Andrew also led ceramics workshops with staff and students at Wellfield Community School, while Robert Winter, ceramics technician and maker, together with CARCuos Artist in Residence, Katherine Butler, worked with Farringdon Sports Community College, Sandhill View Community Arts School and St Bede’s Catholic School and Sixth Form Centre. I worked with approximately twenty Year 8 students and two members of staff from St Aidan’s Catholic School, Sunderland. Several undergraduate students from Glass and Ceramics also supported these sessions. Each school benefited from 4 full-day workshops delivered by a maker, as well as twilight skill-building sessions for the teachers run by Robert Winter at the National Glass Centre. Many of the schools will also receive Crafts Council funding to renew or refurbish their kilns, enabling them to continue using clay in their curriculum after the project has ended.

An important aim of the scheme is to demonstrate to school students how working with clay and ceramics can lead to a viable career and each maker adopted their own distinct approach to the project, reflecting their professional and creative interests. I was keen to incorporate my involvement in the project into both my PhD research and my wider artistic practice. After consultation with Alanna Nipper, St Aidan’s art teacher, I decided to adapt the ‘Tags, Tabs and Traces’ local mapping project suggested by Clayground Collective and the Crafts Council. Our project was loosely called ‘My Sunderland, My Museum’ and the participants were invited to initially make clay stamps and press moulds from personal items and found objects brought in from home. From these stamps, a series of ‘labels’ and ‘plaques’ were created. Finally, the students made a decorated slab-built box in which they could store the original items used to make the stamps, as well as any other personal ephemera, thereby creating their own miniature ‘museum’.

During the course of the project, Marie Harrison, SMWG’s Assistant Learning Officer, led a session in the museum’s Pottery Gallery, where my students enjoyed handling a range of objects from the handling collection before being sent on a treasure hunt around the museum to find iconic images and objects connected to Sunderland. The trip ended with a sketching activity back in the Pottery Gallery. It was intended that the visit would provide the students with an insight into the varied collections in Sunderland, with particular emphasis on the Sunderland pottery, which would inform the practical work they were making in the ceramics workshops. Knowing that their work was soon to be displayed in the museum, the students certainly seemed to enjoy the trip, their only complaint being that it was too short. Some students, taken with the ‘frog mugs’ on dispay, made their own versions back at  school, using slip-trailing techniques, inspired by other items in the collection, to decorate them.

Andrew’s approach was to spend the initial sessions focusing on developing basic clay skills which enabled the students to make work inspired by the architecture of their school.  Robert and Katherine’s students produced collage-like pieces combining textures, modelled elements and surface imagery.

Detail of work made by Year 8 students from St Aidan's Catholic School, Sunderland

The exhibition opening and North East Cluster Celebration event was held on Friday 13^th July and, according to Tony Quinn, Firing Up Project Co-ordinator, was the best attended event so far. The exhibition will run until 13^th September, 2012.

Christopher McHugh is an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award PhD student based at the University of Sunderland and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens.

In a previous exhibition, Kith and Kin: New Glass and Ceramics, held at the National Glass Centre earlier in the year, I had curated a cabinet of original Sunderland pottery alongside documents from the ‘Scott archive’, a collection of paper ephemera from the Southwick Pottery (1788-1897) I had re-accessioned as part of my research. Addressing the title of the exhibition, my display aimed to highlight the family aspect of the production and consumption of Sunderland pottery, demonstrating through objects how it had often been made by several generations of the same families. I also wanted to show how it had been used to commemorate and celebrate family events like births, deaths and marriages. New ceramic work, made in collaboration with members of the Sunderland community, was also displayed in order to establish a dialogue between the past and the present, exploring how ceramic objects have and can be used to commemorate personal and wider narratives.

The Crinson Jug with added labels.

As discussed in a previous blog, Howard Forster, a visitor to the exhibition, recognising some of the documents in my display from his own family history research, contacted me and we decided to make a new object which celebrated his family history through reference to his ancestors’ involvement in the Sunderland potteries. My blog about the Crinson Jug, led to an e-mail enquiry from Sally Hyde, a British-born, New Zealand-based occupational therapist whose fourth great-grandfather, William Milburn, had also been a master potter at Southwick Pottery. Further investigation of the ‘Scott Archive’ revealed a letter addressed to the Durham Agricultural Society dated 1845 showing that William started working at Southwick Pottery in 1788 and continued for 57 years. Milburn would have been a contemporary of William Crinson and his son, Robert, who started working at Southwick in 1788 and 1817 respectively.

For my contribution to the What’s Your Story exhibition, I decided to make a further jug to celebrate this connection as well as Sally’s quest to trace her family tree. This jug, which utilises much imagery collected by Sally on her ‘journey’ has been displayed in a desk case alongside the Crinson Jug and associated archive materials relating to the Milburns and Crinsons, including the above letter, Mark Crinson’s indenture and a letter from Robert Crinson, Mark’s nephew and William’s great grandson. The Crinson Jug has been ‘updated’, by the addition of ceramic labels printed with photographs of Howard Forster, his son and grandson. Interesting for me was the process of making the Milburn Jug which was negotiated remotely through e-mail correspondence and access to Sally’s Ancestry.com guest account. Sally has written a story about her own family history research which can be viewed on the What’s Your Story? website.

The Milburn Jug

How an engagement with creativity, whether it results from tracing one’s family tree or crafting new objects, can help to define one’s identity and sense of self, a theme which has emerged through my recent ceramic practice, also appears to be a wider concern within academia and society. This is well illustrated by Sally’s experience of tracing her family history which seems to have helped her to cope with living far away from her family roots:

I was living in New Zealand and the whole process of creating the next generation started me thinking, and wanting to know about who had gone before. I have lived in New Zealand since 1986; I often feel the distance and a loss in so far as hearing family stories and family information, and this became more acute after the birth of my daughter. We visited my parents in the UK in 2000 and together with my mother began to investigate the past.

Similarly, an ability to empathise with her potter ancestor has helped to guide her own pursuit of making and collecting ceramics:

The knowledge of a Master Potter in my ancestry was great news to me as I have been working at an adolescent mental health unit as an Occupational Therapist for two years since my return to New Zealand in 2010. I have discovered a keen interest in pottery. My work is of a very amateur level, but I like to think that William guides me, and that my DNA assists too.

I don’t have any knowledge of what pieces of pottery William Milburn was involved in creating. I would love to have more information, but am not sure how to obtain this information or even know if it is obtainable. I have since purchased some Sunderland lustre ware pieces of pottery and would like to add more to my collection. I am especially interested in the pieces with a nautical theme which, for me, is inspired by my ancestors that follow from William Milburn who were sea farers. There is a family tendency to sail to foreign shores.

My intention with both jugs was to use relatively ephemeral information from digital photographs and scanned original documents to create enduring, dramatic material focal points or ‘micro-sites’ for commemoration and reflection. Family histories are often lost or not fully passed down the generations. These jugs are attempts to explore how ceramics can be used to preserve such fragile histories through a creative articulation of past and present. The degree to which translating Sally’s and Howard’s research into material objects has helped them to reflect upon their personal histories and how engaged they have felt in the creative process are perhaps questions I can reflect upon as part of my research.

What’s Your Story? offers an example of how museums can respond to the grassroots preoccupations of their visitors, empowering them to frame their own histories through the creation of dialogues between personal stories and items in the collection. The role the craft practitioner can play in the encouragement and mediation of this creativity, especially with reference to a collection, provides rich potential for innovative research. The combination of object making activities and museum display with digital participatory media leads to the possibility of the collection, the community and the artist being linked virtually as well as materially.

Did any of your ancestors work in the Sunderland potteries? Do you own or collect Sunderland pottery or do you know someone who does? If so, we’d love to hear from you.

Read more about the Crinson and Milburn families on the What’s Your Story? website: www.whatsyourstory.org.uk. What’s Your Story? Discovering Family History runs until the 27th August, 2012 at the Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens.

Christopher McHugh is an AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award PhD student based at the University of Sunderland and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens. Read more about his project at www.communityinclay.org.uk.

'Heirlooms' cabinet installation by Christopher McHugh, Kith & Kin 11 November 2011 – 19 February 2012 Curated by Prof Peter Davies and Prof Kevin Petrie Institute for International Research in Glass and Ceramic Art Research Centre, University of Sunderland. Photo: Colin Davison

My decision process regarding the development of new work for the changeover was greatly facilitated by a contingent event which occurred early in the first stage of the exhibition. Rather than undertaking a wholesale reorganisation of my cabinet display, I decided to make and add a single porcelain jug in response to an enquiry made by Howard Forster, a visitor to the first part of Kith and Kin. Mr Forster lives in Sunderland and has traced his family tree back to his third great-grandfather, William Crinson (d. 1836), who was indentured as an apprentice potter at Scott’s Southwick Pottery in 1788. Many of the other members of the Crinson family were Sunderland-based potters and Mr Forster’s research corresponds with the items of paper ephemera I displayed from the ‘Scott Archive’ borrowed from Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens described in my last blog post. For example, William is mentioned as the father of Robert Crinson in the declaration document. Mark Crinson (b. 1841), manager of Rickaby’s Pottery, named on the apprentice indenture, was Mr Forster’s great-grandfather’s brother. A later Robert Crinson (b. 1876), the potter who wrote the letter to the Sunderland Museum in 1969, was his grandfather’s brother. Further research by Mr Forster shows that Robert’s brothers, John Henry Crinson and William Stanley Crinson, served in the Durham Light Infantry during the Great War. William Stanley was injured during the conflict and John Henry was killed in action on 14^th September 1916 during the Battle of the Somme.

Crinson Jug showing John Henry Crinson who was killed during the Battle of the Somme in 1916, glazed porcelain, ceramic decals, mixed media

Detail of Crinson Jug showing Howard Forster's family tree

After meeting Mr Forster and viewing the results of his family research accumulated over fifteen years, I decided to make a jug which employed this information to commemorate the Crinson family in ceramic. Much of this research took the form of digitised original documents downloaded from family search websites and the like. The ‘Crinson Jug’ synthesises a variety of this imagery, including photographs, memoirs, military records and a family tree, as printed surface decoration. It is an attempt to materialise and dramatise Mr Forster’s family history, creating a mnemonic focal point for reflection and remembrance. Printed ceramic, perhaps more than any other medium, has the ability to preserve this kind of potentially ephemeral information in an enduring and creative manner, whilst still retaining a certain sense of familiarity conferred by our long association with clay vessels.

Detail of Crinson Jug Labels, porcelain paper clay, ceramic decals

Although the potteries which made the Sunderland pottery in the SMWG’s collection are no more, the descendants of their workers are alive and thriving in Sunderland. The next step is to create a further piece which depicts the three living generations of the Forster family – father, son and grandson. This project, although narrow in scope, provides an ‘organic’ example of small-scale grass roots engagement through creative ceramics practice and perhaps testifies to the enduring relevance of the collection to the kith and kin of contemporary Sunderland.

Howard Forster with Crinson Jug at the National Glass Centre

Christopher McHugh is an AHRC Collaborate Doctoral Award PhD student based at the University of Sunderland and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens. See more images of the exhibition here.

Kith and Kin: New Glass and Ceramics runs from 11 November 2011 to 19 February 2012 at the National Glass Centre, University of Sunderland.   Curated by Prof. Peter Davies and Prof. Kevin Petrie, Institute for International Research in Glass and Ceramic Art Research Centre, University of Sunderland.

Kith and Kin is an exhibition of new glass and ceramics which opens at the National Glass Centre on 10^th November, 2011, 6-8pm. As a Collaborative Doctoral Award student based jointly at the University of Sunderland and Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens, I have been invited by the curators, Prof. Peter Davies and Prof. Kevin Petrie, to curate a cabinet as part of the exhibition. I am presenting my new ceramic work alongside an arrangement of original Sunderland pottery. Documents from the Southwick Pottery (1788-1897), which I have recently archived as part of my doctoral research at the Museum, will also be displayed. These archive materials serve to give a voice to the people who made the pots while my new work references the original pottery collection, attempting to develop new imagery related to contemporary Sunderland. I have selected objects which address the theme of ‘kith and kin’ on several levels.

I have tried to underline that Sunderland pottery was made by families for use by families. Four generations of the Scott family were involved in the running of the Southwick Pottery and this exhibition displays pottery design notebooks used by Anthony Scott I (1764-1847) and his son, Anthony Scott II (1802-1882).  Similarly, amongst the workers, it can be seen that several generations of the same family often worked in the potteries. The declaration of non-receipt of parochial assistance, dated 1852, shows that Robert Crinson worked for the Scotts for over 35 years, starting in 1817, and that his father was also bound as an apprentice with the Scotts in 1788, continuing till his death in 1836”. A letter to the Sunderland Museum from a later Robert Crinson, aged 94 in 1969, describes how his father, James, and several of his uncles, including Mark Crinson, worked as throwers in Sunderland potteries. Mark Crinson’s indenture, showing that his apprenticeship at Scott’s Southwick Pottery began on 5th May 1858, is also displayed. The later Robert Crinson was also bound as an apprentice thrower at the Old Rickaby Sheepfolds Pottery and, in 1969, wrote:

“I am the last of a family of Great Throwers in the Trade of a Potter and claim to be the last Bound Apprentice In British Isles [sic].”

Many of the items displayed were family heirlooms which were eventually donated to, or acquired by, the SMWG. George Yearl’s pottery painting design book was donated to the Museum by a relative of his grandson, John Haswell.  Beatrice Mary Scott’s birth mug, notably not made, but possibly decorated, in Sunderland,  came from her daughter, Mrs Shaw-Hall, great grand-daughter of Anthony Scott III (1847-1897), while the paper ephemera in the ‘Scott Archive’ was also bequeathed by a Scott descendant.

The pottery displayed is of a commemorative nature, sometimes relating family events to current affairs. For example, Margaret Simpson Thompson’s birth in August 1855 is celebrated alongside the Crimean War (1853-1856) through surface design on her birth mug. The separation of family and friends through conflict is a recurring theme of Sunderland pottery and is demonstrated by the soup dish which depicts the return of a tar to his sweetheart after a voyage.

A soup dish made at the Southwick Pottery. Image courtesy of TWAM, 2011

My new work, Time Future is Not and May Never Be, takes the form of an installation of porcelain objects, and borrows some surface designs from the original Sunderland items, serving to establish links between the past and the present. Just as the Sunderland pottery commemorated personal and wider narratives, this new work attempts to show the enduring relevance of much of the original imagery by identifying similar themes in contemporary Sunderland. Some of the imagery comes from interaction with groups connected to Sunderland, ranging from soldiers to writers.

For example, Wearside-born soldiers from Third Battalion, The Rifles (3 Rifles) were approached in order to develop some new work to commemorate their 2009-2010 tour in Helmand, Afghanistan. Techniques derived from the Collections Trust’s Rethinking Museum Collections toolkit and reminiscence training also offered through TWAM were adapted to deliver an object-based reminiscence workshop. Soldiers were asked to talk about significant objects they had used or acquired while in Afghanistan. Notable examples which have inspired work in ceramic include a British Army Prayer Book, a cross, and a paintbrush used to excavate IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices). The soldiers’ commemorative tattoos  also provide powerful imagery which has been used to develop new surface decoration.

Rifleman Hiles' IED Brush

In the cabinet, contemporary ‘relics’ are juxtaposed with old items, forming a ‘shrine’ which aims to both celebrate the city of Sunderland today, while paying homage to the people in the past who used and made its pottery.

There will be an exhibition re-hang in January where I will re-curate the cabinet with more items form Sunderland Museum & Winter Gardens as well as more of my creative work.

Detail of 'The Heart of Jack Crawford: A Shrine to Unsung Heroes', a Gallery of Wonder exhibition at the Great North Museum: Hancock, by Christopher McHugh, June 2011, Photo: Irene Brown, 2011

Kith and Kin: New Glass and Ceramics, curated by Prof. Peter Davies and Prof. Kevin Petrie, runs from 11 November 2011 to 12 February 2012 at the National Glass Centre, University of Sunderland.