Josiah may finally be returning home
MASTER potter Josiah Wedgwood could be set for a return to the site of his original factory – in sculpture form.
A brick sculpture of Wedgwood's face, which took pride of place within a floral display at the Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival of 1986, has been hidden away in storage for years.
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COMING HOME? The Josiah Wedgwood sculpture which was display at the Stoke-on-Trent Garden Festival of 1986.
But plans have now been drawn-up to bring it out and display it on the front lawn of the Moat House Hotel, on Festival Way, Festival Park.
The plans came about after a committee was set up to decide a place for it to go.
Various suggestions were made – including Burslem town centre and a roundabout on the A34 at Trentham – but committee member councillor Derek Capey, said Festival Park was the most popular option.
He said: "We all felt people would see it there so it was a good place."
The three-metre sculpture was briefly put on show at an exhibition at the Royal Show, in Stoneleigh, Warwickshire, in 2007, but has spent most of the past 23 years in storage at Festival Park.
If plans submitted to Stoke-on-Trent City Council are passed, the sculpture will be viewable from Festival Way.
Mr Capey added: "I was quite upset when I found out it had been put away for that amount of time and we have worked very hard to come up with a new place for it to go.
"Wedgwood is a wonderful name in the city and people all over the world know it so it is important that we keep things like that on view.
"It isn't just an ordinary statue like the others that we have got, it is unique."
Josiah Wedgwood was born in Burslem in 1730 and opened a plant at Etruria in partnership with Thomas Bentley in 1769.
Wedgwood's home, Etruria Hall, which dates back to the same year, lies next to the hotel and is now used as a conference centre.
Historian Fred Hughes, who was also part of the committee, said: "The proximity of Wedgwood's first factory is huge to the evolution of industry in North Staffordshire.
"And the sculpture is unique because it is made out of sources that mirror so much of our industry and that is brick and clay.
"I think it will become a tourist attraction in itself because people still come here to see where Wedgwood lived and worked."
A decision on the plans is expected within weeks. The sculpture needs some restoration work but it is said to be minor.
3 Comments
by Tony Boulton, Grapevine Texas
Thursday, April 16 2009, 4:53PM
“Whatever you might think of this sculpture, it is a piece of art. I think Josiah would appreciate its originality. But the writer of this article needs to research his facts. Wedgwood's "original factory" was in Burslem, not Etruria.”
by Keith, Stoke
Thursday, April 16 2009, 2:25PM
“There was also so much that was fortunate about the National Garden Festival. That it was, and still is I understand, the most successful of all the National Garden Festivals (NGF). It was good value for money and it bought in lot¿s of tourist pounds. It freed-up land that otherwise would have been too expensive to regenerate. It cleared the way for the current day Festival Park. I usually find that the people who complain the loudest over the NGF were the ones who never visited.
As for Wedgwood, art, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. I find it difficult to understand why the population of Stoke-on-Trent who, after all said and done once created beautiful works of art as diverse as Jasper ware to Clarice Cliffe, object to art and criticise it so strongly.
I fail to understand, by the way, what being a Christian has to do with either the NGF of a sculpture of Josiah Wedgwood.”
by Mark Edward Brayford, Chesterton
Thursday, April 16 2009, 10:35AM
“Oh dear - what short memories some people have. There was so much that was unfortunate about the 1986 Garden Festival (not least the ticket price for those who did not enter "over the fence"), but I am sure many will remember all the comments about this so-called "sculpture", which is naught but a pile of bricks, and an exceedingly poor portrait, to boot, of Josiah Wedgwood, who was a devout Christian. It is true that he built his nearby house and factory from brick, but such is true of most of us (St Paul makes this point in more than one of the Epistles, of course) and it is hardly a cause for commemoration. Perhaps this offensive concoction of bricks should be painted in the distinctive and traditional Wedgwood colours, or be left where it is, out of the gaze of Christian people.”