George Wade (pottery manufacturer)

George Albert Wade (19 July 1891 – 27 January 1986), born in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England to a family who ran a pottery business. He was knighted in 1955 for political and public services.^[1]

Sir George was a pupil at Newcastle High School, which has been amalgamated into the Newcastle-under-Lyme School, and left at age 15 to work at the family's pottery factory.^[1] He was a soldier between 1914 and 1919 in World War I, first as a private with the North Staffordshire Regiment, and then as a lieutenant with the South Staffordshire Regiment in the Machine Gun Corps, and he served in France and Egypt.^[1] He Married Florrie Johnson in 1915.^[1]

Sir George became chairman of the family's pottery business, Wade Ceramics Ltd, a manufacturer of porcelain and earthenware, whose main factory was in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent.^[2] In the 1950s, Sir George and the Wade potteries created and manufactured "Whimsies", small cheap solid porcelain animal figures, which became popular and collectable in Britain and America.^[2]

Sir George never fully stopped working, but in the early 1980s he gave the routine running of the business to his son George Anthony (Tony) Johnson Wade.^[1] His hobbies included painting and ornithology.^[1]

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