BBC4-A Fragile History- Ceramics
Episode Two - Ceramics: A Fragile History
BBC Four
Monday 17 October 2011
21.00-22.00
The second film in Ceramics: A Fragile History series, charts the journey of Stoke-on-Trent, as a city built on clay and the heart of Britain's once world-leading ceramics empire. On the back of the new 17th-century vogue for tea, pottery in Britain exploded into a cutting-edge industry, a source of enormous national pride and an internationally renowned export.
The programme introduces the key characters responsible for putting British ceramics on the map: from Josiah Wedgwood, innovator, artist and marketing genius and Josiah Spode, who revolutionising the industry by inventing bone china, to the 20th-century ceramicists Clarice Cliff and Susie Cooper who designed ceramics that were elegant yet affordable. It also uncovers how demands for cheap labour since the 1980s have forced the closure of all but a handful of these great factories.
Comments
I shall be watching this
I shall be watching this programme on Monday with a mixture of pride and anger, pride for the all the people in the potteries that worked in this industry and put this city on the map but also anger for all the people that decimated an industry in the name of greed and cheap labour may you hang your head s in shame.
i enjoy the social history of
i enjoy the social history of these programmes , and like you bj-dj wil have a mixture of pride and anger,
ive never worked in a potbank, but did have a guided tour of Doultons on Nile St when the police organized SPACE for the 6 weeks holiday from schools (many years ago)
the potbank was a hive of activity, it saddens me to see the empty buildings & wasteland that this factory has become, and the lost community it was.
Now I wish I had gone onto
Now I wish I had gone onto one or two of the pottery firms just for a look around I have lived all my life here and never once been inside a potbank. Does a tile firm count? I knew my way around H & R Johnsons Highgate factory very well even though it was like a rabbit warren.
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