ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how much the many thousands of working-class Britons like Charles Shaw working in the pottery industry learned from their workplaces about the ancient Greeks, Romans and Etruscans whose artefacts informed theirs. The popularity of classical designs remained steady, whereas alternative crazes waxed and waned. The picture of uniformly drunken, mutinous and diseased pottery workers fails, however, to accommodate the evidence that they were better educated than their equivalents in many other industries. Pottery workers’ ability to study ancient art formally, rather than by absorbing information during working hours, was slow to emerge. The workers in the Potteries themselves then began to agitate for a local school of design, and in 1845 the Hanley Mechanics’ Institute applied to the Somerset House authorities for assistance. Entertainments on classical themes could certainly be seen: a poster advertising performances at the Royal Pottery Theatre in Hanley during the 1850s includes forthcoming performances of T. C. King’s drama, Damon and Pytheas.
