topographies of the obsolete

The remarkable thing about Stoke is the obselescence of the post-industrial landscape in which the populated parts of these towns are still nestled. Between the chippy and offi you pass an old packing warehouse, two bottle kiln burial sites and a Victorian indoor swimming pool with the windows smashed through. There’s the echo of a pre-Thatcher flourishing economy that died a hard and now mummified death as if the sliphouse was used only yesterday. Skeletons of warehouses and shop floors stand, and crumble around those who have chosen to still call Stoke home.

Working in the pots is nothing abnormal here. But the irony of how competitive the title of ‘ceramic designer’ would be in East London amoungst Turning Earths finest, in comparison to the very real and very disdainful flash of personal trauma that glints over the eyes of the man, down at The Old Wheatsheaf in Tunstall, who held that same title for decades here in Stoke feels like a tragedy.

Coming back from College, our favourite route home is over the Burslem hill – when we drop down over the other side there’s a glimpse of a view across the city. Punctuated between two ruins, on one side a bordered up ceramic workshop and the other a grade II listed building that was once the Roman Catholic Church of St. Joseph that burned down in 1983, leaving only the pillared facade as its remains. This daily glance over the beloved town, finding beauty in its abandoned framing, has become a ritual of paying our quiet respects to the city to which we owe so much.

The ceramic industry in the UK would be nothing without Stoke. The globally renowned Staffordshire slipware wouldn’t exist. Supplying China Tea sets internationally to royalty and civilians alike, purveying pottery across the world for decades. The beautiful and glorious echo of what once was a roaring, breathing landscape of fire and smoke more akin to a clutch of dragons, paving the way for industrial ceramics, can be heard rippling through the cold crisp air when you stop and listen closely enough.