THE PAST:

The pig story begins in 1982 while I was attending a tradeshow in Birmingham. I was busy promoting all of my new ranges when over the loud speaker came the announcement " Would Paul Cardew please report to the main office". I had no idea that at that moment was I about to be given the opportunity to model what would become one of the most famous family's in the UK.

The team at Natwest had been talking about starting a new savings campaign to encourage children to save and keep money in their accounts. They knew they would have to offer a special kind of gift that would appeal to and encourage children to do this, as the last thing children would care about are interest rates. The team told me that they had come up with the idea to create a family of 5 pigs, which children would receive if they could save and keep money in their accounts over a sustained period of time. The idea seemed like it should work and all that was needed was the right looking family of pigs to attract the nation. I guess that is why I was contacted, I was already modelling wacky and highly collectable teapots and considered myself to be the very best at what I did and, luckily it would seem that the team at Natwest must of thought the same, as they picked my small production company " Sunshine Ceramics" based at Exmouth in Devon to help get the project off the ground.

I began sculpting each member of the family and wanted each of them to have their own personality and also be very in touch with the era. The results were as follows:

Woody: The youngest member of the family
Annabel: The daughter / St Trinians
Maxwell: The eldest son / Named after Robert Maxwell
Lady Hillary: The Margaret Thatcher
Sir Nathaniel: The father and head of the family

After final approval of my completed sculpted family, I began production on the quantities required by Natwest of the first pig to start the campaign in January 1983. However the official launch was in December 1982 and I needed to produce 400 completed sets for this. Because of the nature of the campaign it meant that each new family member would be available 6 months after the release of the previous pig. The quantity of Woody predicted to be required in the opening 6 months period was 100,000. This quantity if it was correct would mean that the campaign would be a huge success, It would also push production at Sunshine Ceramics to its maximum, as this would be a very large number to produce for any UK ceramic manufacturer.

Nobody expected what was to happen in the opening 2 weeks of the campaign, the Television advert that was used to try and raise the profile of the campaign obviously had the desired affect and more. In the first 2 weeks of the campaign the entire 100,000 Woody's that was predicted to be enough for 6 months, were required for new children's savings accounts that had already been opened. This amount of new accounts immediately meant that this was destined to be the most successful campaign for any bank in UK history. At the same time it would also mean the end of Sunshine Ceramics involvement in the campaign that it had helped start.

Natwest now had a major problem on their hands, They realised the campaign had become bigger than originally planned, which meant the team were faced with the new problem of keeping thousands of children around the country happy by making sure Natwest kept up with demand. Sunshine Ceramics were not a big enough company to produce the increasing required numbers of pigs and, Natwest had not given an official contract to them for production of the pigs either. This meant the bank had the authority to move production to another supplier for any reason to complete the campaign. With this in mind they started talks to find a different supplier to solve the problem and eventually a solution was found. The answer was the biggest ceramic moneybox producer in the UK (Wade Ceramics).

As a result of these discussions production was moved to Wade Ceramics in Stoke-on-Trent within the first few months of the campaign being started. In order to make production quicker Wade Ceramics had the original family, sculpted by Sunshine Ceramics re-modelled to meet their own mass production requirements. These alterations now meant that Wade were ready to meet the ever increasing demand in numbers for the pigs. It also meant that they were not producing the original family designed for the campaign. Wade put their own company back stamp on the bottom of each pig they produced to differentiate between the two versions. At this point there were 2 factories at different ends of England producing the same family of pigs for Natwest.

In July 1983 Sunshine Ceramics completed their own pig contract, the end of production meant that the Devon based company had produced only 100,000 Woody's and only 400 complete sets of the family. The campaign however continued for a further 5 years with Wade producing in excess of 5,000,000 pigs in total. A large proportion of these pigs made were Woody. However, the number of completed sets of the family made by Wade is expected to be in the 100,000's as opposed to only the 400 completed by Sunshine Ceramics.

In 1998 Wade ceramics were approached by Natwest to create a new member of the family for a new savings campaign aimed at children. This new campaign would require each child to invest a total of £1000 in a savings bond to be eligible for the new family member. Wade had the new member of the family later to be christened as "Cousin Wesley" modelled by Ken Holmes. The start of the new campaign in 1999 was a very small affair compared to the previous one in 1983. The small-scale launch and the high investment required to obtain the pig meant that Wade only produced around 5000 of Cousin Wesley in total.

THE PRESENT:

More recently in 2005, I contacted Natwest about creating some new modern style pigs to be launched through their branches once more. The new children's savings team were intrigued at the thought of the original sculptor of the family in 1982 and themselves working together on a new project again. After several discussions and over one year down the line, the first pigs to be released by the original partnership of 1982 were chosen and in March 2007, a new savings scheme that required children to commit to a small saving £10 per month for a full year was launched. When opening a new account with Natwest and choosing this option to save, children would be presented with a welcome pack that contained a voucher to obtain 1 of 2 brand new "Paint your own Piggybanks". The 2 options available for children were a footballer pig aimed at the boys, or a fairy pig for the girls. Each pig would come undecorated in a box, which would also contain the necessary brush, paints and varnish for children to decorate themselves. The idea behind these particular style pigs was to try and encourage children to still have hands on experience in ceramics, something that as a modeller means a lot to me. This savings campaign and the pigs are still available to date in all Natwest branches.

In July of 2007 Natwest contacted me again about releasing the first gloss-finished pig for 8 years. The new pig was to be used as a promotional item for the "Natwest Cricket Series" that takes place once a year. The obvious result was a cricketer pig that came in the full Natwest strip worn by the cricket team. Natwest only had 500 of these new pigs manufactured to give away as competition prizes.

With December 2007 marking the official silver anniversary of the original family. I am making 2500 complete Sunshine Ceramics sets of the family available to the public for the first time in history. The sets will be hand made at the now based Bovey Tracey factory in Devon. Each set will have its own limited edition number; a back stamp and a certificate of authenticity to celebrate the event will also be included. To mark this very special birthday for the family, each pig will have silver incorporated into the original decoration.

I have also created a new family member which will be given away free with each silver edition set. The details of this new pig are being kept secret at this time. However full images will be released to the public on the 24th November 2007. There will only be a limited edition of 2500 of this new family member to coincide with the set and each pig will have its own edition number on the base.

THE FUTURE:

There have been various illegal fakes of the pigs produced over recent years, most of which have been the mass produced and well known Wade versions. The production of these fakes has seen the collectable price fall on the various auction sites around the world. To try and help spot these fakes, websites such as www.piggybankpage.co.uk have been created to make information and images available to the public. This has helped to cut down the amount of fakes being reproduced and also given important facts concerning the numbers produced by the 2 companies, which obviously determines how collectable they really are today.

There is no question that low production numbers mean that goods will increase in value at a much faster rate on the open market. That is why the original 400 sets I produced in 1982 are the most collectable on the market today, however, as mentioned earlier these sets were not available to the general public, so do not come up for sale very often. To give as many of you as possible a chance to own one of the new sets, I will be limiting the silver anniversary set to one per customer. You can reserve your set from the 1st November and you are also invited to see the sets being hand made at my factory from the 1st December; exactly 25 years after the original sets were first produced. This is a chance for you to be part of history and also own one of tomorrow's antiques today.

They touched the hearts of millions of children in the 80's and are now as close to our hearts as ever. Who knows what they are destined for next? Whatever the weather "The Sunshine Ceramics" family of pigs are here to stay.