Going potty

The recent Possibilities and Losses exhibition at the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art (Mima) featured a giant arrangement of broken china, called Monument, by the ceramics artist Clare Twomey.

It was inspired by a pitcher pile she saw at a tile factory in Stoke-on-Trent. The broken vessels were to be ground to dust and reused by the factory. For Twomey, this was a poignant symbol of a great industrial tradition in decay, yet it also implied hope for the future.

The ending of the UK production of iconic brands such as Spode and Royal Doulton, and the financial collapse in January of Waterford Wedgwood, has produced glazed looks on the faces of those in the pottery business. But for museums and galleries, there is a resurgent interest in ceramic displays and collecting, reflecting vibrancy in a smaller, more specialised segment of a once mighty industry.

The Harris Museum and Art Gallery in Preston unveiled a £400,000 ceramics and glass space last year, while the £10.5m Wedgwood Museum, which is separate from the Waterford Wedgwood business, opened last October and won this year's Art Fund Prize. The Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) unveiled phase one of its new ceramic galleries last month.

The Possibilities and Losses exhibition (22 May-16 August), which Mima curated with Twomey and developed in partnership with the Crafts Council, brought together four artists working in clay.

As well as Twomey, it featured Keith Harrison, Linda Sormin and Neil Brownsword. Clay was also the focus of an exhibition at the Bernard Jacobson Gallery in London earlier this year, in which every exhibit was a ceramic, something virtually unheard of for a large dealer.

There seems to be no shortage of new galleries and fairs. In London, the Craft Potters Association opened a gallery at Somerset House in March. Called Contemporary Ceramics, it provides space for some of the association's 1,000 members to display and sell their work.

Somerset House is also the venue for the Crafts Council's Origin fair (6-11 and 13-18 October). The event features individual makers, unlike Collect, the council's more high-end, international fair.

But the biggest ceramics event of the year is the first British Ceramics Biennial (3 October-13 December, see box below), featuring 10 weeks of exhibitions and events in Stoke-on-Trent.

"Grayson Perry winning the Turner Prize in 2003 brought ceramics into focus," says Miranda Goodby, ceramics collections officer at the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke. "It showed that there's a lot of good work going on in the ceramics world. People are taking it more seriously as an art form."

Ancient and modern

The new V&A ceramics gallery, which has been designed by architect Stanton Williams, will display some 3,000 of its best pieces. It will feature a concise history of ceramics aimed at a general audience that will focus on key stages such as the development of porcelain in the west, of blue and whites and of tin-glaze and lustre.

Reino Liefkes, the V&A's head of ceramics, says there will be a timeline through the middle of the gallery dating from the oldest exhibit, a 3000 BC Japanese pot, through to the present day.

"This means you can make comparisons between what was going on at the same time in, say, Britain, Italy and China," says Liefkes. "Before, you had to make a 10-minute walk across the museum by which time you'd forgotten what you were comparing it with."

Phase two of the V&A's ceramics project, which will open next year, will include more than 26,000 further pieces. It is being designed by Amsterdam-based Opera, and the galleries will evoke a "behind the scenes" experience.

A small proportion of the artefacts will be interpreted, but the rest will be displayed as a study collection in large, densely packed cases. There will also be a ceramics workshop for the public to use with the help of an artist in residence.

"These new galleries will give an impetus to growing our collection," says Liefkes. "People will help because they know their exhibits will be displayed in exciting ways."

The British Ceramics Biennial aims to focus on the heritage of a historic industry based in the Potteries and to recognise the creative gene that continues to run through the area. It will feature not only exhibitions of emerging UK makers and designers, but also the work of established artists from home, such as Philip Eglin, and abroad, such as Jaime Hayon from Spain.

Guerilla ceramics

The project is core-funded by the North Staffordshire Regeneration Partnership, which wants to boost Stoke-on-Trent's profile by emphasising the cultural importance of pottery.

Jeremy Theophilus, the biennial's co-director, says he wants "to connect the city with its ceramics heritage through the breadth of contemporary practice".

In addition to exhibitions in all the region's galleries, as well as in former factories, there will be workshops in which the public will be invited to work alongside artists and designers. There will also be school projects involving bringing youngsters together with older people who once worked in the ceramics industry.

Another element is so-called "guerrilla ceramics", in which artists will develop temporary interventions in public places in Stoke. For example, CJ O'Neil will rework and decorate discarded tableware from charity shops, while Stephen Dixon will work with the Gladstone Pottery Museum in Longton to develop a participatory project using bone china flowers recovered from the old Aynsley factory.

The director of museums at Stoke City Council, Ian van Arkadie, says that museums will approach the biennial in a proactive way. "We'll be taking pieces from our museums out to the public - to sports centres, community centres and shopping centres. We're trying to use culture as a spearhead for regeneration."

The centrepiece will be the Biennial Awards Exhibition at the Potteries Museum in which the work of 27 shortlisted artists will be shown, with the winner being announced in late October after which the museum will acquire the winning exhibit.

Both the MLA/V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Art Fund give grants towards ceramics acquisitions. Last year the Art Fund and the Crafts Council created Art Fund Collect, a scheme that added another £75,000 to the pot for contemporary work. The initiative allows curators to cherry-pick works by artists and makers at the Collect contemporary art fair.

"Ceramics have not suffered from the same over-inflated prices as seen by sections of the visual arts. This is good news," says Crafts Council executive director Rosy Greenlees.

"There's evidence that people who can't afford visual art are turning to ceramics instead." The council itself has an annual acquisition budget and has some 1,400 works available for loan.

Finding sufficient space to display ceramics collections is a problem, though. The Potteries Museum has only 5 per cent of its collection on show at any one time, and is currently reviewing its collecting policy.

Collections officer Jean Milton says: "We've got to be more selective in what we take. We've got a lot of local creativity already, but we want to illustrate more of our international links. We'd like to show how China has influenced ceramics practice here and vice versa."

Contemporary craft also raises challenges for acquisition, display and interpretation. A piece depicting a woman giving birth to rabbits so upset some visitors at the Potteries Museum recently that it had to be moved to a less visible location. Then there's the problem of deciding what contemporary objects are of sufficient quality to stand the test of time.

Milton says: "It's difficult but these judgements are something that come with experience. You just get a feel for what's in fashion. Artists are influencing each other all the time."

Liefkes at the V&A agrees that experience is vital. "You look for how innovative the design and technique is. It should also reflect what's happening now and not 20 years ago. You have to read international magazines, go to lots of shows, and keep your eyes open so you can judge if something is just a whim."

According to new research by sector skills council Creative and Cultural Skills, craft generates almost £3bn for the UK economy each year, most of this from small businesses employing up to five people.

The British Ceramics Biennial will highlight the remnant of a one-time mass ceramics industry that has refocused itself on the middle and high end of a discriminating niche market, using new materials and technologies.

As the Craft Council's Greenlees puts it: "We don't just have the skills, we also have the creative endeavour and that is something interesting and exciting."

Bob Chaundy is a freelance journalist