As a lump of damp clay spins frantically on the potter’s wheel, I tentatively ease my fingers around it, hoping it will soon resemble a pot. Thankfully, there are two instructors leading the six of us on this hour-long taster session, to offer guidance and, in my case, rescue a collapsing pile of clay. I glance at the others’ creations – elegant vases and bowls – and then at mine, which looks more like a volcano. Still, I’m impressed with myself for creating something resembling pottery, and it’s been fun to get stuck in.
I’ve wanted to try throwing a pot since moving to Stoke-on-Trent 14 years ago, and here at World of Wedgwood, I’ve finally given it a go (taster session £32.50). Channel Four’s The Great Pottery Throw Down is filmed at Gladstone Pottery Museum in Longton, one of the six towns that make up Stoke-on-Trent. World famous for its ceramics, Stoke was awarded World Craft City status last July, and 2025 brings a year of events to celebrate 100 years since it became a city. As an honorary Stokie, it seems like the perfect time to discover more of my adopted hometown.
World of Wedgwood is one of the city’s leading attractions, and still produces Wedgwood ceramics. I join a guided tour of their V&A Wedgwood Collection, where our guide, Julia, talks through some of the key items of the 3,000 on display. “Born into a family of potters, he was a local lad,” she says of Josiah Wedgwood, who set up the Etruria Works in the city, revolutionising how factories created products on a mass scale. Naturally, there are lots of ceramics on display, such as the distinctive neoclassical designs in blue jasperware and the First Day Vase that Wedgwood himself made.
There’s a local joke that you can tell someone’s from Stoke if they lift up crockery to check the stamp on the base to see where it was made. “Yep, it’s a Wedgwood,” says my husband as he checks his plate after we’ve finished our gnocchi in the Lunar restaurant. A large moon hangs in the centre of the elegant room – Wedgwood was part of the Enlightenment group known as the Birmingham-based Lunar Society.
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