John Eyre was one of the stars of Doulton’s Lambeth Studio, creating stunning exhibition vases and tile murals for the world’s fairs. He taught pottery painting to young women and was also a very talented painter and book illustrator. Towards the end of his career, he produced nostalgic watercolors of potters at work from his Doulton days.

Eyre continued to design charming scenes of Cupid and Psyche for the Minton Studio before a catastrophic fire destroyed the building in 1875. It was not rebuilt, and Eyre established a decorating studio in W.P.G. Phillip’s ceramic galleries in Oxford Street, where he taught young women how to paint on pottery. The vogue for china painting reached its peak in the late 1870s and 80s when the Howell & James store mounted annual exhibitions for amateur and professional artists, which were patronized by high society and royalty.

Doulton’s Lambeth art studio also promoted pottery decoration as a career for young women in London. In 1883, when John Eyre joined Doulton, there were more than 150 women at work in the Faience painting department producing vases, plaques and tiles. Eyre became the studio’s foremost designer of large-scale tile murals, including a series of famous potters and musicians for the International Health Exhibition of 1884 which are now in Queen Alexandra's House in London. The following year, he designed a series featuring Victorian inventors for the Inventions Exhibition of 1885, and these are now in the Café Royal pub in Edinburgh. His grand finale was a series of tile murals for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago, representing Columbus.