Lowestoft porcelain birth tablet memorial tablet Martha Liffin Mary Liffin

A great many of the works produced at Lowestoft were inscribed, named and dated, giving us valuable information about who owned their wares. These owners included merchants, shopkeepers and publicans in Lowestoft, Norwich, Beccles and Wymondham.

Lowestoft was the only factory to produce little round plaques like this one, known as birth tablets. They seem to have been made to commemorate births to factory employees, rather than for commercial sale, and were made to hang up, perhaps over the baby's cradle. As was usual at the time, whole families worked in the factory together, men, women and children, and we know the names of several of these families.

Birth tablets surviving today are quite rare, but this one is unique. It commemorates a birth, that of Martha Liffin, and also a death, that of Martha's mother, Mary, less than a year later. Mary Liffin (1761-1795) was born a Redgrave. Several Redgraves, including Mary's father and siblings, worked at Lowestoft. A pattern is named the 'Redgrave Pattern' after them.

Unlike her mother, Martha Liffin lived to a ripe old age, dying around 1878.