Search Results for: Stoke - Page 1 of 24

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Stoke-on-Sea

Get inspired by summer time and the Great British holiday. Below you can find links to themed craft activities and discover some holiday souvenirs of years-gone-by.

Summer in the Collections

Holiday and summer-themed objects in our collection

Outings and Holidays

Photographs of the trips of yesteryear from Exploring the Potteries

Blog – “I do like to be beside the seaside…”

Exploring the history of some of our seaside habits

The Art of the Seaside

Enjoy a range of seaside-inspired paintings from our collections via Art UK.

Design a Kite

Design your own kite - print, colour and cut-out

Seaside Mobile

Make and hang around your house for a reminder of summer all year round.

Punch and Judy Finger Puppets

Print, colour, and cut-out your very own seaside puppet show!

CSI: Stoke

CSI: The Staffordshire Hoard | 2011 & 2013
Discover more about our CSI event held in 2011 and 2013.
CSI: The Science of the Great War | 2015
Find out more about our 2015 CSI event
CSI: The Science of the Great War | 2017
Discover more about our CSI event in 2017.
CSI: The Scientific Legacy of WWI | 2018
Discover more about our 2018 event.

Partners:

Stoke-on-Trent Young Archaeologists’ Club

PLEASE NOTE – our membership is fully subscribed, but get in touch if your child would like to be put on our waiting list.

We are looking for Volunteer Assistants to join us in running Stoke-on-Trent YAC. Find out more.

Stoke-on-Trent YAC is open to everyone aged 8–16 years. YAC clubs get involved in all sorts of activities, including visiting and investigating archaeological sites and historic places, trying out traditional crafts, taking part in excavations, and lots more.

Stoke-on-Trent YAC is based at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent. The club usually meets once a month. It is an affiliated club of the YAC network, and is run by staff and volunteers at The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, which is run by Stoke-on-Trent City Council.

Membership currently costs £24.00 per year and renews each January.

If you’d like to get involved with Stoke-on-Trent YAC, or find out more about how the club is run, get in touch with the team using the details below:

Contact: Joe Perry (Curator of Local History)
Tel: 01782 232539
Email:

You can find out more about Stoke-on-Trent YAC, and other branches, on the YAC website.

Stoke Museums launches new Website

Noticed a few changes around here? Stoke-on-Trent Museums has just launched its new and improved website. The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery and Gladstone Pottery Museum each has a new dedicated site in which you can find information about all of our upcoming events, exhibitions and blog stories from behind-the-scenes.

Please take the time to look around and be sure to let us know if you have any comments or questions about the new website.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Alice is falling down the Rabbit Hole! How many curious objects can you collect before reaching the bottom?

Watch out for Bill the Lizard!

Click/Tap the Green Flag to Start.

Use the button below to share this page to Facebook – can your friends beat your score?

Chinese Ceramic Highlights

Small porcelain dish painted with symbols of longevity and good fortune.

Qing dynasty, Yongzheng period, 1723-1735 1938.P.44

This small porcelain dish is beautifully painted with underglaze and overglaze decoration, all of which is highly symbolic. The interior shows five bats flying between a peach tree and ocean waves. The peach tree is associated with immortality and abundance. Five is a fortunate number and the colour red is associated joy and happiness. The five red bats represent five fortunes variously described as health, prosperity, wealth, happiness and longevity, as well as joy.

The combination of bats and the peach tree is particularly associated with birthdays (‘wufu-qingshou’ – ‘five bats celebrate a birthday’), while the combination of five bats and waves is a wish for great happiness (‘shoushan-fuhai’ -‘happiness like the East Sea is never ending’).

The exterior of the dish is decorated with repeated pairs of red bats alternated with peach branches, one of which has the character ‘shou’, again symbolising longevity.

The base is painted in blue with the reign mark of the Yonzheng Emperor within a double circle

This is one of a number of identical dishes commissioned to wish the Yongzheng Emperor a long life and there are examples in both Chinese and European museums.

The Yongzheng Emperor died at the comparatively early age of 56 and, while there are various stories about his death, it is generally agreed that his death was as a result of poisoning. Ironically this is said to have been through consuming too much of the ‘elixir of immortality’ which contained the poisons mercury and arsenic.

2. Porcelain dish with underglaze blue painted decoration.

Qing dynasty, Qianlong period, 1736-1795. 1938.P.136

The decoration of this dish depicts a mother and child playing in a garden, while on the rim are painted four of the eight Precious Objects: a pair of books, open lozenge, jewel and an artemesia leaf. The same four symbols are painted on the reverse. This example dates from the period of the Qianlong Emperor but the design had been known in the West since the late 17^th century, when large quantities of Chinese porcelain started to be imported into Europe by the East India Companies

This design and variations on it became very popular in England and were widely copied by potters from the mid-18^th century onwards. Porcelain factories, such as Bow, in London, and Worcester produced their own finely painted close copies, while factories, such as Spode in Staffordshire, subsequently produced printed version of the design, which they called ‘Jumping Boy’, well into the 19^th century.

3. Cylindrical porcelain mug with underglaze blue decoration

Qing dynasty, Qianlong period, c.1780 709

This cylindrical porcelain mug painted with underglaze blue decoration in an example of the type of wares being made in China for the European market in the late 18^th century. The shape, and in particular, the crossed handles with their distinctive flowered terminals, are typical of English wares. From the middle of the 18^th century the Chinese potteries were exporting such huge quantities of porcelain to Europe via the East India Companies that they were willing to adapt their output to their customers’ requirements.

The body of this mug has a raised spotted-textured ground with a blue-painted landscape with pagoda, trees and etc., in a reserved panel which is framed in gilt and has floral sprays to either side. There is additional gilding to the blue border under the rim with butterflies and flowers, and gilding to the handle terminals and rim. The gilding would have been added in Europe by a specialist decorator in order to make the mug more desirable to the customer.

4. Earthenware model of a camel with head thrown back.

Tang dynasty, 618-907AD. 1948P94

Earthenware model of a camel in buff-coloured earthenware body with orange and cream glaze, standing, with its head thrown back, on a rectangular base.

Tang dynasty models of camels serve as a reminder of the activity of foreign merchants who, for hundreds of years travelled with their camel trains to trade along the Silk Road, between China and the West. This camel is a funerary sculpture, made to accompany the deceased into the afterlife. All sorts of figures were produced from animals to human figures and models of buildings, during the period from the Han to the Tang dynasties.

Since they were made to be buried in tombs and not for export, pottery figures like these were rarely seen in Europe until the early 20^th century, when they began to be collected by individuals and museums.