Makers as educators, curators and collectors

Lily Crowther

Collections: 

• Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum 
• Potteries Museum & Art Gallery 
• Wolverhampton Art Gallery 

Keywords: Collecting, Curating, Museums, Ceramics, Decorative Art

Introduction

This article focuses on two generations of a single family, showing how their shared interests influenced the nascent collections of decorative arts at three galleries across the West Midlands. The Jahn family originated in Germany and moved to Staffordshire in the mid-nineteenth century to pursue new professional opportunities in the ceramics industry. During the decades that followed, members of the family moved beyond their roots in ceramic design and manufacturing to become artists, educators, collectors, and museum curators. The Jahns were involved closely in shaping Wolverhampton Art Gallery, Hanley Museum (now the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery), and Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum. Their family history exemplifies the kinds of inter-institutional links which rarely leave clear traces in the archival records of civic collections. As Kate Hill has noted, the atomisation of local and regional museums and the restricted resources available to research their collections have led to a lack of understanding of their institutional [1]. Bringing to light the links between these three Midlands museums can help to situate the idiosyncrasies of regional collections in the context of broader patterns of curatorial practices.

The working lives of the Jahn family illustrate the intimate connections between making, teaching, collecting, and curating in the applied arts during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Over the course of this period the family negotiated the complex and shifting social territory between the aspirational artisan class and the middle class, making a transition identified by Mervyn Romans as key to the public art and design education system of the period, which served to ‘bolster the middle classes’ claims to hegemony’ [2]. In this context, the Jahns were able to combine their craft skills and knowledge, understanding of design history, and professional networks to influence museum acquisitions, ensuring that their own works and specialist interests were well represented in both regional and national collections. Their career trajectories also show how small regional museums were able to benefit from national and international networks of expertise, an example of Camilla Smith’s assertion that migration ‘has informed the way works are conceived, received and acquired by galleries and museums’ across the Midlands [3].

Building networks: reputation and education, 1860s–90s

Ludwig Jahn (1839–1911), known as Louis, was a ceramic painter and designer specialising in figural decoration in the Rococo revival style [4]. He was born in Thuringia, the centre of German porcelain production for the mass market. Louis spent time as a young man working in Vienna, then moved to Staffordshire, where he joined leading pottery firm Minton & Co. in about 1860. The company had appointed the young French artist Léon Arnoux (1816–1902) as art director in 1849. They had enjoyed huge success at the Great Exhibition of 1851 and capitalised on this popularity, expanding into new product areas. Jahn’s work for Minton was first shown publicly at the 1862 International Exhibition in London (fig.1) [5].

In 1863 Louis married Elizabeth Henk (1844–76) in Stoke-on-Trent. The couple had four children: Henrietta (1864–1954); Albert (1865–1947); Maria, who died in infancy; and Francis (1871–1967) (fig.2). Elizabeth was a fellow German, born in Cologne; her parents Carl Christian Henk (1822–1905) and Maria Theresa Josepha (née Schlappal, 1824–1910) had also moved to Staffordshire to work in the pottery industry. Christian Henk was a leading painter at Minton, with a diverse output including pieces in the style of the Italian Renaissance as well as Rococo scenes. Like Louis Jahn, his work formed part of Minton’s displays at the 1862 International Exhibition [6]. His wife, known as Therese, was employed by Minton as a figure painter [7]. Their elder son Johann Henk (1846–1921), known as John, joined Minton as an apprentice majolica modeller in 1860 and rose to become a leading designer and modeller specialising in naturalistic birds and animals. Elizabeth and John’s youngest brother, Francis Henk (1849–90), worked for the firm as a salesman. Both Christian Henk and his new son-in-law Louis Jahn contributed to Minton’s displays at the 1867 Paris Exposition [8]. In 1871, Jahn’s work was again at the centre of Minton’s displays for the International Exhibition in London, where he showed two large vases decorated with cupids and nymphs in the style of the Rococo painter François Boucher, described by the Birmingham Daily Post as being ‘distinguished by some of the best figure painting in the gallery’ [9].

In 1872, Louis became art director at Brownfield’s pottery in Cobridge, Stoke-on-Trent, where the founder, William Brownfield (1812–73), had recently been joined by his son William Etches Brownfield (1848–1903). Under the guidance of this new and energetic young manager, the firm expanded successfully into the production of both porcelain and majolica. Brownfield’s was also well known for its stoneware jugs, mentioned by influential critic Llewellynn Jewittas ‘a speciality of this firm, and… remarkably good’ [10]. These jugs suggest a possible link between Louis Jahn’s professional practice and the family’s personal collections: among the many objects later given by the Jahn family to the V&A are a number of early modern German stonewares, some bearing a close resemblance to those produced by Brownfield’s, as well as an early example of a Staffordshire stoneware jug [11].

These objects were variously given and bequeathed to the V&A by Louis’s son Albert Jahn, and it is tempting to speculate that Albert had inherited them – and his interest in European stoneware – from his parents [12]. Collecting German Westerwald stoneware, known at the time as grès de Flandres, had become fashionable among Victorian antiquarians and followers of the Arts and Crafts movement; William Morris collected these from the late 1850s onwards, and sold contemporary examples through his London showroom [13]. Perhaps Brownfield’s stonewares, then, owed their high quality to Louis Jahn’s familiarity with the German stoneware tradition as well as his understanding that vernacular-style pottery of this type was in growing demand among British consumers.

Louis’s fame as a designer, however, rested less on these sober stonewares than on the production of the extraordinary Brownfield vase. This bizarre confection, made in 1879, was described by the firm as ‘the largest china vase ever made in this or any other country’ [14]. Standing eleven feet high, at the centre of its structure was a globe of green clay, decorated with white bisque figures representing Ceres and the four seasons, and profuse, white-glazed relief embellishments including the fruits and flowers of each season, as well as a frieze of sixty cupids engaged in seasonal sports and pastimes [15]. The overall design was by Jahn, and the figures were modelled by the sculptor Albert-Ernest Carrier Belleuse (1824–87), who was director of works at Sèvres, the French porcelain manufactory. Its manufacture presented serious challenges. After several failed attempts to model and fire the structure, a special kiln had to be built, and the main parts of the vase assembled inside the kiln itself. The vase epitomised the technical virtuosity and aesthetic excess of Victorian exhibition pieces, as well as the high levels of risk and expenditure taken on by the manufacturers of such objects. It was shown at the Melbourne International Exhibition of 1880–1, the Crystal Palace Exhibition of 1884, and the Paris Exposition of 1889 [16]. Unfortunately, it was destroyed in a fire at the Brownfield works in 1894, but its public impact was such that it would be remembered in Louis’s obituary more than fifteen years later [17].

Alongside their work in the ceramics industry, Louis and his family also had a longstanding association with art schools in the Potteries and beyond. Tracing the Jahn and Henk families’ progress through the art school system illustrates clearly how the study and teaching of art were interconnected with British design manufacturing in the late nineteenth century. There was a substantial overlap between the artists at leading Staffordshire pottery firms such as Minton and the staff of Hanley School of Art, where both of Louis’s sons, Albert and Francis, began their studies. This overlap reflected the priorities of the Department of Science and Art, which aimed to unite design education with the practical skills required by industry in each region. Hanley School of Art, founded in 1847, held classes in modelling, moulding and casting, which were of special relevance to ceramics manufacturing [18]. The school’s founding committee included Herbert Minton, who released his senior designers to teach regularly at the school. These included leading modeller John Henk, who worked as a modelling instructor from about 1880 to 1900. This education system aimed to ensure a constant supply of qualified graduates ready for employment in local industry.

Both of Louis Jahn’s sons were trained at Hanley School of Art and then at the National Art Training School (NATS) in South Kensington, which would later become the Royal College of Art. Albert thrived in this tightly structured environment, winning several prizes and scholarships during the 1880s [19]. The NATS specialised in training art teachers who could then apply the ‘South Kensington system’ of art teaching in the regions. Both Albert’s training as a teacher and his introduction to Asian art in the South Kensington Museum would later be influential in his career and collecting interests.

By contrast, Francis Jahn did not distinguish himself as a student [20]. After a period working as a potter’s modeller, however, he earned a scholarship which allowed him to follow Albert to the NATS in 1891. After a short time studying in Paris, he then returned home to work as a pottery designer and to teach modelling at Hanley School of Art alongside his maternal uncle John Henk. By now well-established in the Potteries and with connections at South Kensington, in the following decades, the Jahn family’s influence would stretch beyond Minton and Hanley into the educational and cultural institutions of the wider region.

Becoming influential: leadership and connoisseurship, 1890s–1930s

In 1893, Louis left Brownfield’s and returned to Minton as art director. The firm had an established practice of employing leading European artists, including Marc-Louis Solon (1835–1913) [21]. During Louis Jahn’s tenure as art director, Minton produced some of Solon’s most spectacular showpieces of pâte-sur-pâte porcelain. This painstaking technique was developed at Sèvres in 1850 and involved building up a relief design from layers of liquid clay slip on a contrasting background. It was perfected by Solon, who brought it to England in 1870 when he joined Minton, as one of several artists from France seeking stability and new creative outlets across the Channel during a time of political unrest [22]. Production of pâte-sur-pâte at Minton reached its peak at the turn of the century under Jahn’s directorship.

Meanwhile, Louis’s sons were beginning to develop their own careers. In 1890, Albert became Director of Wolverhampton School of Art. With this appointment, he fulfilled the ultimate aim of his training: having progressed through the regional art school system to the NATS, he could now disseminate the South Kensington design principles to the next generation of students. In his first decade at Wolverhampton, Albert gradually introduced more practical classes to the curriculum which related directly to the local industries of the Black Country, such as wrought iron production [23]. This was in line with the Science and Art Department’s policy of promoting close relations between regional art schools and local employers. Albert, in keeping with the region’s reputation for excellence in art metalwork, was also a successful silversmith [24]. His designs from the 1890s and early 1900s demonstrate a strong Art Nouveau influence, with flowing, asymmetric shapes incorporating semi-precious stones and female figures [25].

His skills as a designer-maker were complemented by a collecting interest in Japanese metalwork. His collection included articulated iron creatures or jizai okimono, several of which he later gave to the British Museum and to the V&A [26]. He also left his collections of Japanese edged weapons and pipes to the V&A, along with examples of his own designs in silver [27]. These gifts demonstrate his self-confidence as both a maker and a collector; they also suggest a sense of personal attachment to South Kensington and a belief in the importance of museums for design education. In this sense, his donations to the national collection were part of Albert’s practice as an educator, passing on the benefits of his own training in the South Kensington system. Albert also developed a thriving practice as a portrait painter to Wolverhampton’s social and artistic élite [28]. His subjects included Thomas Bantock, former Mayor of Wolverhampton; the landscape painter Joseph Vickers de Ville (1856–1925), who had moved to the city in 1881; and the sons of Samuel Theodore Mander (1853–1900), chair of the School of Art Committee, who commissioned the Arts and Crafts Wightwick Manor in the late 1880s and early 1890s (now National Trust) [29].

These, then, were the skills and connections – as teacher, jewellery designer-maker, painter, and collector – which Albert Jahn brought to his role as curator of Wolverhampton Art Gallery during the 1890s. This was an ex officio responsibility given to him as principal of the art school. The gallery had opened in 1884, so his tenure came at a formative time [30]. The museum collection was ‘procured with special reference to the particular industries of the town’; it was located adjacent to the art school and had free entry [31]. The art gallery also served its local population by collecting examples of local industries, such as japanning. As Kate Hill explains, this type of museum collecting served both as a way to promote local identity and prestige and offered ‘instruction and practical help’ to the industries in question [32].

The gallery supported Albert’s work in making the curriculum at the art school more relevant to local manufacturing, whilst also helping to strengthen a sense of Wolverhampton as a significant place in its own right. During this period, Wolverhampton and other Black Country towns were increasingly establishing their own civic institutions, which reflected their distinct identities and economies [33]. Acquisitions during Albert’s tenure included German porcelain and stoneware, and Japanese woodblock prints, carvings and metalwork (fig.3), reflecting his family background, collecting interests, and expertise as a craftsman [34]. Japanese decorative art remains one of the most important aspects of Wolverhampton’s world cultures collection, demonstrating how the decisions made by early curators and other influential figures can have substantial impacts for the long-term development of museum collections.

Albert’s younger brother, Francis, was meanwhile working to establish himself as a sculptor. He specialised in allegorical, classical and religious figure subjects, and showed several sculptures at the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists in the early twentieth century. In about 1905, Albert left the Midlands to become principal of Sheffield School of Art. There, he was able to employ Francis as head of modelling from about 1906 to 1925 [35]. Whilst he enjoyed modest success as a sculptor, however, Francis’s real strength was as a collector. The two known portraits of him – one by his brother Albert, and the other by Henry Hoyland (1895–1948), the head of painting at Sheffield School of Art – show the two sides of his public persona. The former depicts Francis c. 1890-1910 in a large studio filled with classical statuary, wearing a smock and holding a maquette of a draped female figure [36]. Hoyland’s The Connoisseur (1918) depicts Francis surrounded by his collection, including a portfolio of prints, eighteenth-century furniture, Chinese ceramics, Staffordshire pottery, and Delftware (fig.4) [37]. The setting is his house, 22 Grange Crescent, a semi-detached suburban villa in Sheffield. Living alone for the first time in his life, Francis was emerging from the shadows of his father and his older brother and developing his own identity as an aesthete and collector.

Back in the Potteries, his father, Louis, left Minton and became curator of Hanley Museum from 1903 until his death in 1911. He was particularly interested in the history of pottery production in the area. The subject of local ceramics manufacturing and its history had always been at the heart of museums in the Potteries: the district’s first museum was founded in the 1830s with a gift of ceramics from the manufacturer Enoch Wood to the Pottery Mechanics’ Institute, which later amalgamated with the Hanley Corporation Museum in the 1880s. As a curator with a background in industry, Louis was well-placed to develop local understanding of the history of ceramic production in the region.

In 1904, there was an archaeological excavation at the site of the new Hanley Post Office; Louis gave fifteen pieces of Staffordshire ware found during the dig to the V&A, mostly fragments demonstrating various decorative styles employed locally in the early modern period [38]. The V&A had only very recently begun collecting this type of material; its first major acquisition of vernacular Staffordshire wares was in 1901, as part of the transfer of the ceramics collection from the Museum of Practical Geology in Jermyn Street. Through his collecting at Hanley and his donations to the national collection, Louis Jahn worked to promote both a sense of place and local pride in the Potteries, and the national importance of Staffordshire pottery in the history of decorative art.

Louis Jahn in Hanley and his son Albert in Wolverhampton were both highly connected and successful in their work outside the museum world, giving them more autonomy than many other curators of the period. Hill observes that around 1900, ‘professional independence was a particular issue for provincial curators struggling to escape a subordinate role with regard to local élites arguably at the peak of their interconnected power and influence’ [39]. There was also a lack of consensus on the best qualifications or routes into the curatorial profession, with some museums overseen by gentleman amateurs, whilst others employed untrained curators whose duties were essentially restricted to caretaking [40]. The Jahns, though, were able to bring a certain prestige of their own to their roles; if not the social equals of the Minton and Mander families who controlled their respective council committees, they were nevertheless members of local industrial and artistic élites, as artists, teachers and museum professionals with significant managerial roles.

Trainor identifies a key similarity between the Potteries and the Black Country, where ‘the people who mattered’ were predominantly local politicians and leading manufacturers rather than aristocrats [41]. Museums were important sites of cultural and intellectual authority in this context, enjoying the same ‘civic visibility’ which Jon Mee identifies in the literary and philosophical societies of Manchester and Liverpool [42]. Developing the collections at Wolverhampton and Hanley allowed the Jahns to stamp their authority, expertise and identities on their respective institutions.

The roles occupied by Louis and Albert Jahn as some of the country’s first professional curators, and as donors, cemented the family’s ascent to the educated middle classes. As experienced makers, though, the collections they built were designed to serve the needs of audiences like themselves: experts in materials and design, who could use museums as a practical resource to improve their skills. Claire Jones notes that skilled industrial workers were often ‘highly knowledgeable visitors’ who could bring their specialisms to bear in their understanding of museum objects, and yet these visitors ‘have been side-lined in the histories of craft, fine art and the decorative arts because of their association with industrialization and the factory system’ [43]. Such visitors are central to the histories of museums in Stoke and Wolverhampton; specialist manufacturing was at the centre of both towns’ identities and cultures. The Jahns are significant examples of skilled makers with careers in industry, education and museums, who built an intimate understanding of their local communities’ needs and interests.

Coda: personal legacies and public collections, 1930s–60s

Albert, Francis and their sister Henrietta were all childless, and were the last generation of the Jahn family in Britain. Their contributions to museums were perhaps their most significant gesture toward the future, demonstrating the importance they attached to collections and the meaning which museums held for them.

Francis and Henrietta retired to Leamington Spa; their connection to the town was through Francis’s friend Henry Hoyland, who had moved to Leamington to work for the Camouflage Directorate during the Second World War. During his retirement, Francis gave, sold and bequeathed almost 350 objects to Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum. The first acquisitions were made in 1948–9, when the museum was refurbishing its spaces and developing the collection following the war; the last came from the sale of Francis’s estate in 1968. The diversity of these works reflects the eclectic tastes which Francis shared with his family. A group of Japanese prints recalls Albert’s collection of Japanese metalwork and his acquisitions of ukiyo-e for Wolverhampton Art Gallery. A collection of lustre pottery was given to Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum in memory of Henrietta, having perhaps originally been collected by or with her (fig.5).

Staffordshire wares show Francis’s affinity with his roots in the Potteries. Francis had inherited much of his father’s collection of eighteenth-century Staffordshire ceramics, although Louis had donated some pieces to Hanley Museum. For example, a pair of candlesticks which Francis sold to Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, made by William Greatbatch after a design by William Kent, are identical to one in the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery which was formerly in Louis’s personal collection [44]. This suggests that Louis carefully disposed of his collection across public museums and his family. Francis may have also inherited pieces from his brother. When Albert died in 1947, Francis sold a group of ceramics to Frank Thomas, a prominent collector of German stoneware, which are likely to have come from Albert’s estate [45]. But Francis also had his own particular interests, including Regency fashion plates, Delftware, and English drinking glasses, his collection of the latter now representing a significant proportion of the decorative art collection at Leamington.

In securing a place for key parts of his collections at Leamington, including some of his own sculptures and his portrait as The Connoisseur, Francis created a public legacy and image of himself. He also had an ongoing influence on the museum’s collecting priorities, establishing an area of strength in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British ceramics, which curator H.S. Tallamy would leverage in the 1950s to secure additional funding for collections development. As the last surviving sibling, Francis perhaps felt it especially urgent to leave a personal and visible legacy. As the artist Matt Smith points out, specifically in relation to LGBTQ+ individuals and communities, museums can be particularly important sites of intergenerational memory for those whose traditions and histories are not directly passed from parent to child [46]. We can only speculate as to Francis’s intimate life; but he may have felt that the museum offered an opportunity to leave behind something of himself and his family, as artists, makers, collectors and teachers.

Conclusion

Considered as a group, the objects given by the Jahn family to various museums, and those acquired by them as curators, paint a detailed and varied picture of their interests and collecting priorities. These ranged from vernacular Staffordshire pottery to highly sophisticated Japanese decorative arts. The scope of the collections reflects the complex relationships between craft and industry in the Midlands, national systems of educational and industrial policy, and wider international patterns of influence and migration. Their dispersal across different institutions has hidden their connections until now.

It is worth considering how much else in the institutional histories of municipal and local museums has been obscured by a narrow focus on each institution as a separate entity, when in fact museums were highly interconnected, with each other and with related sectors including manufacturing and education. When re-examined as parts of a larger whole, the connections between smaller museum collections may become more visible and meaningful. The Jahns were far from being the only dynasty in the sector, the best-known example being the Wallis family, who took much more prominent roles in large institutions [47].

Regional networks of familial and professional ties such as those explored in this article are less researched than those involving national collections but were nevertheless influential. Additional research could enhance our understanding not just of our regional museums but of their wider networks of institutional relationships. Such connections can be surfaced using new digital tools which create bridges between separate museum databases [48]. But to interrogate this new wealth of data productively, researchers will also need to approach museum history in a holistic way. As this article has shown, the Jahn family were embedded in personal and professional networks which stretched across generations, regions and international borders; they participated in communities of artists and makers who informed their collecting practices as both curators and donors. Framing institutional histories in terms of these social contexts helps to explain the strengths and specialisms of decorative art collections in the Midlands, which in turn makes those collections more meaningful.

Lily Crowther is Curator (History) at Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, and a Research Fellow at the Ceramics Research Centre, University of Westminster.

Acknowledgements

With thanks to Vicki Slade, Abigael Flack and Dr Chloe Johnson at Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum for advice and suggestions.

Notes

[1] Kate Hill, ‘The “People’s Past”? - How the History of Social History in Museums Shapes Its Present’, Social History in Museums, 46 (2022), pp.7–16 (p.8).

[2] Mervyn Romans, ‘Social Class and the Origin of Public Art and Design Education in Britain: In Search of a Target Group’, in Histories of Art and Design Education: Collected Essays, ed. by Mervyn Romans (Bristol, 2005), pp.55–65.

[3] Camilla Smith, ‘Editorial: Exile and Migration in Regional Collections’, Midlands Art Papers, no. 6 (2023), p.3.

[4] For biographical details see ‘Ludwig Louis Hartmann Adalbert Jahn - Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951’ [https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/mapping/public/view/person.php?id=msib4_1225119305&search=louis%20jahn], accessed 23 December 2024.

[5] See also a contemporaneous vase in the V&A decorated by Louis Jahn with copies of two paintings by Antoine Watteau, museum number 8101&A-1863.

[6] A pair of vases painted by Henk in the style of eighteenth-century Sèvres porcelain for the exhibition are at the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, museum numbers 3836 and 3837.

[7] Death certificate of Therese Henk, The Minton Archive, G272/1/1/1/151/6.

[8] Leon Arnoux, ‘Pottery’, in Reports on the Paris Universal Exhibition, 1867, 6 vols. (London, 1868), ii, pp.391–414 (pp.404, 413–14).

[9] ‘The International Exhibition’, Birmingham Daily Post, 9 June 1871, p.5.

[10] Llewellynn Frederick William Jewitt, The Ceramic Art of Great Britain (London, 1883), p.474.

[11] V&A museum numbers C.25 to 33-1948 and C.186-1933.

[12] Other vernacular German pieces acquired by museums from the Jahn siblings include a charming seventeenth-century Thuringian earthenware culinary mould in the form of sea creatures, given to the V&A by Henrietta, museum number C.185-1933, and a group of tin-glazed jugs from Francis Jahn’s collection now in Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, museum numbers M3247 to 3250.1969.

[13] Gill Chitty and David Stocker, ‘Westerwald Stoneware at Kelmscott Manor: Morris, Pottery and the Politics of Production’, The Antiquaries Journal, 99 (2019), pp.363–97. Westerwald stoneware was widely sold in Germany for everyday household use. It originated in the same region of north-western Germany which was home to the Henk family; Elizabeth Henk’s forebears are likely to have worked in stoneware production before their move to Staffordshire.

[14] ‘A Triumph in China Manufacture’, Birmingham Daily Post, 23 April 1884, p.6.

[15] ‘Art and Literary Gossip’, Manchester Times, 26 April 1884, p.8.

[16] ‘The Crystal Palace Exhibition’, Pall Mall Gazette, 23 April 1884, p.6; ‘The Paris Exhibition.’, Art Journal, January 1889, pp.9–16.

[17] ‘Fires’, Manchester Courier and Lancashire General Advertiser, 5 March 1894, p.6; ‘Vase That Took Years to Make’, Nottingham Evening Post, 21 April 1911, p.6.

[18] ‘Hanley School of Art - Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951’ [https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/mapping/public/view/organization.php?id=msib4_1221650078&search=hanley%20school%20of%20art], accessed 23 December 2024.

[19] ‘The National Competition of Schools of Art’, Birmingham Daily Post, 21 July 1884, p.5.

[20] ‘News of the Day’, Birmingham Daily Post, 14 October 1889, p.4.

[21] In addition to Louis’s predecessor Léon Arnoux, prominent decorators at Minton in the 1850s-90s included Émile Lessore (1805–76), Édouard Rischgitz (1828–1909), and Antonin Boullemier (1840–1900).Louis Jahn’s story is comparable in many ways to that of his better-known contemporary Marc-Louis Solon. Solon similarly married into a successful family of European immigrants to the Potteries: his wife Laure was the daughter of Léon Arnoux. Solon also shared Jahn’s interest in early modern European and English pottery, publishing several influential books on the subject and forming his own collection of Staffordshire pieces. His son, Léon Solon (1872–1957) was a contemporary of Francis Jahn at Hanley School of Art and the National Art Training School in South Kensington and then joined Minton as an artist in 1895.

[22] Melissa Berry, ‘From Sèvres to Stoke: Marc-Louis-Emanuel Solon and the Legacy of British Ceramics’, The Journal of the Decorative Arts Society 1850-the Present, 43 (2019), pp.30-43.

[23] ‘Wolverhampton Municipal School of Art’, Birmingham Daily Post, 26 April 1900, p.9.

[24] ‘Albert Carl Christian Jahn - Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951’[https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/mapping/public/view/person.php?id=msib4_1225119505&search=louis%20jahn], accessed 23 December 2024.

[25] See for example a silver casket conferring the Freedom of the Borough of Wolverhampton, now in Wolverhampton Art Gallery, museum number M224.

[26] British Museum number 1937,1218.1, and V&A museum numbers M.37 to 39-1947.

[27] V&A numbers M.12 to 20-1947, M.21 to 36-1947, and M.79 to 85-1947 respectively.

[28] Richard H. Trainor, Black Country Élites: The Exercise of Authority in an Industrialized Area, 1830-1900 (Oxford, 1993), p.74.

[29] The portrait of Bantock is now in Wolverhampton Art Gallery, museum number OP893.

[30] Early donors to the Wolverhampton collection included members of the Mander family, who contributed ethnographic and archaeological objects.

[31] H.M. Cundall, ‘Our Provincial Art Museums and Galleries: IV. Sheffield and Wolverhampton’, Art Journal, 54 (1892), pp.279–83 (p.283).

[32] Kate Hill, ‘Manufactures, Archaeology and Bygones: Making a Sense of Place in Civic Museums, 1850–1914’, International Journal of Regional and Local History, 8.1 (2013), pp.54–74 (p.60).

[33] Trainor (1993), p.3.

[34] For example: a beer mug, museum number E189.2; a pair of porcelain figures, ‘The Bird’ and ‘The Bouquet’, museum numbers P222 and P223.

[35] ‘Francis H. Aloysius Jahn - Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851–1951’ [https://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/mapping/public/view/person.php?id=msib4_1203418350&search=louis%20jahn], accessed 23 December 2024.

[36] Now in a US private collection.

[37] Now at Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, museum number A585.1968.

[38] V&A, museum numbers 1545 to 1560-1904.

[39] Kate Hill, ‘“A Rather Undefined Social Position and Public Recognition”: Professionalisation, Status and Masculinity in Provincial Museums, c.1870–1930’, Gender & History, 33.2 (2021), pp.448–69 (p.449).

[40] J. Lynne Teather, ‘Museology and Its Traditions: The British Experience, 1845–1945’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Leicester (1983), p.189.

[41] Trainor (1993), p.77.

[42] Jon Mee, Networks of Improvement: Literature, Bodies, and Machines in the Industrial Revolution (University of Chicago Press, 2023), p.3.

[43] Claire Jones, ‘The Nineteenth-Century Industrial Worker as Exhibition Visitor: Ways of Engaging with Making’, Journal of Modern Craft, 15.2 (2022), pp.167–80 (p.169).

[44] LSAG&M museum numbers M1800.1948.1 & 2; PMAG museum number 2619.

[45] Around 30 of these have since been bequeathed to the British Museum. Dr Rachel King, British Museum, personal correspondence, 27 March 2024.

[46] Matt Smith, ‘Queering the Museum’, in Contemporary Clay and Museum Culture: Ceramics in the Expanded Field, ed. by Christie Brown, Julian Stair, and Clare Twomey (Abingdon, 2016), pp.196–208 (p.207).

[47] Teather identifies four curatorial dynasties: George Wallis (Keeper of Art at the South Kensington Museum) and his sons Whitworth Wallis (Director of Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery) and George Harry Wallis (Director of Nottingham Castle Museum & Art Gallery); three generations of Pearsons at the Royal College of Surgeons; W.E. Mayes of the British Museum and Leicester Museum & Art Gallery, whose son W.P. Mayes was at Leicester and later the Royal Albert Memorial Museum in Exeter; and J.E. Gray (Keeper of Zoology at the British Museum for 35 years), nephew of E.W. Gray (Keeper of Natural Curiosities, also at the British Museum). Teather (1983), p.194.

[48] For example, the Museum Data Service aims to connect object records from all UK museums in a single central database, [www.museumdata.uk]. The AHRC’s 5-year programme Towards a National Collection (2020–5) also supported research to break down barriers between cultural heritage collections through digital technologies [www.nationalcollection.org.uk].