Spode Under the name 'Spode Ltd' the same factories and business was continued after 1970. In 2006, the business merged with Royal Worcester. The merged company entered administration on 6 November 2008. The brand names and intellectual property were acquired by Portmeirion Group on 23 April 2009. On 23 April 2009, Portmeirion Pottery purchased their rival Royal Worcester and Spode brands, together with some of the stock, after they had been placed into administration the previous November. The purchase did not include Royal Worcester or Spode manufacturing facilities. Many items in Spode's Blue Italian and Woodland ranges are now made at
Royal Worcester Corset Company Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2009 when Brooklyn Museum moved its costume collection in order to reduce expenses. Contemporary Worcester playwrights Virginia Byrne and Kallin Johnson, of Notre Dame Academy, debuted their fictionalized musical "Royal Worcester Corset Company" in 1993, to commemorate the women who worked at the factory. Royal Worcester Corset Company The Royal Worcester Corset Company, was founded as The Worcester Skirt Company by David Hale Fanning in 1861 in Worcester, MA, and first specialized in making hoop skirts. In 1872 the company changed its name to the Worcester Corset Co., to reflect its change of direction from