Charles Vyse (1882 Staffordshire - 1971 Deal, Kent), was an English studio potter, noted for producing colourful figurines of characters seen on London streets.
Charles was part of a Staffordshire family that had traditionally been involved in the pottery industry. He was apprenticed to Doulton in Burslem at age fourteen as a modeller and designer, and trained by Charles Noke. Henry Doulton saw his potential and steered him to the Hanley Art School where he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London. At the RCA he studied sculpture: his years there were from 1905 to 1910, including a travelling scholarship to visit Italy in 1909. In 1911 he became a member of the Royal British Society of Sculptors and married Nell (1892-1967). In 1912 he studied at the Camberwell School of Art.
In 1914 Vyse executed a frieze depicting potters and miners above the entrance to a new technical college in Stoke-on-Trent (now Staffordshire University). The frieze is in Hollington sandstone, and shows the influence of the New Sculpture movement.
Doulton produced designs by Vyse in the inter-war period, for example a figurine called "Darling". However, Vyse is best-remembered for the thousands of pieces produced by a studio pottery at Cheyne Walk in Chelsea, which he started in 1919 with his wife. Here they produced figurines based on ordinary people seen in London. These slip-cast statuettes proved to be extremely popular and a number of women were employed to produce them. Their studio pottery also produced two other types of ware: revivalist oriental forms and glazes, and art deco hand-decorated functional stoneware.
