Folk Art and Commemorative Crockery

When you think about folk art and ceramics, you think of harvest jugs and christening mugs, coronation cups and saucers, earthenware cooking pots. The recent Folk Art in Britain exhibition at Tate Britain included some great examples. Pottery and ceramics have been used to mark national occasions, commemorate personal life events and show political allegiances. Ceramic urns have even been used from earliest times to hold a person's ashes after death. The museum has some wonderful examples with a collection that includes everyday objects and replica English Delft ware and Thomas Toft style slip ware. There's also locally produced Pinxton porcelain and examples of Wedgewood. Stoneware hot water bottles, made at Pearsons factory in nearby Chesterfield, cooking pots and water purifiers are all there in the collection. Sometimes we know who the potter was. Their signature or cipher is on the piece. More often with folk art their work is anonymous, and if we are lucky there's a thumb print in the clay, the potter's mark, connecting the past with the present.