NEIL BROWNSWORD: COLLAGING HISTORY

摘要

Neil Brownsword left school in 1987, aged sixteen, to work on a youth training scheme at Wedgwood as a tableware modeller. He later went on to a degree in ceramics and then an MA at the Royal College of Art. Having worked alongside highly skilled workers at Wedgwood, he is acutely aware that those skills are only just surviving. Coitaging History is a paean to those workers, a celebration of Stoke's place in ceramic history and a cry for the recognition of a dying industry. In 2004, Brownsword approached me as director of an archive that records interviews with craftspeople, to assist him with a number of Wedgwood workers whose skills are threatened by job losses. These recordings form an integral part of the exhibition, arguing that 'all these wonderfully able people now in their fifties with no prospect of transferring this unique knowledge to anything else are left packing shelves in the glut of supermarkets which are now built upon once prevalent and historic sites of manufacture.