History

The Staffordshire Potteries is the industrial area encompassing the six towns – Tunstall, Burslem, Hanley, Stoke, Fenton and Longton – that now make up the city of Stoke-on-Trent. The Potteries became a centre of ceramic production in the early 17th century, due to the local availability of clay, salt, lead and coal. Hundreds of companies produced decorative or industrial items.

 

Techniques

 

 

Local forms

 

 

Sub-crafts

• Mould making – 1 maker at Wedgwood
• Modelling – 3 makers at Wedgwood
• Throwing – 1 maker at Wedgwood
• Turning
• Press moulding
• Slip casting
• Pressure casting
• Jiggering and jollying (turning flat and hollow forms respectively using jigs)
• Figure making and sprigging
• Flower making
• Sagger making – 0 makers
• Ground laying
• Copperplate engraving, tissue transfer and printing – 3 makers
• Gilding – including raised paste and jewelling
• Engine turning (including dicing and rouletting) – 1 maker at Wedgwood
• Piercing – 1 maker at Wedgwood
• Patésurpaté – 0 makers
• Agate marbling – 0 makers
• Acid etching

 

Issues affecting the viability of the craft

• Ageing practitioners – many are beyond retirement age.
• Some of the potteries employ a token workforce to demonstrate the heritage of the skills while outsourcing the majority of their production to low-wage economies in other countries. This can give a misleading sense of the health of the crafts.
• Some of the current practitioners have been kept on as demonstrators by the Gladstone Pottery Museum, keeping the skills alive but in a precarious state due to reliance on public funding in place of a sustainable market.

 

Support organisations

• Clay College
• Gladstone Pottery Museum
• Dudson Museum
• Etruria Industrial Museum
• Spode Museum Trust Heritage Centre

 

Craftspeople currently known

• Wedgwood
• Spode
• Middleport Pottery
• Royal Stafford

 

Other information

 

 

References

• thepotteries.org