Clay and Commerce
The Marketing Magic of Western Stores
One lucky customer who shopped at Western Stores, Bathurst was the recipient of this teapot and these jugs, probably given to them by the manager as a show of goodwill for the customer’s support.
These may not have been the prettiest pieces of earthenware displayed on that customer’s kitchen dresser, but they were a reminder that Western Stores was the friendliest and most well-loved chain of department stores in central and western NSW. (Conveniently, they also advertised the company in the process.)
With its beginnings in 1849, Western Stores and Edgleys Ltd was a country retail group with stores in numerous towns in Central Western NSW. They were suppliers of food, clothing, white goods, farm supplies including stock and animal feed. Managers were happy to provide credit to people on the land and the stores became local icons and social meeting places, becoming known as simply ‘The Store.’
‘Meet you at The Store’, people would say.
The tea ware gifts themselves, which also included sugar bowls, came all the way from England where they were manufactured by Gibson & Sons, an old company that had been throwing clay on the wheel since 1885 in Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire – the pottery capital of Europe. The style of the maker’s mark on the base of the Western Stores example, with a crown over the word ‘GIBSONS’ in a scroll, was introduced in c. 1950, dating these pieces to the 1950s-60s.
In the 1960s, Western Stores was purchased by Farmer’s & Co of Sydney, and shortly after, Farmer’s were taken over again. This was when everyone’s favourite country town store became part of another well-loved Australian store, Myer Emporium.
