English wallpaper manufacturing company founded in 1840 in Darwen, Lancs, by Charles potter (1802–72). In 1839 Potter & Ross, a calico-printing business in Darwen, patented the first successful power-driven wallpaper-printing machine using engraved copper rollers. It was developed by their foreman, Walmsley Preston (1815–71). In 1840 Potter and Preston left the firm and set up business with Potter’s two brothers, Harold Potter (b 1806) and Edwin Potter (b 1810), as C., H. & E. Potter at Belgrave Mills, Darwen. Charles Potter’s son John Gerald Potter (1829–1908) became a partner in 1849, and the firm, styled as C., E. & J. G. Potter, and then as C. & J. G. Potter (1853), continued as a family business until 1899. In 1840 Preston developed a surface printing machine in which metal cylinders were replaced with wooden rollers, thereby producing a much clearer print. By the 1850s designs of floral sprays on a pin-wheel or striped background were being printed in 12 colours. The process continued to be refined; in ...