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2 days ago | Advertorial | Gillian Hartshorne

“In daylight it’s a plain white dome. Light a candle, and the whole street comes back.” – Enid (75) is selling the last porcelain lanterns she will ever make

For ten Christmases, Enid Machin has cast thin porcelain lanterns in the back room of her terraced house in Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, and sold them only at her chapel’s Christmas fair. But her hands have grown slower, and at 75 she has decided this will be her last Christmas at the kiln. On 12 December, Enid switches it off for good. Her final 341 lanterns are being offered online for the first time.

Burslem, December. For nine years, the same little moment has played out at the Christmas fair in the hall of the Methodist chapel round the corner. A child picks up one of the plain white domes on Enid’s table, turns it over, finds nothing special and puts it back. Then Enid slides a lit tealight underneath it – and the child goes completely quiet.

Out of the blank porcelain, a whole picture appears: a snowy street with a chapel spire, Santa’s sleigh over the rooftops, a robin on a holly branch. Glowing warm and gold, as if somebody had painted it with light.

“Where did the picture come from?” the children always ask. And Enid always answers the same way: “It was there all along, duck. It just needed a bit of light.”

A grandmother’s night-light and 36 years of moulds

The story begins with a night-light. Enid’s grandmother was a paintress in one of the old potbanks in Longton, and she had one small treasure on her bedroom windowsill: a porcelain lamp panel that looked like nothing at all in the daytime. At night, with the lamp on, a little picture of a mill by a stream appeared in it. “I’d lie in her spare bed and stare at that mill until I fell asleep,” Enid says. “I thought it was magic.”

It wasn’t magic. It was a lithophane – a very old craft, and one the Staffordshire potteries were famous for. A picture is pressed into thin, unglazed porcelain. Where the porcelain is thin, the light shines through brightly. Where it is thick, it stays dark. The picture only exists when there is a light behind it.

At 21, Enid went into the mould shop of a pottery in Longton. For 36 years she carved and cast the plaster moulds that the factory’s plates, cups and teapots were made in – until the works closed for good in 2008. “I made moulds longer than I’ve done anything else in my life,” she laughs. “I can read a bit of porcelain like a newspaper.”

The first lantern, Christmas 2016

The first lantern was never meant to be sold. It was the winter of 2016, and Enid wanted to make her husband Derek something special for Christmas: the view from their front window, the frosty slate roofs of their street and the chapel spire at the end of it.

Enid remembered her grandmother’s lamp. Over two weeks in the back room, she carved their own street in reverse into a plaster mould: the chapel, the neighbours’ houses, the fir trees, the stars. She cast it in porcelain so thin you could see your fingers through it, fired it, and on Christmas Eve she set it on the little table next to Derek’s chair with a tealight inside.

“He sat down in front of it and didn’t say a word for a long time,” Enid says. “Then he said: ‘There’s the chapel. There’s our street.’ That was the moment I knew I’d make more.”

From one lantern to more than 2,400

The ladies from chapel saw it at Enid’s house and wanted one. Then their daughters wanted one. Then people started coming over from Leek and Stone and Newcastle-under-Lyme. Over ten Christmases, Enid has cast more than 2,400 lanterns in eight designs, each with its own story: the Winter Village that started it all, Santa's Sleigh for her grandson, the Snowmen, the Angels, the Nativity for the chapel, the Robin from Derek’s bird table, the Cats for the two old tabbies that sleep on her worktable – and the Lavender Meadow, for everyone who wanted one to keep out all year round.

Not one was ever sold in a shop or online. Only at the chapel fair and from Enid’s front step – which is why, outside the Potteries, almost nobody has ever seen one.

What makes Enid’s lanterns so special

In daylight they look almost too simple: a small matt white dome on a matching saucer, with a fine relief you only notice up close. Then the candle goes in.

Each lantern is a dome of unglazed bisque porcelain, 11.5 centimetres across and 7.8 centimetres tall, sitting on its own porcelain saucer. You lift the dome off, set a tealight on the saucer, put the dome back – and the scene lights up from inside in soft gold, with real depth: the snow on the roofs glows brighter than the walls, Santa’s sleigh stands out against the night sky, every feather of the robin shows. A battery LED tealight works just as well, for a bedside table, a child’s room or a whole evening without a flame.

“People always ask what it’s like the first time they light it,” she says. “The room goes quiet. Somebody switches off the big light. And then everybody just looks at it.” No cables, no tangle of fairy lights: one small candle, and a whole snowy street glows on the windowsill while the evening gets dark outside. It is the kind of light that makes a front room feel like Christmas Eve.

“Every year one more for the windowsill”

Enid keeps a biscuit tin on the shelf above her worktable. It is full of Christmas cards from customers. One family in Hanley has bought a new design every December since 2019 – seven of the eight now stand on their windowsill, the grandchildren argue every year about who gets to light them, and this year they want the last one. Another card simply says: “Mum passed in October. Her Angels lantern was the first thing I lit in my own house.”

“That’s the part I’ll miss,” Enid says. “Not the casting. Knowing whose window they’re glowing in.”

“I’d rather stop while they still come out right”

One evening in late August, after a long day at the worktable, Enid noticed her hands were aching more than usual. She sat with a cup of tea for a long while, rubbing her fingers, and then rang her granddaughter Tegan. “I’m 75, and my hands just don’t want to keep up any more,” she says quietly. “I’d rather stop while every lantern still comes out the way it should.” So in September she planned one last big firing – and then that’s it.

She doesn’t make a fuss about it. But when she talks about this year’s chapel fair – the first in nine years without her table – she goes quiet for a moment and looks out of the window.

341 lanterns – then that’s it

On the shelves of the back room, wrapped in tissue paper in old wooden fruit crates, sit the last lanterns Enid will ever make: 341 of them – this autumn’s firing, plus every lantern she had kept back for this year’s fair. Around 42 of each design.

It was Tegan, 26, who persuaded her to offer them online for the first time. “She said: Nan, there are people in Cornwall and Scotland who’d love these and will never come to Burslem,” Enid says. She agreed on one condition: until her last day at the kiln, the price stays what it has always been at the chapel fair – thirty pounds.

“I’ve asked thirty pounds since the very first fair,” she says. “Nobody does this for the money. And I’m not going to get greedy on my way out.” The special price applies until 12 December. After that, the remaining lanterns will keep going out at the shop’s regular price – but only until the last one is gone.

What sets Enid’s lanterns apart:

What owners say

“The gift that comes out every December for the next 20 years”

Many of Enid’s lanterns were never meant for the buyer’s own windowsill. “Most people buy two,” Enid says. “One for themselves and one for their mum, their daughter, a neighbour who’s on their own this year.” A lantern for a first home. It needs no plug, no batteries if you use a real candle, it arrives wrapped in tissue paper, and it comes out of its box every December for decades.

Where can you get Enid’s lanterns?

Enid’s lanterns are only available through County Craft, a small online shop for Christmas gifts from independent makers. Only there will you get the original lanterns from Enid’s back room in Burslem. Look-alike porcelain lanterns from mass production have started to appear on big marketplaces. At first glance they may look similar, but they have nothing to do with Enid’s work.

12 December – then that’s it

On 12 December, Enid will switch off her kiln for the last time. “Ten Christmases,” she says, and looks at the fruit crates on the shelves. “That’s a good innings. I’d just like every one of these to be glowing in somebody’s window this year.”

If you would like one of the original lanterns from Enid’s final firing, don’t wait too long. The special price ends on 12 December, and with the first-ever online sale, the 341 lanterns are not expected to last long after that.

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