A way with clay

Most cultural tourists, apart from the Japanese, skirt the six towns of Stoke-on-Trent.  They are wrong. The bottle kilns have tumbled and the smoke-ridden skylines are no more. Yet museums teem with quality. And remaining pottery firms disclose glimpses of the design and craftsmanship admired throughout the city’s history.

The founding father of Stoke’s global pre-eminence was Josiah Wedgwood, perhaps the most talented all-rounder among British industrial revolutionaries.