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(The Challenge of)

Re-evaluating Intangible Cultural Heritage in the UK’s Capital of Ceramics

Vicki McGarvey, Postgraduate Research Student, Staffordshire University

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How can we:
Address the challenge, of acknowledging, industrial heritage within authorised definitions of intangible cultural heritage?
Qualify the the intangible cultural heritage of industrial ceramics when we are distracted by valuing the object?
Engage the local community in defining and communicating their intangible cultural heritage?

All of which cannot be fully answered today

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“It always worthwhile to live in a district where people are making things of beauty and this is compensation for the grim smile of the six towns”

Geoffrey Bemrose Curator of Hanley Museum 1931-1961

“It always worthwhile to live in a district where people are making things of beauty and this is compensation for the grim smile of the six towns”

Geoffrey Bemrose Curator of Hanley Museum 1931-1961

I must first make it clear that I am a biased researcher, that has developed my own values about Stoke-on-Trent and its heritage, values that I need to challenge, disrupted. I was born in a terrace house in Brindley Street in Middleport (1^st picture this Middleport today) in 1967. I lived in a semi-detached house in Highlane, from the age of 2-19, which looks down on Burslem, I think the houses were built to get people out of the smog, although I have no memory of the smog. I shopped in Burslem, went to Burslem library, which was in the Wedgwood Institute (2^nd Picture). My dad was a chartered accountant at the Michelin and then he moved into the church and became a curate at Christchurch in Tunstall, the third picture is Tunstall Park. My mum was a nurse and then a housewife. These are my relationships with the tangible. My paternal grandparents had worked in the pottery industry briefly at young age, my grandad as a saggar maker or carrier my grandmother on the production line gilding. My paternal great grandma moved to Glasgow to skill up Glaswegians in the ceramics industry. My maternal grandmother had a chip shop then an oatcake shop in Middleport, feeding the pottery workers. My brother worked on a potbank for a brief amount of time, my best friend’s dad was head mould maker at Woods, the boys I used to hang around with as a teenager worked at Sadlers and support Port Vale. I am a member of the turnover club. However, my knowledge of the pottery industry is very much framed and limited by the tangible, appreciating a place and its history, is far less demanding than understanding the language of making.

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“Much of our understanding about the past is framed by the material”

“heritage is not only about the past and material things, but it is also an act of communication and an act of making meaning of the present” Laura-Jane Smith (2006) about the past and material things, but it is also an “act of communication and an ct of making meaning of the present

But I am not the only one. Academic and heritage researcher Laura-Jane Smith says that “Much of our understanding about the past is framed by the material” and goes on to say “heritage is not only about the past and material things, but it is also an act of communication and an act of making meaning of the present” Smith has created a concept Authorised Heritage Discourse to define heritages pre-occupation with safeguarding a protecting aesthetically pleasing material, sites and places so that they can be passed onto future generations for their education to forge a sense of common identity with the past. She says that these preserving practices have led to people and institutions legitimising what should be kept for safe keeping. One institution being UNESCO. According to Emma Waterton (2006) what is defined as heritage that needs to be safeguarded, is contextualised in John Ruskin and Willam Morris’s philosophy of authenticity and aesthetic with little recognition for the industrial workplace and an absence of the working class.

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UNESCO like Historic England uses the list to identify what heritage needs to be safeguarded Having a place on a heritage list it is thought, can lead to social and economic investment and collective protection, although as we have seen Price and Kensington Factory in Longport this is not always the case. However, listing even if it does not provide physical safeguarding, can facilitate documentary preservation, even if the object cannot be displayed or is sadly lost. UK is a signatory of UNESCO World Heritage Convention, for safeguarding tangible heritage. The industrial sites represented are Ironbridge Gorge, Derwent Valley Mills, The Forth Bridge and Saltaire, sadly not The Potteries, or any ceramics industrial heritage site. UNESCO lists now extend to the preservation of intangible cultural heritage, traditions and living expressions. The UK and the US have not signed up to the 2003 convention, which is also not representative of industrial skills. With respect to UNESC we could question whether the absence of industrial skills means that they are not valued equally, we could ask if the reason the UK has not signed is because 19th century Pugin and Rusking critiques of industrialisation, still have an influence on the present.

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From value to…

Social significance

Value as a word can be a noun, something is important or useful, or verb, something is important, or you appreciate it. Within the case of heritage Laura Jane-Smith is asking us to question whose value. According to Chris Johnston (2017) heritage values can be triggered or embedded in things also in stories and memories, also value is not fixed it may change over time and will vary between individuals and groups. Randall Mason (2002), says that the process and methods of understanding and making sense of value, may not be strictly historic but may be cultural and symbolic. Johnston has suggested a movement away from value judgements to social significant, connecting heritage with identity and shared memory. Significance requires the involvement of the non-expert to help explain the significance, above are two pictures of moulds, top left is a teaching tool to demonstrate the process of moulding making, the picture below are moulds with Neil Brownsword’s installation Externalising the archive at the BCB 2019, moulds Spode. It could be argued that the value of the mould and its social significance cannot be limited to the authorised expert its true value and significance is realised by the language of the skilled worker, that can transform the object from inanimate to living.

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�“Anonymity is part of the beauty of work, but also a reason craftsmanship is underestimated”

Ezra Shales Academic

UNESCO is a valorising instrument and is it easier to establish the value of the tangible, whereas the anonymity within the object and the ambiguity of the value of intangible cultural heritage is more challenging. We need to ask questions about value. Preservation is wrapped up what we think is worth keeping, and there is also the challenging of articulating value to those that control discourse, if the existing language of heritage is associated with describing the material object to an audience, which can be incongruent to the complex language of making. Also, if the person involved in the practice is anonymous and is secondary to the material object, the detail of the process cannot be unearthed. In addition to this according to Fredheim and Khalaf social value and communal value are often side-lined. Above are objects from my china cabinet most received when my husband’s mother died, the people who produced them apart from the last pot are anonymous, apart from Kevin Millward, which I learned about reading Ezra Shale’s book.

VINTAGE ROYAL ALBERT IMARI CROWN CHINA: Bone china 1920s: Longton http://www.potteryhistories.com/page100.html - I love the fragility the intricacy of the design – my husbands – tea set on ebay can be bought for about £100 that would £2.18 in 1920 when it was made
Widlflower Johnson Brothers 1970s Hanley Ironstone china, ironstone ware or most commonly just ironstone, is a type of vitreous pottery first made in the United Kingdom in the early 19th century. It is often classed as earthenware although in appearance and properties it is similar to fine stoneware. It was developed in the 19th century by potters in Staffordshire, England as a cheaper, mass-produced alternative for porcelain. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ironstone_china - we use this set for Christmas lunch
Nordic Blue – Meakin 1970s Ironstone: Subsidiary of Wedgwood underglazed blued painted; Eagle Pottery which transferred to Johnson Brothers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._%26_G._Meakin
Portmerion Mug - Designed by Kevin Millward;

Smith and Akagwa (2008) question polarising the debate between intangible the skills and tangible the object. However, Harvey (2001) not attempting to with define cultural heritage, can lead to the continuation of the hegemonic Ruskin/Morris, authorised heritage discourse, that excludes the aesthetical contribution of the industrial working class, leading to cultural relegation in the industrial heritage narrative as anthropomorphised machines –what do you think?

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Reauthorising heritage

The community: Bound by Clay
The artist: Neil Brownsword
The skilled worker : Rita Floyd

Living Heritage…

beyond preservation

Reauthorising heritage

The community: Bound by Clay
The artist: Neil Brownsword
The skilled- worker : Rita Floyd

Living Heritage…

beyond preservation

Maybe we should ask is it possible to develop a model of social significance by defining value within an industrial context and combining with social significance, the pairing up the expert with the layperson, so each has an ideological shift, and moves away from the authorised definition to reauthorise the definitions. In this relationship shifting, the expert may not always be the heritage expert, the expert may be the person with the skill, the layperson in the community. The heritage expert may be able to adopt a facilitative role, assisting with engagement, communication, and acknowledgement. Some refer to this as co-production, I will not discuss today whether this is an appropriate term but will only say that this term has been generated by the authorised expert and we may need to find out whether it is a term that can be owned by the skilled worker and the layperson. Within the context of this presentation, I am going to call it living heritage. Living heritage is also used by UNESCO interchangeably with intangible cultural heritage and living culture. For example this I am going to present 3 examples that go beyond the displayed object, that include the community, the artist, and the skilled worker.

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The Women of Bound by Clay

Stoke and Northstaffs Women’s Network is a voluntary group of women which come together each year to celebrate international women’s day. In 2019 they were successful in getting money from the Heritage Lottery fund for a project to celebrate the contribution of women to the ceramics industry, past and present across all aspect of the pottery industry. The network wanted to remove some of the anonymity by naming those that have been involved. We were following in the footsteps of academic Liz Hart who produced an excellent study Paintresses and Potters: Work Skill and Social Relations in Pottery Stoke-on-Trent between 1981-84. The outputs, a film, a book and an educational resource, were based on interviews with women that had worked in the industry who talked about their culture and their skills conversation focused on the working environment, the role of women, work and loss, community and creativity. This is where I met Neil and Rita, and my interest on the acknowledgement of workers and their skills began.

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Neil Brownsword, artist

Alchemy and Metamorphosis

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Rita Floyd: floral ceramic artist

Neil Brownsword Factory with Rita Floyd

Photographer Joel Fildes

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Beyond the museum

Bringing heritage to life and reauthorising value is a work in progress especially if we are engaging those people who have lived within the potteries most of their life and see the establish symbols or are new to the area and have less of awareness. I am not saying that the bottle kilned past is not important, but the continued story of when kilns moved to gas or electric is less detailed. An activity like the British Ceramics Biennial can help, although it has a focus on studio pottery, although some of the objects do link to the heritage of the area. Also, we now have the Heritage Crafts Association Redlist, which has been set-up to identify those skills which are in danger of being lost in the industry. There is further work to be done in engaging the non-expert lay person, and to help them to understand the value and social significance of the general community, to move them from audience member to advocates. Maeve Marmion in her research on community engagement and heritage, says that although heritage plays a fundamental role in creating a sense of place and personal belonging, not everyone connects with it, that we needed to move beyond expert views and emphasise personal experiences. Intangible heritage is difficult to interpret, the language of the skilled worker, is a different language to learn, it haptic and technical, but is of value and is significant.

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“focusing on the human element inherent in artefacts,

will moderate the fetishising of objects”

(Alivizatou 2006)