I have been contacted several times regarding some cottages in the Mudlen End style that seem to have been made as Pomanders. These have windows cut out and a hole in the roof ridge. They most likely would have had a bag of pot pourri inserted into them and hung in a wardrobe perhaps, to create a pleasant smell. These photos show said Pomander models and the likeness to the Mudlen End shop #11. There is a small sticker on the base of one which reads “Made In Taiwan”. There is no connection with Mudlen End except the uncanny “resemblance”. My friend David Purcell purchased 2 pomander type models, the other, not shown here, was a likeness to Mudlen End #22, David tells me that when it arrived, ironically, it was in 22 pieces !! he noted that the walls of the model were very thin.
Another “uncanny resemblance” to certain Mudlen End models are these Sulleys models below. Sulleys started producing models later than Mudlen End and the likeness to these Mudlen End models is cause for thought !
‘Around The Corner’ cottages
These models are blatant ” knock offs”. Most of the Mudlen End collection was simply copied by a pottery in the U.K. and marketed in the U.S. as “Suffolk Cottages”, a fairly low and unethical thing to do. The page ” The late 70’s” shows a flyer of the Around The Corner models and you can clearly see the majority of them are simply copies of Mudlen End models.
May 2020 : These arrived on Ebay recently and I do not recall seeing these before in these colours. Again they are just copies of my fathers work, I still find it abhorrent that someone would just make moulds from another potters work, not even trying to replicate them with their own skill, but just to make copies and of course profit. The base stamp on these just read made in England. The underside photos show a certain shimmer and it looks as if they are actually made from porcelain.
An unusual aspect with this set is that they are presented in the same type of box that Mudlen End actually used. I believe that the boxes were originally intended for shipping wine through the post and it was only the partitioning pieces that needed to be made to fit the cottages into the box nicely. I believe the idea came from a customer in the United States. So how these fakes came to be in a Mudlen End box is cause for thought !