Dora Billington

Dora May Billington (1890 – 1968) was an English teacher of pottery, a writer and a studio potter. Her own work explored the possibilities of painting on pottery.

Life and career

Dora Billington was born into a family of potters in Stoke-on-Trent, specifically Tunstall. From 1905 to 1910 she attended Tunstall School of Art and later Hanley School of Art, becoming a teacher assistant in her final year. She worked as a decorator for Bernard Moore, 1910-1912 and then studied at the Royal College of Art (RCA) 1912-1916 and the Slade School of Art. At the RCA she studied in the design department under W. R. Lethaby and was taught calligraphy by Edward Johnston, embroidery by Grace Christie and pottery by Richard Lunn. Billington remained an amateur embroiderer and an occasional writer on textiles. Lunn died in 1915 at the age of about 75 and Billington was asked to take over his class with John Adams (who later ran the Poole Pottery). She taught pottery at the Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1919 and left the RCA in 1925 when William Rothenstein appointed William Staite Murray as pottery instructor. The circumstances of her leaving remain somewhat unclear. By that date Rothenstein had been in place for five years, and although he supported Billington's work he criticised the teaching of pottery and other crafts as "too unexperimental and derivative. No consistent attempt appears to have been made to deal with the interpretation of the contemporary world in design and execution... the research work towards the discovery of new subject matter and new treatment, so noticeable on the Continent, seem to have been wanting."