A major new ceramic work is unveiled at the Holburne this week. Installed along the wall leading to the Mezzanine Gallery, Ghost by Neil Brownsword presents repurposed remnants of Britain’s contracting ceramic industry, offering a reflection on industrial change and its impact on people, place, and intergenerational skill.
Neil Brownsword (b. Stoke-on-Trent, Staffordshire, 1970) is an artist, educator, and Professor of Ceramics at the University of Staffordshire. He began his career as an apprentice at the Wedgwood factory in the mid-1980s, training as a modeller and designer. Since graduating from the Royal College of Art in 1995, his work has received national and international acclaim.
Brownsword’s practice explores the origins and shifting landscape of British ceramic manufacture – an industry shaped by seventeenth – and eighteenth-century demand for Chinese-inspired wares and the rise of tea drinking.
Over the past three decades, global mass production has led to the loss of many historic factories in Stoke-on-Trent, unable to sustain rising UK energy and production costs. Following these closures, Brownsword has focused on archiving former industrial sites and salvaging discarded production remnants that bear the traces of this economic shift.
In Ghost, Brownsword reactivates recovered moulds – once integral to systems of mass production -that were deliberately defaced prior to factory shutdown. Recast as fragile bone china fragments, these altered forms hover between absence and presence, evoking the skilled labour and industrial processes that once sustained them.
The acquisition of Ghost marks a significant addition to the Holburne’s growing collection of contemporary ceramics, complementing its holdings of historic works spanning the 8th to the 20th century.
Neil Brownsword said: “I am deeply honoured that Ghost has been included in the Holburne’s permanent collection, and sincerely grateful to all those who supported its acquisition. Installed alongside European ceramics produced in imitation of Chinese porcelain, the work reflects on shifting dynamics of global exchange and the historical reversal of economic relations between East and West. By extracting a further layer of production from post-industrial objects relegated to waste, the work foregrounds the skilled labour underpinning serial manufacture, alongside the mechanised infrastructures that once sustained it. Through acts of reproduction and re-presentation, these forms operate as a register of cultural memory, holding within them the entangled histories of industrial transition and the erosion of skilled labour.”
Chris Stephens, Director of the Holburne, said: “This remarkable work tells a compelling story about the rise and fall of Britain’s ceramic industry. We are grateful for the support of the Contemporary Art Society in enabling us to add this important work to our collection, where it is displayed alongside historic examples of bone china produced during Bath’s Georgian heyday.”
Ghost is presented by the Contemporary Art Society through the Omega and Griffin Fund.
Caroline Douglas, Director of the Contemporary Art Society said: “I’m delighted that the CAS have been able to help the Holburne to acquire this major work that so eloquently encapsulates all that is so unique and compelling in Neil Brownsword’s practice.”
About the Contemporary Art Society:
The Contemporary Art Society (CAS) is a London-based charity founded in 1910 to promote the acquisition and study of contemporary art in the UK. Since its foundation, it has facilitated the donation of over 10,500 works of fine art and craft into public collections and currently has a membership of 78 museums across the UK: from Plymouth in the South to Orkney in the north, and from Swansea in the West to Norwich in the East. Over the years, the CAS has acquired work by many leading artists including Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Francis Bacon, David Hockney, John Akomfrah, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye and Grayson Perry. We’re thrilled to continue this legacy by supporting the acquisition of Neil Brownsword’s Ghost (2025) for the Holburne.