Ceramic - Culture – Innovation CCI
This Culture 2000 funded project started in 2001 and successfully ended in 2004. The work demonstrated the changing face of European ceramics from 1851 until the present day.
The Partnership
Six of Europe’s leading ceramic museums worked together to tell the story of 150 years of change. These included:
- Deutsches Porzellanmuseum, Hohenberg, Germany
- Musée National de Porcelaine Adrien Dubouché, Limoges, France
- The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, Stoke-on-Trent, UK
- Museu Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza, Italy
- Museo Nacional do Azulejo, Lisboa, Portugal
- The Herend Porcelain Museum Foundation, Herend, Hungary
The partnership was made possible by a grant from the European Union's Culture 2000 programme, which promoted cultural co-operation and mutual understanding across Europe. Deutsches Porzellanmuseum was the lead partner, responsible for overall project co-ordination.
The Project
There were six discrete elements to the project, and each museum was the lead partner for one of these.
- A travelling exhibition (Herend)
- A virtual exhibition (Stoke-on-Trent)
- A ceramic artists database (Limoges)
- An on-line bibliography (Faenza)
- A multi-lingual ceramic thesaurus (Lisbon)
- A symposium on the future of European ceramics (Hohenberg)
The Concept
The underlying concept that lies behind the partnership is that the history of European ceramics during the past 150 years offers an insight into a wider process of cross-fertilisation in the decorative arts and design. The project aims to promote a shared understanding of history, by highlighting mutual tendencies in design and technology during the different stylistic periods of the 19th and 20th century. It traces the impact of cultural innovation and artistic interchange on Europe’s ceramic centres, from the Great Exhibition of 1851 until the present day. The project also explores the way in which ideas were initiated in one country and adapted in others, to take account of national and regional differences.