Famous Pottery Museums

Famous Pottery Museums

Items made from pottery, ancient artefacts and modern forms of this popular art can be viewed at various museums around the world.

Gladstone Pottery Museum

The Gladstone Pottery Museum is in Longton in Staffordshire and is a working museum and is like those used in North Staffordshire during the Industrial Revolution.  The museum has two kilns and around 50 bottle ovens.  Visitors to the museums can explore the kilns, the engine house, slip room and workshop for saggar making.  All aspects of clay making are shown, such as throwing, moulding and decorating.  Visitors can also visit the gallery that shows how the tile originated and the history of earth and water closets and sanitary ware.

Jackfield Tile Museum

This museum is administered by the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust and is located in Jackfield, England in a World Heritage Site, where the Industrial Revolution was born.  It is housed in a tile factory, where Craven and Dunnhill produce tiles.  The museum tracks the history of the British tile from 1840 to 1960 and is one of the oldest production centres of ceramics in this area.  Collections at the museum include the tiler William de Morgan, and various other tilers.

Spode Museum

Located in Stoke-on-Trent this is where Josiah Spode established his pottery enterprise in 1744.  He succeeded in formulating Bone China.  By 1820 the factory, which was then owned by his son, became the largest and employed 2 000 employees and had 22 ovens.  The museum has a collection of ceramics spanning 200 years of Spode ceramics including pieces that had been made for Royalty, Great Exhibitions and simple domestic ceramic items.  It is considered the largest collection of Spode items and also includes an archive of paper documents and photographs together with watercolour images of patterns used since 1800.  Antique potter’s tools and machinery are also on display of which some go back to 1800.

CLAY Museum

This museum of ceramic art is in Denmark and houses some of the finest ceramic pieces and crafts, which include a Royal Copenhagen plate that is 235 years old.  The museum has undergone a transformation from a small museum in an old villa to a larger more modern building and has an above and underground section.  Many important exhibitions of ceramic artists have been on display and their website has details on current exhibits, as they change as often as online betting offers.

National Museum of Australian Pottery

This museum is in Holbrook in New South Wales and has over 1700 items of domestic Australian pottery from 19^th and 20^th century and includes teapots, jugs, water filters and bottles together with a large collection of colourful and decorative pottery items.  Visitors can view works from Jonathan Leak who was a convict and are the earliest examples of Australian pottery and were discovered in Sydney during an archaeological dig in 2007.  The museum has a continuous programme of exhibitions and details can be found on their website.