Susan Williams-Ellis

Susan Williams-Ellis died on 26 November 2007 in her sleep, aged 89.

Even in her eighties, Williams-Ellis' desire to continue to design the best tableware and ceramics led her to keep closely involved with the latest generation of Portmeirion designs, introducing Portmeirion to new audiences all over the world. Until 2006, she was still travelling the world, finding inspiration from ancient civilisations and underwater worlds for her art work.

In 2005, she received an honorary fellowship from the Rector of London's University of Arts, Sir Michael Bichard, and University Registrar, Susan Asser. Susan Williams-Ellis said:

Portmeirion was one of the first retail companies to fully understand and exploit the "lifestyle" consumer, creating a wide range of products including casual tableware, housewares and gifts for both women and men. The 1970s saw the birth of what is considered by many to be signature range of Portmeirion: Botanic Garden. It was based on illustration plates discovered by Susan in an antique natural history book she found at an antiquarian bookseller's in London: Weldon & Wesley. Susan was looking for eighteenth-century engravings of sea creatures to use in a pottery decoration. She bought some French encyclopaedias and, as she was leaving, the bookseller showed her a brightly hand-coloured 'herbal' book of 1817, illustrated with a large selection of plants and flowers. The book, by Thomas Green, was called The Universal -or -Botanical, Medical and Agricultural Dictionary.

However, the lure of Clough's architectural vision was strong. In 1953, the management of the souvenir shop in the Welsh village of Portmeirion, created by Susan's father, fell to Susan and Euan. Despite the unique architectural status of the village, the shop was operating at a loss. By 1961, the shop had grown enormously; Susan and Euan were managers of the village; and a second Portmeirion shop had opened in one of London's smartest shopping areas, Pont Street. Working on Sir Clough's principle that "good design is good business", the couple transformed two broken-down potteries in Stoke-on-Trent into one of the country's most affluent pottery companies, Portmeirion Pottery. In an era when the idea of the "working woman" was an anathema, the entrepreneurial success of Susan Williams-Ellis, as a designer and a businesswoman (as well as wife and mother), was unusual.

In 1948, Susan and her husband Euan moved to Wales, following their marriage in 1945, and became self-sufficient. She earned some money from book illustration and design work, while Euan produced a pamphlet, Towards Equality, for the Fabian Society.

On 13 March 1944, her brother, Christopher (1923–1944), fell in action before Monte Cassino as a lieutenant in the Welsh Guards. He had joined up straight from King's College, Cambridge. His friend at Cambridge was Euan Cooper-Willis, who later married Susan. The couple had four children: daughters Anwyl, Siân, and Menna Angharad; and son Robin Llywelyn. Anwyl and Menna are artists who had a close involvement with Portmeirion Pottery; Siân is a peace activist; Robin is a Welsh language author.

She was determined to be an artist from an early age. In the 1930s, Susan studied ceramics with Bernard and David Leach while she was at Dartington Hall School. At Chelsea School of Art, during the 1940s, her tutors included Graham Sutherland for painting and Henry Moore for sculpture, who helped to develop Susan's innate feeling for three-dimensional shape and form.

Susan Williams-Ellis (6 June 1918 – 26 November 2007) was a British pottery designer, who was best known for co-founding Portmeirion Pottery. She was the eldest daughter of Sir Clough Williams-Ellis.