Wedgwood's craftspeople produce objects that dignify our lives daily in countless ways — here's hoping that better times lie ahead

Last week, the Wedgwood factory in Barlaston, Staffordshire, paused its production for up to 90 days. According to the official statement issued by the Fiskars Group, the Finnish company that has owned Wedgwood since 2015, ‘this short-term measure is being taken to address elevated inventory levels caused by lower consumer demand in some of our key markets. A total of 70 employees will be placed on temporary leave’. That number includes the skilled workers who produce both fine bone china pieces for the company and the Jasperware that made Josiah Wedgwood (1730–95) internationally famous and rich. Many of the methods of production for the latter are unchanged since the 18th century. Factory tours have also ceased.

The official line about this suspension is that there is nothing to worry about. Athena hopes so. Certainly, the workforce is being fully paid for its duration. Yet it is hard not to feel a little nervous, particularly against the backdrop of several years of steeply rising energy costs, which represent a massive expense in ceramics production.

Added to which, since the late 1980s — admittedly under different ownership — the company has had a tempestuous time. Not only did it notoriously neglect Barlaston Hall — which was eventually purchased for £1 and rescued by SAVE Britain’s Heritage — but it outsourced much of its work from the 1990s to Indonesia, laying off UK staff and materially reducing the perceived value and British association of its products. Then, in 2009, it went into administration and the resulting sale of the Wedgwood collection — now in the care of the V&A Museum — as a means of paying staff pension debts became another cultural cause célèbre. Hopefully, this suspension is not a harbinger of further difficulties.

Whatever the case, the previous travails of the company suggest a failure to grasp the particular combination of quality, craftsmanship and history that make its ceramics so special. That is perhaps hardly surprising, however, given wider British attitudes to industrial art in general. Today, it’s commonly treated as if it were too utilitarian to qualify as art and too suspiciously aesthetic to be regarded as industry. We should take it much more seriously as a living and creative tradition.

In the case of the various potteries that still operate around Stoke-on-Trent, including Emma Bridgewater and the Burleigh Factory, for example, a highly skilled workforce continues to produce vast numbers of objects that dignify our lives daily in countless ways. Look at the mugs in your kitchen, the crockery you use or the objects on your chimneypiece.

The only sadness is that the dishwasher destroys so many historic ceramics. We should struggle against the temptation to save the labour of washing up and leave such things unused and invisible at the back of a cupboard collecting dust. Even if they only come out once or twice a year, they are a joy to use.