FPS visit to the World of Wedgwood and Majolica Mania in Stoke-on-Trent

Before Christmas, Stoke-on-Trent City Council announced exciting plans to secure up to £5 million of funding for a new extension to the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery aiming to ‘promote and enhance the city’s unique cultural and heritage offer’. So if you have never visited The Potteries Museum this is a great opportunity to see the collections.

For the exceptionally keen, we will meet from 11:00 for an 11:30 am start at the World of Wedgwood, in Barlaston, meeting with Rebecca Klarner, Assistant Curator V&A Wedgwood Collection, for an introduction to the collection.

Then at 14:00 pm we will meet with Miranda Goodby, Senior Curator of Ceramics at the Potteries Museum for an introduction to the permanent collection followed by a tour of the exhibition Majolica Mania: Transatlantic Pottery in England and the United States, 1850-1915.

This exhibition, the first major survey of majolica in nearly four decades, was organized by the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in New York. This is its only UK venue. First introduced by the Minton factory at the Great Exhibition in 1851, majolica’s popularity soon meant that it was being made by numerous manufactories in England and, from the 1870s by an increasing number of American potteries. Brightly coloured and exuberantly modelled, majolica reflects Victorian interests in historical and exotic subject matter, the natural world, new food and popular culture.

Details

There are frequent trains from London’s Euston Rail Station to Stoke-On-Trent Rail Station, for example, a train leaving at 8:53 am, arrives at Stoke-On-Trent at 10:26 am.

There are taxis from Stoke-On-Trent Rail Station to Barlaston.

Admission to World of Wedgwood is free.

Lunch is not organised.

Transport from Wedgwood to the Potteries Museum is by taxi.

The exhibition Majolica Mania is £5 to be paid on arrival.

The Potteries museum is open until 17:00, and return trains to London for example are at 17:53 arriving at Euston Station at 19:27. The walk from Stoke-On-Trent Rail Station to the Potteries Museum takes about 30 minutes.

The only expense other than transport and lunch is the Majolica exhibition.

If interested, please contact the FPS administrator Kelsey Weeks (FPSmailing@gmail.com), and state if you wish to visit both sites.