fame. Collectors should know two things: the glaze is prone to fine crazing with age, which is normal and part of its character rather than damage, and the tall, thin-handled coffee pot was notoriously fragile, meaning a complete set like this one is genuinely harder to find intact than most people realise.