The Turner family of potters was active in Staffordshire, England 1756-1829. Their manufactures have been compared favourably with, and sometimes confused with, those of Josiah Wedgwood and Sons. Josiah Wedgwood was both a friend and a commercial rival of John Turner the elder, the first notable potter in the family.
John Turner the elder (christened 7 June 1737, St Nicholas Church, Newport, Shropshire – 24 December 1787) was apprenticed in 1753 to the Staffordshire potter Daniel Bird. By 1756, he was established in a partnership with R. Banks, at Stoke-on-Trent, at a factory which has since been absorbed into the Spode group. In 1759 or 1762, he relocated to Lane End (now part of Longton). Nothing is known about his education; but he knew sufficient French to write his formulations in that language, perhaps as a defence against industrial espionage. The earliest piece reliably attributed to him is a 1762 teapot. In 1775, he installed a Newcomen engine at his pottery. In 1780, he was one of the founders of the New Hall Works at Stoke. About 1780, he discovered a vein of fine clay (called "peacock marl") at Dock Green or Green Dock, Edensor, Derbyshire, which he used to make a wide variety of wares of a "cane" colour. He also made blue glazed pottery similar to Japanese porcelain. He was appointed potter to the Prince of Wales in 1784, and some of his wares are marked with the Prince of Wales's feathers.
John the elder married Ann Emery on 15 October 1759. They had three sons and three daughters; among whom were William (1762 – 5 July 1835) and John the younger; he made them partners in his firm about 1780, and they continued it after his death.
Little is known of John the younger. William had been in Paris during the French Revolution, and arrested, and escaped with his life only by the intervention of the British ambassador, Earl Stafford. On 19 January 1800, the brothers were granted a patent for the manufacture of a new kind of stoneware, which has been called "Turner's patent". In 1803, William was a Major in the Longton volunteers. In 1805, the patent rights were sold to Spode; in 1806, the firm was declared bankrupt, allegedly in part because of the turmoil caused by the French revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.
William continued in business until the factory was sold in 1829. His bust, by George Ray, is in Stoke-on-Trent City Museum.