Items from the Spode Collection feature in external exhibitions
We lend items from the Spode Collection to feature in exhibitions staged by fellow museums
The Spode Museum occasionally lends items from its collection to fellow museums to feature in specific exhibitions. These have included the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Fairfax House in York, The Gladstone Pottery Museum, Stoke and the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Fairfax House: Consuming Passions, Luxury Shopping in the Georgian Period
The exhibition explored the world of luxury consumption and Georgian polite shopping in the eighteenth century. Focusing on luxury objects and commodities – such as those required to furnish, fill and decorate homes in the latest taste, to clothe and accessorise, to entertain or simply satisfy the desire for the novel, a significant component of the exhibition will look at the retail experiences and shopping practices of wealthy Georgian Society. Taking its cue from the Fairfaxes, who were discerning customers and from whose household Fairfax House were fortunate to have a rich archival depository to draw upon, the exhibition examined the broader retail landscape of Georgian Britain as well as that of burgeoning provincial centres of polite society.
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Plate rim samples at Fairfax House
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Trustee Janis Rodwell at Fairfax House
The Victoria and Albert Museum: Transfer Printing at Spode 1800 – 1900
The invention of transfer printing around 1750 revolutionised ceramic decoration. At its best, the technique allowed the application of sophisticated designs – which previously would have been laboriously hand painted – at a much lower cost per unit.
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Transfer printing exhibits at the V&A
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Transfer printing exhibits at the V&A
The Gladstone Museum
The 18th century Spode throwing wheel is currently on exhibition at the Gladstone Pottery Museum in Stoke on Trent. The power for the thrower was provided by a young child turning the large wheel in the foreground. The power is transferred via rope to the thrower at the other end. Following the installation of steam power at the Spode factory, from 1802, throwing wheels and other machinery were powered by steam. Although it is likely that some hand powered wheels were still in use hence the survival of this wheel.
The Victoria and Albert Museum: Blue and white: British Printed Ceramics
Research for this exhibition began in 2013 with visits to the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery, the Wedgwood Museum and the Spode Museum Trust in Stoke-on-Trent to explore their collections of blue and white. Working with the curators Miranda Goodby, Claire Blakey (PMAG), Director Gaye Blake Roberts (Wedgwood) and Spode Museum Trustees Paul and Kath Holdway the V&A identified a fabulous selection of ceramics to feature alongside the V&A collections.
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Italian Pattern Garden Seat
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Items selected for the V&A
Ashmolean Museum: An Elegant Society: Adam Buck, Artist in the Age of Jane Austin
The exhibition and monograph on Adam Buck’s work, bought to the attention of a wider audience how influential he was as an artist during his own time and his elegant portraits of royalty and officers and charming illustrations of Georgian life and manners of Regency society.
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A pair of New Shape French Jars hand painted with "Hibernia in a jig " after Adam Buck
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Teapot Stand and Bute shape teacup printed with P.348 from a Spode Copperplate
