Qualla: Wedgwood Institute

Wedgwood Institute: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AtticTapestry, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Wedgwood Institute should not exist where it does. The facade is Venetian Gothic, popularised by John Ruskin, modelled on the Doge's Palace, and crusted with twelve terracotta panels of the months, twelve mosaic zodiac signs by the Venetian glassmaker Salviati, and another ten terracotta panels depicting the stages of making a pot. The building sits on Queen Street in Burslem, in the heart of the Stoke-on-Trent Potteries, and it stares back at the soot-darkened brickwork of the surrounding streets like a foreigner who has been here long enough to belong but never quite blends in. Burslem built it on public subscription in the 1860s, named it after Josiah Wedgwood, and put a free library and a School of Art inside.

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Image: AtticTapestry | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wedgwood Institute: Gladstone Lays a Stone

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Steven Birks, CC BY-SA 2.0. On 26 October 1863, the Chancellor of the Exchequer William Ewart Gladstone arrived in Burslem to lay the foundation stone of a building that had been entirely funded by public subscription, with an estimated cost of £4,000. Four thousand pounds of working-class pottery-town mone...

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Image: Steven Birks | CC BY-SA 2.0

Wedgwood Institute: Kipling's Father Designed the Frieze

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 14GTR, CC0. The basic design was by an architect named Nichols, but the elaborate decoration that defines the building was the work of two men: Robert Edgar and John Lockwood Kipling. The second of those names will sound familiar. Lockwood Kipling was the father of Rudyard Kipling, and he em...

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Image: 14GTR | CC0

Wedgwood Institute: The Long Decline

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ronnie Macdonald from Chelmsford, United Kingdom, CC BY 2.0. Like the institute it modelled itself on in Venice, the Wedgwood Institute proved hard to maintain. The art students left in 1905, when Burslem School of Art got its own building directly opposite. The library moved across the road in 2008 and the council closed it about eighteen...

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Image: Ronnie Macdonald from Chelmsford, United Kingdom | CC BY 2.0

Wedgwood Institute: A Slow Rescue, Still in Progress

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy Mabbett, CC BY-SA 4.0. Restoration work began in February 2015, funded by grant money and coordinated by Stoke-on-Trent City Council with the Prince's Regeneration Trust, now reorganised as the King's Foundation. The plan was to make the building habitable again for start-up businesses. In March 2024, ...

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Image: Andy Mabbett | CC BY-SA 4.0