The Beautiful Game

by A Marr & Associates Media

The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery in Stoke-on-Trent will be commemorating the 100^th anniversary of the First World War in a variety of ways between now, and 2018.

The creation of a life-sized replica WWI trench in its grounds is just one way. Another is the Echoes of War exhibition, which runs through to April 26^th, 2015.

Included in this is a ceramic interpretation of a world-famous football match, which took place on the front line between soldiers representing Britain and Germany.

The Beautiful Game by Stephen Dixon – featuring glazed ceramic figures with digital transfer printing, and mounted on a “found” textile football pitch – commemorates the extraordinary events of Christmas Day 1914 when an unofficial truce called a temporary halt to the carnage on the Western Front.

It is widely documented, by soldiers from all ranks and both sides, that improvised football matched took place in no-man’s land during the truce, though their reports of the scores vary dramatically.

The most commonly quoted scoreline, however, is a 3-2 win for Germany! This work adopts the genre of Crested China, a type of souvenir ware produced in The Potteries by the firm of W.H.Goss and many others, which was at the height of its popularity during the Great War.

For further information about The Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, visit www.stoke.gov.uk/museums