Photo Archive: Three Ladies Admiring A Bottle Kiln, Gladstone Pottery Museum, Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, c.2007.

Tags

bottle kiln, Gladstone Pottery, Gladstone Pottery Museum, Industrial Heritage, Longton., Museums, Pottery, Stoke-on-Trent

This one of my favourite photographs.

It has been so long since I visited the Gladstone Pottery I’ve forgotten where I was standing when I took this photograph, but I appear to be looking down from a not inconsiderable height! I’m probably stood on some stairs, because I can’t see myself leaning out of a window.

If you would like a photograph with a better view of one of the Gladstone Pottery’s famous bottle kilns there is a link to one here, which I posted back in April: Photo Archive: Gladstone Pottery Museum, Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, c.2007.

 

Photo Archive: Gladstone Pottery Museum, Longton, Stoke-on-Trent, c.2007.

Tags

bottle kiln, Gladstone Pottery, Gladstone Pottery Museum, Longton., Pottery, Stoke-on-Trent, Tile, Toliet, Victorian.

I love the bottle kilns of the Gladstone Pottery for three reasons. Firstly: I live in a world of mostly square and rectangular brick buildings, so they are something out of the ordinary for me and I’ve always found the bottle a very pleasing shape. Secondly: They are an industrial wonder of the Victorian period and something worth preserving, in my opinion, as much as any other relic of Britain’s industrial heritage. Thirdly: As one of my old art tutors once told me, “Form follows function”. It does the job and it looks pleasing to the eye (although, I’m sure they didn’t look so pleasing when there were hundreds of the things on the go belching out goodness-knows-what into the air).

The Pottery is brilliantly preserved and the site and the site was a joy to explore (or at least it was back in 2007, I haven’t been back since). The site also incorporates an impressive toilet exhibit and tile collection; not to me missed.

The Gladstone Pottery Museum webpage: http://www.stokemuseums.org.uk/visit/gpm/