Wedgwood Museum, Stoke-on-Trent

At the new Wedgwood Museum, the freshness of its galleries is matched by the brightness of the front-of-house staff enthusing about this latest visitor attraction to open in a depressed Potteries.

The museum was unveiled in October, just months ahead of administrators being called into certain companies within the Waterford Wedgwood group. Fortunately, the museum, as an independent charitable trust, is separate from the company whose name it bears and remains open for business as normal.

The original museum was closed in 1999 when the company created a visitor centre to entice people with the lure of factory tours, throw-your-own pots and shopping opportunities.

There was little space left for historic artefacts, so the Wedgwood Museum Trust spent the next nine years planning a purpose-built venue to exhibit many of the 7,500 artefacts and 75,000 archives in its care. The entrepreneurial Josiah Wedgwood would have approved: prior to the credit crunch, the whole complex was expected to attract more than 100,000 visitors a year.

The new museum offers a chronological romp through the life and times of the eponymous Wedgwood, as well as the achievements of the company he founded.

The 14-year-old Josiah was apprenticed to his eldest brother to learn the art of making pottery. An attack of smallpox prevented him from undertaking physical labour, so he dedicated himself to understanding the craft of pottery rather than throwing it.

The three galleries have been designed by Ivor Heal and bear his trademark object-rich displays with clean, uncluttered set-works. The result is an agreeable cross between a social history museum, with its story of a local boy made good, and the Victoria and Albert Museum's Materials and Techniques galleries, which focus on methods of production.

The nature of the subject matter lends itself to a wealth of motifs and design devices that are used to punctuate the narrative. Enlarged details of objects provide the background for key information panels while sketches and jottings from Wedgwood's original notebooks form the backdrop to many showcases. These are particularly effective when juxtaposed with their associated wares.

A sample from an 18th-century pattern book is used as the centrepiece for a display, which makes the link between fashion and business. Wedgwood realised these books served a dual purpose: as an accurate record of the designs available and as a "pretty amuzemt. [sic] for the ladies" to browse through before choosing their tableware, thus encouraging them to part with good money.

To the rear is a wall-mounted showcase crammed with plates
of different designs, while to the side is a digital interactive where visitors can zoom in on details. This multi-layered approach to interpretation is repeated throughout the gallery and provides a sense of the breadth and depth of the collection and the massive amount of subject knowledge available.

I particularly enjoyed the use of early 20th-century films. These help transport visitors back to a past that is close enough to be within living memory but distant enough to no longer exist. One film demonstrates how transfers were created (by men) and applied to ceramics (by women).

The two-minute silent loop conveys how labour was divided between the sexes as well as showing the different stages of production and the skills required.

To one side of the screen is an engraved copper plate once used to make intricate transfers, now mounted to allow visitors to feel the almost imperceptible lines scored on its surface. To the other is a showcase containing tableware with the transfers applied.

The only confusing part of this grouping is the fact that the film is located within the 17th-century gallery, presumably to demonstrate how techniques have changed little over the years, but it appears oddly out of context.

Wedgwood was a product of the industrial revolution. The perfection of the green glaze, as used on the iconographic Cauliflower service, was his first significant achievement and an indication of things to come.

He was relentless in his experimentation and painstakingly recorded every result. Wedgwood's experiments produced trays full of test pieces and sample ceramics, each inscribed with a unique identification number and many with precise firing instructions.

A specimen cabinet with drawers full of these trays gives an insight into the mind of this polymath: expansive yet capable of paying attention to detail. Wedgwood's cataloguing system would be worthy of imitation by any modern museum.

Perhaps the museum is tripped up by the sheer volume of all this information. My imagination was captured by so many interesting facts that I later found it difficult to recall a coherent story. This may be a problem with the way my mind works, but it is also due in part to the nature of museum exhibitions that require significant efforts to reap the benefits of such an intense learning experience.

Whereas I couldn't fault any of the individual interpretive elements, I probably spent too much time interacting with them rather than reflecting on the significance of the actual artefacts.

But if I could change one thing it would be the ceiling-mounted lights, which throw awkward reflections and shadows onto the waist-high, horizontal text panels. This might be unavoidable in a refurbished gallery where tight budgets mean existing equipment has to be reused, but it is inexcusable in a new building.

Maria Blyzinsky is a freelance exhibitions consultant and founder member of The Exhibitions Team