WEDGWOOD'S didn't really register with me until I saw Fred Halfpenny throwing a vase on television during one of those regular intervals in the 1950s.

Watching Fred manipulating his little hill of clay fascinated me and no doubt millions of others. It gave Wedgwood's a national platform, though the BBC must have been pleased for its new channel to be associated with a household name.

Although I'm sure Wedgwood's head thrower would have been delighted with the new museum, it strikes me that Fred would have had many tales of his own to tell about life on the factory.

I never spoke to him, but over the years I have listened to stories from a variety of 'pottery ladies' who worked at Wedgwood's and elsewhere.

Some of the tales of goings-on at the potbanks are not suitable for repetition in a family newspaper. Why? Ask anyone who worked in the industry as a young man and ran the gauntlet in a workshop full of women.

However, Wedgwood's had a reputation for looking after its workpeople even at Josiah's original factory at Etruria, in spite of it being ancient and unhealthy.

I was told that the works incorporated a large bath house because most homes didn't have a bathroom. The six baths were used on alternate days by women and men during the dinner hour. It was dirty work for everybody at Etruria, particularly for those who worked in the clay.

Another tale I heard concerned four women who sat together after breakfast and took snuff. One of them wiped her mouth on one shoulder and her nose on the other. She never made a mistake.

According to my elderly informant, even in 1932 there were rumours that the Etruria works might close when the Depression was at its height.

Apparently the situation was saved by a big order for beakers from Cadbury's, who gave them away with Bournvita.

It was normal for short time to be worked from March to May when the St Lawrence River was frozen, preventing exports from reaching their destinations in America.

I was also reminded that there were no paid holidays in those days. The workers put sixpence or a shilling into a weekly holiday fund.

Most of the workers wore wooden clogs, which were still in use in the 1940s after the move to Barlaston. A former Lord Mayor told me she wore red ones herself and clumped about Stoke Station in them while waiting for the train.

This prominent female also recalled that the Barlaston factory provided workers with a mid-morning snack of bread and dripping at a halfpenny a round.

She and everyone else talked about the lightness and cleanliness of Barlaston after working at the old place in Etruria.

Commendably, the management kept the dust down at the new factory. The china clay department rarely had visitors because they might take in dirt on their shoes.

However, I was surprised to learn that smoking was banned in that workshop. Why? because cigarette ash shows up on china clay when it's fired.

Even the Wedgwood Museum might learn more about its own past from the old hands.