The Potteries - Stoke-on-Trent

Wedgwood

Josiah Wedgwood was a pioneer in the making of pottery. He experimented a lot and invented several new techniques and materials, which made his business a top supplier of royalty for example. The fine translucent bone china is world famous.

The Wedgwood factory has moved several times and is now located outside of Stoke, but very near to the canal. The factory complex has a museum, an expensive shop, a factory outlet and several restaurants and tearooms. But the highlight of our visit was the factory tour, which was extremely interesting and very hot as there are firing kilns everywhere. Sadly they didn't allow photographs inside the factory.

The self-guided factory tour allows visitors to see all stages of production from the first firing of the clay to the multiple stages of glazing and painting and firing and firing again and again. I was surprised how much is actually still done by hand in the production of the china. Some designs are printed by specialised printing machines in multiple colours, but other designs are transferred from a type of decal onto the surface by hand or even hand painted. It's not surprising that the Wedgwood china is so expensive!

Wedgwood Museum

Art outside the museum

Josiah Wegdwood statue

The factory seen from the canal

Dudson Museum

Dudson is not a household brand. They make ceramics and china mainly for the hospitality industry. However, they have won lots of prizes for their pieces as the proud keeper of the museum explained to us. The main reason why we went to see this museum was that it was located inside one of the old bottle ovens. The museum keeper was very pleased to see us as she said she doesn't get very many visitors. She gave us a fantastic tour.

It's also worth mentioning that Dudson donated the original factory buildings to the council, when they moved their factory elsewhere. The old factory buildings now house charities and other community services. It is great that it was possible to preserve the old buildings in this way.

This is the Dudson bottle oven. In the heyday of pottery making using these coal fired kilns, there were thousands of them in and around Stoke.


Dudson bottlen oven

Some Dudson figurines and clock

This technique and material is called Jasperware

Inside the oven

Stoke Pottery Museum

Of course Stoke has a big museum of everything to do with pottery.


Pottery museum with a frieze reminding of Soviet celebrations of workers

Wedgwood cauliflower theme from the 1800s

This milk jug is massive

One of the more hideous applications of china

Don't sit on this stool!


Stoke Town Impressions




Statue of a steel worker

Inscription on steel worker statue

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