Ghost (2023-2024)

Neil Brownsword is an artist, researcher and educator, including Professor of Ceramics at Staffordshire University. His research into the legacy of deindustrialisation in North Staffordshire's ceramic industry has had a wide cultural impact, through reinvigorating associated post-industrial spaces and endangered industrial crafts. Neil’s career in ceramics began as an apprentice at the Wedgwood factory in the mid 1980’s as a modeller and designer before he entered into Higher Education, graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1995.  

His practice involves rediscovering and repurposing remnants of the industrial ceramic production of now defunct factories. Global mass production has meant many historic ceramic factories in Stoke-on-Trent have been unable to sustain UK production costs and consequently a significant part of the area’s economy, skill-base and identity has been lost over time. Following the closure of many of these factories, the artist has sought to salvage the discarded rubber moulds, originally used to create plaster moulds for production, that have been abandoned and forgot about. In the past these moulds would be transferred from one factory to another, but when these companies shut down permanently the moulds would be defaced to prevent them from being used again.   

In Ghost (2023-2024), Brownsword uses these marred moulds to create new forms, hinting at their previous existence, while becoming objects in their own right. He creates groupings of these forms and presents them together in large scale installations. In doing so, his work becomes thought-provoking reflections on notions of functionality, beauty, and legacy.  

Brownsword’s accompanying film elaborates these concerns through a temporal montage. Composed from footage collected across Stoke-on-Trent’s ceramic landscape - alongside archival material captured during fieldwork at the Wedgwood factory (2003–4) - the work juxtaposes fixed-camera observations of vegetation reclaiming derelict industrial sites with the close choreography of hand, tool, and material that once underpinned ceramic production. Through these layered visual registers, the film foregrounds the embodied knowledge that sustained the industry and considers the paradoxes of creation and destruction, permanence and transformation.  

The acquisition of Ghost is a significant and foundational addition to the Holburne’s growing collection of contemporary ceramics, which began with the acquisition of In Time by Edmund de Waal in 2024. The expansion of contemporary ceramics builds on the rich collection of historic ceramics in the Holburne collection which span from the 8th century to about 1900. The founding collection of Sir William Holburne’s varied collection of, primarily 18th and 19th-century European porcelain, includes some world-class pieces, and a wide range of factories and styles are represented. The particular strengths of the collection are the English pieces, especially the Chelsea factory pieces and the figures dating from 1765 to 1775. Other English factory pieces from Worcester, Wedgwood, Chelsea, Bow and numerous other factories have been added through recent acquisitions.  

(Text by Eleanor Powlesland, Curator, The Holburne Museum, Bath)

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