Moulds Middleport Pottery V McGarvey cc-by
The following is a revised extract of my presentation "The Challenge of Re-evaluating Intangible Cultural Heritage in the UK’s Capital of Ceramics" at the Beyond Preservation: Re-evaluating Intangible Cultural Heritage in the UK Ceramic Industry symposium that was held at the Potteries Museum and Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent on 16th October 2021, as part of the British Ceramics Biennial.
Follow the links below for the full presentation and script:
Revised Extract
Value: the regard that something is held to deserve; the importance, worth, or usefulness of something;
Values, valuing, valued: consider something to be important or beneficial
Heritage is not always beautiful, we instil our own beauty depending on the relationship we have with it, value is subjective and influenced by many factors, such as place and people. In my Ph.D. research I am trying to answer the following questions how can we:
- Address the challenge, of acknowledging, industrial heritage within authorised definitions of intangible cultural heritage?
- Qualify the intangible cultural heritage of industrial ceramics when we are distracted by valuing the object?
- Engage the local community in defining and communicating their intangible cultural heritage?
I am still unravelling the complexities associated with these questions. The questions extend to the legacy of our heritage and the young, for our heritage is theirs too. How do we encourage them to go beyond playing and making with clay, to being curious about how everyday objects are made, rather than just focusing on the object itself? To see the value of the worker that makes the object together with their embodied skills.
“It always worthwhile to live in a district where people are making things of beauty and this is compensation for the grim smile of the six towns”
Geoffrey Bemrose Curator of Hanley Museum 1931-1961
I must first make it clear that I am a biased researcher, that has developed my own objectified values about Stoke-on-Trent and its heritage, values that I need to challenge and disrupt. I was born in a terraced house in Brindley Street in Middleport (1st picture this Middleport today) in 1967. I lived in a semi-detached house in Highlane, from the age of 2-19, which looks down on Burslem, I think the houses were built to get people out of the smog, although I have no memory of the smog. I shopped in Burslem, went to Burslem library, which was in the Wedgwood Institute. My dad was a chartered accountant at the Michelin and then he moved into the church and became a curate at Christchurch in Tunstall. My mum was a nurse and then a housewife. These are my relationships with the tangible. My paternal grandparents had worked in the pottery industry briefly at a young age, my grandad as a saggar maker or carrier my grandmother on the production line gilding. My paternal great grandma moved to Glasgow to skill up Glaswegians in the ceramics industry. My maternal grandmother had a chip shop then an oatcake shop in Middleport, feeding the pottery workers. My brother worked on a potbank for a brief amount of time, my best friend’s dad was head mould maker at Woods, the boys I used to hang around with as a teenager worked at Sadlers and support Port Vale. I am a member of the turnover club. However, my knowledge of the pottery industry is very much framed and limited by the tangible, appreciating a place and its history, the protection of bottle kilns and decaying factories is far less demanding than understanding the language of making.
But I am not the only one. Academic and heritage researcher Laura-Jane Smith says that “Much of our understanding about the past is framed by the material” and goes on to say “heritage is not only about the past and material things, but it is also an act of communication and an act of making meaning of the present” Smith has created a concept Authorised Heritage Discourse to define heritages pre-occupation with safeguarding and protecting aesthetically pleasing material, sites and places so that they can be passed onto future generations for their education to forge a sense of common identity with the past. She says that these preserving practices have led to people and institutions legitimising what should be kept for safe keeping. One institution being UNESCO. According to Emma Waterton (2006) what is defined as heritage that needs to be safeguarded, is contextualised in John Ruskin and Willam Morris’s philosophy of authenticity and aesthetic with little recognition for the industrial workplace and an absence of the working class.
UNESCO like Historic England uses the list to identify what heritage needs to be safeguarded Having a place on a heritage list it is thought, can lead to social and economic investment and collective protection, although as we have seen Price and Kensington Factory in Longport (which I have discussed in a previous blog Price and Kensington Teapot Works, demolition? But it's listed) this is not always the case. However, listing even if it does not provide physical safeguarding, can facilitate documentary preservation, even if the object cannot be displayed or is sadly lost. UK is a signatory of UNESCO’s World Heritage Convention, for safeguarding tangible heritage. The industrial sites represented are Ironbridge Gorge, Derwent Valley Mills, The Forth Bridge and Saltaire, sadly not The Potteries, or any ceramics industrial heritage site. UNESCO lists now extend to the preservation of intangible cultural heritage, traditions and living expressions. The UK and the US have not signed up to the 2003 convention, which is also not representative of industrial skills. With respect to UNESCO we could question whether the absence of industrial skills means that they are not valued equally, we could ask if the reason the UK has not signed is because 19th century Pugin and Ruskin critiques of industrialisation, still have an influence on the present.
Rear Price and Kensington Pottery Factory Longport V McGarvey cc-by
Front of Price and Kensington Pottery Factory Longport V McGarvey cc-by
Value as a word can be a noun or verb, something is important or useful, or something you appreciate. Within the case of heritage Laura Jane-Smith is asking us to question whose value. According to Chris Johnston (2017) heritage values can be triggered or embedded in things also in stories and memories, also value is not fixed it may change over time and will vary between individuals and groups. Randall Mason (2002), says that the process and methods of understanding and making sense of value, may not be strictly historic but may be cultural and symbolic. Johnston has suggested a movement away from value judgements to social significance, connecting heritage with identity and shared memory. Significance requires the involvement of the non-expert to help explain the significance. For, example, Neil Brownsword’s in his installation Externalising the Archive at the BCB 2019, used moulds from Spode. It could be argued that the value of the mould and its social significance cannot be limited to the authorised expert its true value and significance is realised by the language of the skilled worker, that can transform the object from inanimate to living.
Externalising the archive Neil Brownsword VMcGarvey cc-by
“Anonymity is part of the beauty of work, but also a reason craftsmanship is underestimated”
Ezra Shales Academic
We could question whether it is easier to establish the value of the tangible but does the anonymity within the object and the ambiguity make valuing intangible cultural heritage more challenging. We need to ask questions about value. Preservation is wrapped up with what we think is worth keeping, and there is also the challenge of articulating value to those that control discourse, if the existing language of heritage is associated with describing the material object to an audience, can be incongruent to the complex language of making. Also, if the person involved in the practice is anonymous and is secondary to the material object, the detail of the process cannot be unearthed. In addition to this according to Fredheim and Khalaf argue that social value and communal value are often side-lined.
Smith and Akagwa (2008) question polarising the debate between intangible skills and tangible the object. However, Harvey (2001) says not attempting to with define intangible cultural heritage, can lead to the continuation of the Ruskin/Morris, authorised heritage discourse, that excludes the aesthetical contribution of the industrial working class.
Maybe we should ask is it possible to develop a model of social significance by defining value within an industrial context and combining with social significance, the pairing up the expert with the layperson, so each has an ideological shift, and moves away from the authorised definition to reauthorise the definitions. In this relationship shifting, the expert may not always be the heritage expert, the expert may be the person with the skill, the layperson in the community. The heritage expert may be able to adopt a facilitative role, assisting with engagement, communication, and acknowledgement.
References
Elliot, G., (2004) Potters: Oral History in the Staffordshire Ceramic Industry. Leek, Staffordshire: Churet Valley Books
Fredheim, L.H. and Khalaf, M., (2016) The significance of values: heritage value typologies re-examined. International Journal of Heritage Studies, 22(6), pp.466-481.
Johnston, C., 2017. Recognising connection: social significance and heritage practice1.
Mason, R. (2002). Assessing values in Conservation Planning: Methodological issues and choices, in de la Torre, Marta, ed. 2002. Assessing the Values of Cultural Heritage: Research Report. Los Angeles, CA: Getty Conservation Institute.
Shales, E., (2017) The Shape of Craft. Reaktion Books.
Smith, L. and Campbell, G., 2017. The tautology of “intangible values” and the misrecognition of intangible cultural heritage. Heritage & Society, 10(1), pp.26-44.
Smith, L., (2006) Uses of heritage. Routledge.
Smith, L. and Akagawa, N. eds., 2008. Intangible heritage. Routledge.