Wedgwood Institute

The Wedgwood Institute is a large red-brick building that stands in Queen Street, in the town of Burslem, Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, England. It is sometimes called the Wedgwood Memorial Institute, but it is not to be confused with the former Wedgwood Memorial College in Barlaston. It achieved Listed building status (grade II starred) in 1972.

The Wedgwood Institute was funded entirely by public subscription from 1859 onward, the estimated cost at the time being £4,000, and was constructed between 1863 and 1869. It was named after the potter Josiah Wedgwood, and it stands on the site of the former Brick House pottery works which Wedgwood had rented from 1762 to 1770. Brick House was the second of his pottery works in the town of Burslem, the first being at the Ivy House works. A small part of the old Works was incorporated into the fabric of the new Institute.

The foundation stone of the new Institute was laid by then Chancellor of the Exchequer William Ewart Gladstone on 26 October 1863; the building itself opened 21 April 1869.

The School of Art and Science opened in October 1869; the Free Library opened in 1870; their cost being by the levy of a penny rate (i.e.: a local universal property tax) under the Public Libraries Act.

The style of architecture chosen was Venetian Gothic, which had been popularised by John Ruskin. The basic design is by an architect called Nichols, but the elaborate decorations which form an integral part of the facade were designed by Robert Edgar and John Lockwood Kipling. Kipling, the father of the famous writer Rudyard Kipling, emigrated to India in 1865 while the building was still under construction, and the façade was not completed until 1871.

It is an ornate building coated with numerous inlaid sculptures, ceramics and a series of zodiac mosaics, the latter executed by Signor Salviati. Over the entrance is a tympanum with portrait medallions of three people connected with Wedgwood's projects: these are John Flaxman, the sculptor, Joseph Priestley, the scientist and discoverer of oxygen, and Thomas Bentley (1730–1780), a business partner of Wedgwood. Above the tympanum is a statue of Josiah Wedgwood. The statue is in the middle of a frieze.

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