Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/07/how-cornishware-magically-gets-its-iconic-stripes.html
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Brit here. I have never heard of this stuff before today.
A quick check of its history on the wikis reveals that it was originally made in Derbyshire, which is emphatically not Cornwall. Since its reboot, some of it is made in Somerset, which is considerably closer to Cornwall, but still not Cornwall. The rest of it (most of it?) is made abroad.
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Also Brit here. I’ve never seen ‘Cornishware’ in any colour other than blue (with white stripes). Maybe I need to visit Cornwall more. 
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Cheery and brightly lit for a Imperial Roman Tin Mine, too! Or maybe, suggestive of skiffs with kerf under 10 cm., to sail casually about. It’s a thick looking stripe for the thin looking glaze…and the artisans are possibly also roboticists (wax techs? Brazil waxing known for offering landing strips, maybe Cornwall has er, navigational risk escalators?) if it’s really 90pct. stripes.
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Bought a whole 8 place set about 6 years ago (red). 30% broke 40% chipped, 30% survives.
I wouldn’t both if i were you.
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Brit here too, and while I knew of the pattern I didn’t know it was Cornish.
Possibly fun fact, the clay used at the Delft pottery in the Netherlands comes from Cornwall.
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If this stuff was really named after the sky over the Cornish sea, we’re lucky we didn’t end up with grey stripes.
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Apparently it’s not! It was originally designed and made near Burton-on-Trent. The “Cornish” bit is pure marketing.
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I guess you could call something made since the 20s “traditional”? There are many pottery styles in the UK, however, which have been manufactured for a much longer time. Most of the lines of Wedgwood and Spode would qualify as much more “traditional” (going back to the 18th and 19th centuries respectively), even though they might look newer. Or the Brown Betty teapot, that goes back to the 19th century.
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It was very popular in its day, though, enough that there were knockoffs of it- my family’s blue & white striped china was actually Swinnerton’s ‘Somerset Blue’.
Apparently it was originally made by completely coating with blue, and scraping bands of it off on a lathe.
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That’s called engine turning and is actually a quite fascinating process. The Staffordshire potters, and especially Josiah Wedgwood did some really great stuff with that in the late 18th century. The turning engines were automated in two axes via shaped cams that encoded the pattern.
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