The first of which will be Tiles and Ceramics of the Arts and Crafts Movement. On this trip, we will travel through the western part of England and Wales where much of the clay deposits were located and therefore, where much of the producers of these products flourished.
From Manchester and Liverpool, to Ironbridge and Cardiff, we will visit the places where many astonishingly beautiful tiles were installed and still exist today – in government buildings such as the Houses of Parliament, in churches including the glorious St. Giles in Cheadle by A.W.N.Pugin, in commercial establishments and in museums. We will visit private collections of tiles and ceramics, and a few places where they were produced, such as Stoke-on-Trent. Happily the large collection of Wedgwood has recently been purchased and is being returned to the Wedgwood Museum in Stoke.
We will have fun too, visiting tile dealers and taking a pub crawl to places where amazingly beautiful tiles have been enjoyed by beer drinkers over the last century. Among the more unusual locations are a number of public lavatories.