Ceramic tableware, the cups, plates and saucers we use every day, is unusual in one respect - each piece bears an identifying mark which tells a story. They're rarely given a second thought: they are on the bottom of plates because the important aspect is on the top - the decoration – but there is a fascinating story to be told from looking at the overlooked, the things we simply take for granted. This project aims to make us re-examine a familiar aspect of our lives and see it in a new way, and to be visually compelling in its own right.

Made in England begins where industrially produced ceramic began: in the pottery towns of Stoke-on-Trent. An art work in mosaic is to be installed in the entrance to the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Hanley, which houses a collection of ceramic of international importance, and receives visitors from all over the world.

The marks on the backs of plates -- known in the trade as ‘backstamps’ -- inadvertently convey a social history of England, and ways in which the English have seen themselves, encompassing technology, classicism, empire, nationhood and the pastoral. The name of the project is taken from these stamps. Ceramic was not marked with the country of manufacture until the nineteenth century. American legislation required that ceramic sold in the US should be marked first ‘England’ and then ‘Made in England’.

This history of the stamps is rich with different registers; by examining the names of the various lines of tableware, one can see the changing nature of their appeal to women -- ideas about nationhood (Lord Nelson Ware, Royal Albert, Crown Ducal, Churchill) and empire (Empire Ware, Colonial Village) are replaced in the early part of the twentieth century by names with a more pastoral appeal, a nostalgia for the English countryside (Riverside, Hedgerow, Roses to Remember, Tudor Village).

Fixing the Made in England mosaic wall at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent (click for larger image)

In the sixties and seventies industrially-made ceramic mirrors an interest in the arty and handmade (Kiln-Craft, Studio Ware), the glamorous and cosmopolitan (Black Velvet, Manhattan) and moves via the specifically female (Hostess Tableware, Geisha) to a contemporary idea of a place for the man in the kitchen (Jamie Oliver’s new ‘Big Daddy’ plate for Royal Worcester for example). You can trace technological development by looking underneath your cereal bowl -- the story of the ‘bone’ in bone china for example (which involves a macabre story of the bones of Native Americans), or the ‘hand engraved under glaze’ to ‘microwave and dishwasher safe’. But alongside the official story told by the names of the lines of tableware -- from ‘Colonial Village’ to ‘Homespun’-- are traces of people who made these goods, the thumb print of a painter, the test stroke of the brush, numbers counting out how many pieces had been made in a shift or a day.

Ultimately the aim of the project is to look at the everyday in a local, a national and an international context. The products of the ceramic industry have a particular meaning to the community of Stoke-on-Trent, thousands of whom have spent their entire working lives in the industry, and many of whom have recently been made redundant as the industry contracts under pressure from the more competitively priced products of the Far East -- particularly China. But curiously the highly skilled workforce is not alone in being displaced by the retooled Chinese industrial giants -- the traditional Chinese ceramic towns are also withering, and there are fruitful and supportive links between the two communities. The history of ceramic, more familiarly known as ‘china’, is one which cannot be seen simply in a national context: the word tells you about a trading history.

The project in detail

There are four parts to the project:

A mosaic wall, now installed in the entrance to the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent, made from backstamps donated by the public. This will soon be open to the public - check our news section for the latest

A website, an encyclopaedic record of all the backstamps we are given, together with an illustrated narrative of the people involved and a story of the times in which the tableware was made. This is due to go online in June.

Community workshops family history, digital stories, photographs of local people at work or at home, ‘Make your Mark’ sessions, where individuals make backstamps representing how they see themselves, and pattern making and mosaic making sessions. There are also workshops in local schools.

An exhibition of the development of the project, to take place at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery (and a show of print and digital media at the gallery of the University of Staffordshire.)