The Lost City of Stoke-on-Trent

Author: Rice, Matthew

Brand: Frances Lincoln

Edition: 1st Edition

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Number Of Pages: 152

Release Date: 07-10-2010

Details: About the Author From humble beginnings, working a kiln set up in the bathroom of a squat she was living in, Emma Bridgewater has built up her eponymous pottery design business over the last twenty five years to a turnover of £ 8m. All of her ceramics are made in a nineteenth century factory on the Caldon canal in Stoke on Trent. She is married to Mathew Rice, and they collaborate on pottery designs. Emma and Matthew live in Oxford, but retain a home in Norfolk. Matthew Rice is a painter, designer and writer. He is the author of Village Buildings of Britain (Little Brown), to which Prince Charles contributed a foreword. He lives in Norfolk with his wife, the potter Emma Bridgewater. Product Description This is a song for Stoke: a fanfare for one of the great cities of the world's first industrial revolution; a lament for the bottle kilns and pot banks, the terraces and mansions that were thrown up or carefully planned to house a global industry and then torn down in the 1960s; and the ballad of a remarkable city - how she was born, how she grew and behaved as a big, bold grown up and how she crumbled as she grew old but, surprisingly, never died. This is not a guide book but an invitation to explore and discover a (deeply flawed) treasure trove Matthew Rice's detailed - and often funny - architectural watercolours are the basis of this book, but those bones are fleshed out with a narrative of the place: the towering figures of the eighteenth century, Wedgwood, Spode and Brindley; the geological underpinning of coal and clay that fixed its position; the trade with America with cargos mapping the great marches west across the prairies of the New World; the reports of unspeakable humanitarian horrors that sent a thrilling shudder through the drawing rooms of Victorian Britain and the changes those reports brought about; and the sad decline and mismanagements that all but destroyed the city after the second World War. The foreword is written by Matthew's wife Emma Bridgewater, whose first visit to Stoke twenty five years ago inspired her to start a business that still employs over one hundred people in a Victorian factory in the heart of the city. Review A delightful book for anyone with an interest in Stoke on Trent. It is a true celebration of all that Stoke has been and what Rice hopes it will be in the future. --Ceramic Review This charming book, illustrated throughout by the author's wity and informative watercolours, is a howl of protest at what has been done to Stoke in the past, and a call to arms to save what remains. --House and Garden Mr Rice's Osbert lancaster-ish drawings record the neglected Victorian architectural jewels whose proud preservation he advocates. Stoke, hollowed out by industrial decline, is regarded as a dump by many in nearby Birmingham and Manchester. Mr Rice is a posh bloke from down south. Sometimes it takes an outsider to point out that the local under-acheiver is not as dumb or ugly as sneering neighhbours say. --Financial Times

EAN: 9780711231399

Languages: English

Binding: Hardcover

Item Condition: UsedLikeNew