Jemma originally trained as a mechanic, but after a nasty accident with a glass door which almost severed her right hand when she was 21, she ended up spending time around the workshops in the pottery – and is now an amateur historian who knows more than anyone about its history, craft, machinery and decorative patterns.
Among its many riches, Middleport boasts the largest collection of historic moulds in Europe – more than 17,000 of them, dating back 150 years.
“The Victorians had a jug or pot for just about everything, and we’ve kept every single design,” says Jemma. “We still use a lot of them now. Just not always for the purpose intended.” Oh, really? “Yes, they made a lot of hospital-ware, such as bleeding cups. There’s not much call for footbaths now, but we use that mould to make bread bins. A local carpenter makes a wooden lid – the Americans love them, they like big items. And our cookie jars were originally leech jars.”
Not quite the slithery image you have in mind as you reach for a chocolate chip, but still. The mould designs are copied by hand. It’s highly specialised work – not that the self-effacing mould-maker John Machin, who’s been at Middleport for 30 years, would let you say that.
He first models the item for a cast, sculpting it from a lump of plaster on a wheel, a process that might take two days for a simple jug, or a week for a teapot, with each part – spout, body, handle – modelled separately. And what happens if you make a slip near the end?
“Well, you start again,” he says bluntly.
Traditionally, this job has required a seven-year apprenticeship, so the prospect of finding new people prepared to learn the skills is daunting. But the new investment will ensure they are passed on. It means Middleport will continue to offer almost 70 careful workers a refuge from the call centres of Stoke-on-Trent, turning out some 5,000 pieces of blue-and-white, maroon-and-white, patterned and plain ceramics a week – half of which are exported.
It’s that blue and white patterning, or at least the method by which it’s applied, that really sets Middleport apart. It’s one of the few remaining potteries in the world to use the hand-applied tissue-transfer technique perfected by Josiah Spode in 1784.
It’s quite a thing to see in action: white tissue paper is passed over an engraved roller covered in cobalt dye, then sheets of the blue-and-white patterned paper are torn off and slung on a glorified washing line so they can be reached by the ''transferers’’. Fragments of patterns – borders and motifs – are then snipped, with scissors, off a sheet, stuck by hand onto a pot that’s been fired once (it will be fired twice more before it’s finished) and rubbed smooth of creases and bubbles. The tissue is later washed off, leaving the ink on the clay.
“You’ve got two hours to use the tissue before the ink’s too dry,” says Bridgette Dix, surrounded by bits of blue-and-white paper covered in motifs of a pattern called Asiatic pheasant – the most popular one sold here.
Bridgette’s been doing this since she was 17 and has been at Middleport for 23 years. “It took me about seven years to get to this job. It used to be called being a journeywoman. You started off holding the prints, nothing more, just that. Then each journeywoman would have an apprentice who would do the rubbing and also cut the prints from the tissue. Only the journeywoman actually applied the prints.”
All the times I have picked up a blue-and-white patterned mug of tea, it has never once occurred to me to think that someone has had to match up the ends of a border stuck on the inside of the rim, or to consider the fact that each one is very slightly different.
How does Bridgette know where to cut the pattern so that she has the right length?
“Prince Charles asked me the same question when he visited. You just do.”
And can she identify a piece that she has transferred? Is there any distinctive sign?
Bridgette makes a sucky-in face. “I don’t like half-leaves. Some will cut the border halfway through a leaf. I don’t. It doesn’t look good.”
And the most common mistake? She rolls her eyes. “Upside down.”
Tissue transferers today are not required to go through quite such a long apprenticeship; they are sat down and taught the job rather than left to pick it up more gradually through experience and observation.
I’m not quite sure where Keith Flynn – a kiln-placer I run into, leaving the tissue transfer room – learnt the sort of graceful balance that would be useful in a silver service waiter. Like a man in a Laurel and Hardy sketch, he nimbly runs up and down the stairs, using just one hand to carry a wooden plank stacked with pots to the next kiln.
Have there been many nasty accidents?
“Not really. But it would be a problem if you lifted that teapot off… [because of] the balance.”
It’s not just these livelihoods and precious skills that will be saved, but also the glory of the Grade II listed building. Thanks to the Regeneration Trust, the largest of its magnificent fecund-looking bottle ovens (out of use since the Clean Air Act was passed in the Fifties), as well as the original drying tower and chimney, will all be preserved.
Some parts of the building will be transformed into show galleries and workshops, and the current workspaces will be repaired, restoring to Middleport Pottery and to the people of Middleport the glory they deserve.
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