Original subtitles

Mm!

From your very first cuppa of the day...

To that 11 o'clock caffeine kick.

From your mid-afternoon brew...

To your last hot chocolate at night.

Around 90% of us Brits prefer to drink from a mug.

In fact, here in the UK,

we wash down a staggering 195 million mugfuls of tea

and coffee every day.

And where's the best place to find out how this

daily essential is made?

A factory that's been making mugs for over 200 years.

I'm Gregg Wallace...

Oh!

..and I'll be getting a handle on the incredible journey

mugs take from clay...

Ah! You've done it. Look at that! It's like a magic trick.

Whoa!

..to kiln...

That is serious, isn't it?

..and quality control concerto.

Well, I reckon that's a G flat minor.

I'm Cherry Healey...

..and I'll be discovering when it comes to designing high-tech cars,

clay is key.

And historian Ruth Goodman...

Oh, wow. Look at that!

..is looking back at a British ceramic artist

who really broke the mould.

Talk about shock of the new.

I mean, it's so right. It's so bold.

This factory produces one million mugs every year,

and I'm going to reveal just how they do it.

Welcome to Inside The Factory.

This is the Denby factory in Derbyshire.

They've been making pottery here since 1809.

Each week, they churn out nearly 160,000 pieces,

from plates and bowls to cups and teapots.

But I'm following production of one of their bestsellers,

the Halo Heritage Mug.

Every pot produced in this historic factory

starts life in the same place...

..at this enormous 100 metre-long mound.

Good morning.

Ah. Morning, Gregg, how are you?

Are you Dean? I am.

I'm meeting operations director Dean Barlow,

who I'm reliably informed is no mug.

Dean, listen, I've visited many, many factories over the years,

but what on earth is this?

It's 100,000 tonnes of clay.

Well, I can't imagine this came on one truck.

The last delivery that we had was back in 2014,

and it took several HGVs a day for about three months

to deliver the clay.

So how long will this last you now?

This will last for at least 20 years, and we'll start to look

for the next delivery sometime in about ten years' time.

You have a delivery every 20 years?!

Something like that, yeah. That can't be right! Yeah, yeah.

Is clay a natural product?

Clay is a natural product.

It forms from the weathering of rocks.

In fact, clay is a fine-grained, mineral-rich soil,

which, when wet, is easy to shape and mould.

Are there particular types?

There's all different types of clay.

This is what we call a ball clay, because it sticks together.

Where does it come from?

We get this generally where there's any kind of coal mining

or deep excavation going on

because it sits about 60 metres below the surface.

The factory gets its clay from nearby mines,

which are at the centre of a continuous 300-mile long seam

that runs all the way from the north-east to the Bristol Channel.

The clay here, it was formed in the Carboniferous period

360 million years ago.

This clay could have appeared in Jurassic Park?

Yeah, it had a background feature in Jurassic Park.

GREGG LAUGHS If you look closely, you'll see it.

ROARING

I might be drinking out of a mug

that a Tyrannosaurus rex has weed on.

Yeah, quite possibly. Depends how you like your tea.

HE LAUGHS

But there's no time for a cuppa yet,

because production is under way as three tonnes of clay -

enough to make a batch of 5,000 mugs -

is heading to the cylinder house.

So what happens to our clay in here?

This is where we take this raw clay, which is still quite lumpy,

and break it down into a much finer product.

I love that machine, but where's the clay going?

What's he doing?

So, he's loading it into underground cylinders, which are basically

like big washing machine drums,

but about 100-150 times the size of your one at home.

My three tonnes of clay drop through a hatch and fall six feet

into one of four cylinder mills, each containing

a tonne of large flint pebbles...

..like this one.

I love The Flintstones. Yeah.

I'm going to call that one Wilma.

Wilma? Yeah.

The Flintstones will pound the clay into a finer consistency

inside the heavy-duty washing machine, and water is pumped in

to get the sticky load moving.

Water basically makes it rotate quickly.

How much water? Two tonnes.

The hatch is closed and the cylinder mill rotates

at 20 revolutions a minute, in a process called milling.

So, there's five tonnes in there?

There's five tonnes of clay slip.

Did you call it slip?

Yeah, we call any mixture of clay and water "slip."

It begins to heat up as well because we've got the constant action

of the pebbles and that actually heats it up to about 45 degrees C.

And the warmer something is, the easier it is to transport. Right.

It takes two hours to mill my clay, turning it into

7,000 litres of warm slip.

It's then pumped through underground pipes to the slip house

and into one of these giant tanks.

Wow, mate, how much slip - clay and water - is in one of these?

There's approximately 18,000 litres, which is enough

for about 100,000 mugs.

Wow. But what do you do with it once it's in there?

We have to add quartz and feldspar.

Hang on, they're a... They're a comedy duet, weren't they?

Not in this case, no.

My uncle saw them performing at The Palladium.

Interesting.

Quartz and feldspar actually do make a great double act.

They are the Earth's most abundant crystallised minerals,

mined from rocks in the ground and then reduced to a powder.

They help strengthen the soft clay.

Quartz is quite a pure material.

It contains silica.

Quartz, I think I've seen in watches.

Yep. Is that right? Yeah.

Feldspar, I've never heard of.

Feldspar is basically a rotted granite,

so it's a by-product of weathering of harder rocks.

What do they do?

So, quartz and feldspar basically form the glue

that holds everything together,

and also help to alter the thermal expansion of the clay.

So, if you used raw clay without quartz and feldspar,

the first time you put hot water into the mug,

it wouldn't be able to expand enough and it would crack.

The quartz and feldspar are pumped into an 18,000 litre tank of slip,

and the finished mix looks almost drinkable.

Oh! That's the consistency of a cappuccino.

Yep. Very runny at this point.

It is, isn't it? Very liquid!

My clay slip is runny so it can flow easily through pipes

for this stage of the process.

But for the next bit, we need to turn the liquid back into a solid.

I'm was going to suggest a cup of tea if, you've got any mugs.

Have you got any mugs?

No.

Now, many of us reach for a cuppa to quench our thirst,

but as Ruth's been investigating, there was a time

when people were more interested in the tea leaves left behind

in the bottom of the cup.

It's hard to beat a bracing stroll by the coast,

and back in the 1900s...

The Victorians loved to be beside the seaside,

and flocked to pleasure piers like this one at Eastbourne.

Completed in 1872, it became a perfect place to promenade, and,

like many Victorian piers, offered a variety of sideshows.

I see you over there. Yes, you.

One of the most popular forms of entertainment was fortune-telling.

Clairvoyant machines like this offered a tantalising glimpse

into the future.

I want to find out why Victorian Britain was so captivated

by the idea of predicting what lay ahead.

Karl, hello! Hi, Ruth. Hello.

So I'm hoping social history expert Dr Karl Bell

can shed some light on this mystery.

So, how widespread was this interest in the supernatural

in Victorian times?

It was surprisingly widespread.

People tend to think of it as a very sort of rational age,

but, actually, the supernatural was infused

through Victorian culture.

At a time when one in three children died before their fifth birthday

and fatal illnesses like cholera and typhoid were common,

the idea that you could communicate with lost loved ones

appealed across all classes and creeds.

Spiritualism became so popular that after the death of Prince Albert

in 1861, Queen Victoria is reputed to have actually

taken part in seances.

The fashion for summoning departed spirits was followed

by a brilliantly British take on fortune-telling -

reading tea leaves.

But what did the Victorians call this new craze?

The art of tasseomancy.

Tasseomancy! I love it - it's got a posh word.

When you pour your tea, you're often left with the loose leaves,

the sediment in the bottom, and people would read the symbols

in the bottom of the cup and predict their future from it.

Interpreting the symbols was made even easier with a publication

of the first do-it-yourself guide to tasseomancy, in 1917.

Karl and I are going to give it a go.

So, what does it tell us to do first, then?

Leave about half a teaspoonful of liquid in there. Mm-hm.

Invert it...

..on the saucer.

Back upright. OK.

The tea clumps into recognisable shapes.

Kind of.

I mean, I suppose that middle bit looks a bit like a tree.

It does.

And the book reveals what they mean.

So trees are a lucky sign. Oh, right!

It suggests fortune in the country.

What have you got?

A mountain?

We do have mountains. Oh, we do have mountains?

Powerful friends, it means. Oh!

Many mountains means equally powerful enemies.

Ah. Oh. Oh.

THEY LAUGH

As the trend for amateur fortune-telling grew,

businesses cashed in - including the pottery industry,

which began to produce special cups

to make reading tea leaves even easier.

Right, so this is the Nelros Cup

and it was designed by Neville Ross in 1904.

No more guessing whether you had a tree or a mountain.

Symbols and signs of the zodiac were added,

which gave the reader much more to go on.

If you were looking for something like a husband or wife,

what their star sign may be,

that would narrow it down to at least one of 12.

Oh, I see! OK.

Or it could be - the star sign Aries is often linked to soldiers,

so it could be that you were going to marry a soldier.

The outbreak of the First World War brought renewed interest

in fortune-telling.

As the view of France from Eastbourne reminds us,

the future of so many families

was uncertain.

You had millions of soldiers heading over to fight.

And, actually, you would get an increase in soldiers themselves

going to see fortune-tellers because they want to know,

"Am I coming back?"

At a time when life felt so precarious,

it's no wonder that people turned to spiritualism for answers.

And, for many, the fascination with predicting the future

continues to this day.

People still read their daily horoscope,

and some of them very much believe in it.

So, even if the fashion for tea leaf reading has passed,

nonetheless, the ideas behind it, the belief and the need

for that still lingers on. Yep.

Superstitions and magical belief,

magical thinking still continues into the present day.

And which of us would refuse a glimpse into the future?

In that respect, it seems we're not all that different

from our Victorian ancestors.

And how British

that the answer to life's big questions should be looked for

in the bottom of a cup of tea.

WHIRRING

SLUDGING

MECHANICAL ROAR

Back at the factory,

my liquid clay slip has been milled, mixed, and is ready to be

turned back into solid clay...

..so it's pumped to this odd-looking machine.

This looks like an enormous old-fashioned filing cabinet.

What is it? It's actually what we call the filter press.

This is taking the finished clay slip,

it's pumping it up into the start of the machine,

the slip's travelling through the centre,

it's pressed together with steel plates,

and these hessian-backed cloths,

and basically what's happening is it's squeezing all of the water

out of the clay.

It's like squeezing an orange? It's like squeezing an orange, yeah.

Why take out so much of the water?

The finished product has got to be a plastic clay

that can be deformed and create a mug.

It's got to get like modelling clay.

It's going to get like modelling clay, like Plasticine.

Compressing at a pressure of 200 psi -

equivalent to the weight of seven cars -

it takes three hours for six tonnes of water to be wrung out

of my 12 tonnes of slip...

..before the filter press is ready to open.

It does look like a World War II bomber plane.

Yeah, we do call them the bomb bay doors.

So, the mechanism is basically now pulling the clay slab open.

There's 90 slabs of clay, each one's about just over a metre square,

and each slab of clay would make about 300 mugs.

Seriously? Yeah.

Well, that one's not going to come off on its own, is it?

No. Bomb's away!

THUD

I never had Plasticine that big when I was a kid.

I'm a natural at this!

The slabs parachute down onto a conveyor,

which marches them along to a rotary feeder to break them up.

With the water removed, my clay needs to get rid of one more element

before I can make mugs.

That part of the machine is the de-airing pugmill.

A what? A de-airing pugmill.

Right. So, it's basically taking all those little pieces,

pushing it through a vacuum chamber, all the air's being sucked out...

Is it sucking it out like an enormous Hoover?

It's sucking it out like a Hoover.

Why do you have to take the air out?

Air is the enemy in pottery

because when you fire anything with an air bubble in it,

the air expands quite dramatically

and that causes an explosion in firing.

And that would not only break the mugs,

it would also break the kiln.

Oh, it's seriously dangerous.

Once the air is sucked out, my clay is compacted

under five tonnes of pressure

and falls through a cylinder where it's cut into smaller logs.

Oh, them! Yeah.

So they're what we call pug rolls.

What you're trying to do is create a pug roll

that's got a good plasticity and evenness, because plasticity

means it can be deformed without cracking.

You can make it into shapes? You can mould it into shapes, yeah.

And you are just knocking these down into manageable little tubes?

Yeah, they're about 140 mil diameter, about 0.4 metres long.

They weigh about ten kilos each,

and each one of those could make 60 or 70 of your mugs.

Have they got to be cleaned yet?

Because I'd like to put them through a Pugwash.

PIRATE MUSIC PLAYS No problem, Captain.

HE LAUGHS

To get my pugs shipshape,

a robot arm picks them up with eight vacuum suckers

and deposits them onto a pallet.

That looks like a modern art installation to me.

Yeah, it could be. Yeah.

For my mugs, I'll need 12 pallet loads with 20 pugs on each.

So, basically, we've got the pug roll, we've now got to take

that down onto the factory.

But, first, you need to see a man about making a mould.

A mug mould? A mug mould.

Thank you, my friend. Cheers. See you later!

A mug mould.

To make the moulds for my mugs,

I'm making my way to the mould room,

where I'm meeting master mug moulder Darryl Keatley.

Are you Darryl?

Hey, Gregg, how are you doing?

Mate, why are you dressed like a doctor?

It's how they like us to dress round here.

Listen, you need to tell me what happens in here, please. OK.

Well, this is the mould shop.

And we're making a Heritage Mug mould.

To turn my clay pugs into mugs,

they're shaped inside moulds.

But to do that, first we need to make moulds with mug-shaped holes.

These are the cases, Gregg, that we'll be pouring the plaster into.

And what are these made out of?

Silicone rubber. The shells onto the top of the cases,

and then it's ready for plaster to be poured into.

So you pour plaster around these... Yep.

..and that will give you your mug-shaped mould?

That's correct, yes. Incredible!

It's the silicone that creates the shape of the mug.

So, now all we need is some plaster to make the moulds.

What sort of plaster is it?

It's plaster of Paris. The sort of thing you get if you broke your arm?

Yeah, most probably a similar sort of thing, yeah. Yeah.

And you know all about that, being a doctor. Correct, yes.

With surgical precision, we're adding 16 pints of water

into a jug, followed by 170g of plaster.

After two minutes of mixing, we pour it into the cases,

and it's a race against time before the plaster sets.

A bit faster.

That's it. Stop now.

Then go onto the next one.

Oh! Oh.

THEY CHUCKLE

Keep it to the side, keep it to the side.

It's going to start setting now, you see.

So, now I've got to get my hand in and twizzle it round.

Oh, what are you doing?! I've got to bring my hand up

to bring the air to the top - if there's any air left in it.

Now it's my turn to get the bubbles out

before the mixture gets too hard.

Ugh. Can you feel it?

You've got to push it there... Oh, it's warm!

It's like sticking your hand in a bowl of custard!

So, we need to scrape these level.

Just smooth it off like that.

Oh, my word. Have I messed this one up?

No, no. It looks OK so far.

After 20 minutes, the plaster is set and the mould can be removed.

So, keep going until it pops, right?

Keep going till it pops. That's correct, yeah. That's it.

Oh! There you go.

And then wind it back. That's it. And slide it off.

Then lift the shell off.

Just pull it up now.

There you go.

Look, that's my mug mould!

Yeah!

Surely once you've made one... Yeah.

..that's it, you use it for life, right?

No, you get about 250 pieces out of one mould,

then it starts to get saturated and lose its shape.

You put a lot of care and love into this mould.

Yeah, yeah. You've got to take pride in your job.

And when people ask you what you do for a living, what do you say?

I'm a doctor. THEY LAUGH

Operation Mould complete.

They're heading to a storeroom heated to 45 degrees,

where it'll take a whole week for them to fully dry.

We've been using clay for thousands of years because it's so adaptable,

and it's brilliant at making little things.

But these days, if you were going to design something big

or even technical, you wouldn't use clay, would you?

Cherry's on the case.

This top-secret facility is holding classified information,

but it isn't MI5 or GCHQ,

it's a centre for cutting-edge car design.

I've been given special access to this inner sanctum of innovation

to see how clay is at the forefront of automotive technology.

Tucked away in the Warwickshire countryside

is the 39,000 square foot

high-security Land Rover Design Studio.

My guide is chief designer Andy Wheel.

Your last name is Wheel, is that right?

Correct, Andy Wheel.

I am a Wheel and this is what I do for a living.

Andy is taking me behind the scenes

to see where the designs start to take shape.

Is this where cars are born?

Effectively, yes.

So, surely these days, all the design can be done on the computer?

Well, that's one of the big myths.

We will start building a design on the computer as a 3D data model,

but then we will take that and we will transfer it

into a full-size clay model.

You use clay to build life-sized copies of the car?

Nothing beats getting models into 3D at full size.

How on earth do you turn that into a luxury car?

I think the best thing is for me to show you. Lead the way.

Each year, 100 tonnes of clay is used to make

life-sized models like this.

That is absolutely amazing.

The process starts with a foam framework covered with

50mm of clay,

attached to a chassis with wheels.

They then use a machine that looks like an enormous dentist drill,

which uses the computer 3D model

to mill the vehicle shape into the clay.

It look like they're shaving chocolate off the car.

ANDY CHUCKLES

How does the arm know where to carve?

The cutting arm there is effectively tracing that shape.

The machine takes off everything that is superfluous,

extra stuff, so that what we're left with is the digital model

in a physical form.

It takes the milling machine up to three days

to complete the design.

But the finer details can only be done by hand.

Jess, are you queen of clay?

You could say so. THEY LAUGH

Jess is one of a team of 46 clay sculptors

who add the finishing touches.

What's the benefit of using clay?

We can change the design, you know, pretty much instantly.

It's recyclable. So, as soon as we take off like this,

we can put it into the recycling machine and then we heat it up

and it can come back out and we can put it back on.

That's why we use it.

OK, that's pretty good. What's next?

So, next is to start slicking.

What is slicking?

It's taking off all of these ridges on the clay

and all these bits to blend it into the surface.

What you do is you basically just glide over the surface.

The team here can work on a single model, honing the design,

changing details and refining aerodynamic features

for up to three years.

But, incredibly, it's not just the outside of the car

that's crafted this way.

A precise model of the inside is also created.

Every detail is carved, from the dashboard to the seats,

all finely sculpted in clay.

But not everything could be made from clay, of course,

like the mirrors and lights.

This is like the world's biggest, most brilliant toy.

And, boy, is it fun to make. Look at that.

I'm not sure about the colour tone.

A brown car isn't going to impress anyone, so the team coat it

in a stretchable coloured modelling film

that mimics the look and feel of paint.

Why not just paint the clay?

We could paint the clay, but every time we remove that paint,

it would damage the surface underneath.

Whereas the film, we can take it off, we can do the work,

and then we can put the same film back on again.

To cover an entire car uses 15 metres of film

and takes a day to complete.

And against the real thing,

it's almost impossible to tell the difference.

If you hadn't guessed, the model car is on the right.

Wow.

Oh, my gosh.

Seeing them side by side...

I can't really get my head around the fact

that that is not a real car.

I suppose you mostly see cars out in the wild, not in a showroom.

Absolutely.

We get the cars outside, we get the models outside,

so that we can take a good look and critique all of the lines

and the volumes and proportions.

Outside, it's the only way.

Finally, when the team is happy with the whole design,

the clay car is scanned and turned back into a 3D computer model,

ready to be put into production.

It's amazing to think that sculpting with clay

is one of the oldest forms of craft,

yet here it is today being such a key part of cutting-edge design.

That really is longevity.

THUD

SMOOSHING

POP

At the factory, we're 11 hours into mug production.

My clay has been filtered to remove the water,

extruded to remove the air, and shaped into cylinders, or pugs,

as they're known in the pottery game.

And now I'm taking them to mug making.

Whoa!

There's a fair amount of weight on there, son, isn't there?

..where I'm catching up with mug master Dean.

What happens to them now? Can I lend a hand?

We need to feed these into the machines because this is

too big a diameter to make a mug.

So, we're going to turn it down into about a third

of the diameter it is currently.

A conveyor carries my pugs to an extruder,

which squeezes them down to size.

A cheese wire then slices them into smaller 50g chunks called slugs.

The slugs are placed into the plaster of Paris mould

that you've made in the mould shop.

The steel tool then presses the inside shape.

That spinning smooth metal?

Yeah, that's the steel roller tool.

That's taking the place of the potter's hand.

In the old days, a potter's hand would have formed the clay

into a mug shape.

Here, this spinning tool pushes it down against the mould,

creating the form of the mug.

Four millimetres thick at the base,

and tapering to two millimetres at the top.

How fast are you making mugs here?

So, this is making in a mug every six seconds,

so 14 mugs every minute,

840 mugs every hour and 5,000 mugs in an eight-hour shift.

That's 75 times more mugs per hour

than a traditional potter could make by hand.

And they're all exactly the same shape and size.

Now I know why you need so many moulds. Exactly.

It's extraordinary. It's quite therapeutic.

It's beautiful! Yeah.

What's that bit shooting off?

All of the clay that's coming off the top end is the scrap,

and that all gets recycled.

Once we've got the mug in the mould,

we then need to dry it so that it shrinks.

Otherwise, if you tried to take that mug out of the mould now,

it would just basically fall to pieces.

So much of your process is actually trying to get rid of things. Yep.

Trying to get rid of air or trying to get rid of water. Yep.

My fragile mugs are sent through an enormous dryer

at 55 degrees for 20 minutes.

Reducing their size by 2% allows them to be easily lifted

from the moulds by robot arms.

Then they travel to get smoothed over by a spinning sponge.

It is like a mini carwash. That's it. Yep.

It's still quite soft. Still very soft.

Obviously, they could be deformed by a sponge, so, yes, very soft.

Still wouldn't be able to hold

a hot cup of coffee with it, though, would you?

No, so now we go on to the next stage,

which is putting a handle onto the mug.

I've got to get a handle on it. And that's that way. Yeah.

Thank you, Dean. I'll see you soon, right? See you later.

Time for me to make my way to the handle station...

..where clay slip has been poured into handle-shaped moulds

and then dried for six hours.

Lovely to meet you.

Hello, Gregg. Lovely to meet you.

Helping me get to grips with my handles

is the factory's chief handle putter-on-er Denise Griffiths.

I've got a box of incredibly beautiful handles.

Thank you.

Would you mind showing me how you stick them on the mugs?

No problem.

You pick the mug up off the belt,

pick a handle up, put it in the slip,

press it on at the top, on at the bottom,

you wipe round it in a figure eight, and then...

No way! Would you let me have a go at that?

Yes, of course you can.

Oh, God! You've got to be slim, ain't you,

to get through here, Denise?

You have, yes.

So, I put that in there?

Yes.

Get my handle, put it in the slip.

Yeah. Dab it. Yeah. Dab off the excess.

Put your finger underneath and press it on with your thumb.

And now you wipe round it in a figure eight.

Pick it up.

Ah!

Ah-ha, ha-ha!

Magic.

Look at that! Well done. You've done it.

Look at that, it's like a magic trick!

How many of these do you do every day?

We do about 1,700 each.

The three of us together do 5,000 in a day.

Listen, we've all had a handle come off a mug one time or another,

is there a secret to a permanent, fixed handle.

There is. Design, shape and a very good handler.

That's me. HE LAUGHS

My expertly applied handles now do a bit of bonding with their mugs,

drying at 50 degrees for one hour and 25 minutes.

From there, they are sent to the kiln,

where I'm catching up with my old china, Dean.

Dean, I've got my mugs. They've got handles.

They feel very strong indeed now.

They are quite firm.

They're down to less than 0.5% moisture content,

but that moisture content is still enough to make them brittle.

There you go.

Oh! Yes.

I think I'm stronger than I look!

Obviously.

They're only at about 3% of the strength of the finished mug.

To make them stronger, my mugs must be fired.

So, how do they get from here into the kiln?

These are actually trucks that are on wheels,

and it's like a big train.

No, you're kidding me! No. I thought that was permanent.

No, no, no. These are all on wheels. This is like a tray.

It's like a tray. Yeah, exactly like a tray.

Can I go and see some of them going in? Let's have a look, yeah.

Groovy Train by The Farm

A constant train of trucks moves along the track 24 hours a day,

seven days a week. And every 35 minutes, a new one is drawn

into the mouth of this giant 50 metre gas-powered kiln.

Whoa!

So... That is serious, isn't it?

Yeah, what you're looking at there is 950 degrees centigrade

in the centre of the kiln there.

How many pieces of crockery do you have in there?

We could get to about 15,000 pieces in the actual kiln itself

at any one time.

Please, try and explain to me -

what is happening to this piece of pottery inside there?

So, if you remember the original ingredients in the clay body

that we created earlier -

we've got clay particles, we've got quartz and we've got feldspar.

They completely melt up to 950 degrees,

and they're forming a glass that is

then binding the clay particles together,

creating strength, creating form.

All three melt together, and when they do,

they are a very strong bond?

Correct, yeah.

What do you do if something goes wrong in the middle of that?!

We have to turn the kiln off and then wait a week for it to cool down

before we can get somebody in there to pull the truck out.

Ha-ha! It takes a week to cool down?

And then it takes a week to heat up again.

No way!

Fingers crossed nothing goes wrong with my mugs.

As it is, it's going to take 18 hours for them

to travel through the kiln.

There it goes! Yep, there it goes. It's on its way.

The UK has a long tradition of pottery making,

but one person really broke the mould when it came to designing it.

Historian Ruth Goodman is following their rags-to-riches story.

This tale of a pottery pioneer began 120 years ago in Stoke-on-Trent -

the Staffordshire town at the heart of Britain's pottery industry.

And in these streets, one of the most revolutionary figures

of British ceramics was born and raised...

..and would go on to lead a team of 1,000 people

in the creation of 8.5 million ground-breaking ceramic works.

And such success was all the more remarkable

because Clarice Cliff was a woman.

I'm meeting pottery expert Will Farmer

outside her childhood home.

It's a very modest house, isn't it?

Absolutely. Her mother took in washing to supplement the income.

And, of course, as one of seven children growing up in areas

like this, you would be expected to go to work very young.

So, at the tender age of 13, and with a talent for art,

Clarice started her career

as a freehand paintress in the Potteries.

The freehand paintress was the most highly sought after,

the best paid, and it was generally deemed that once you picked

that choice, that would be your career for life.

And you choose that at 13? You do.

Unless, of course, you're Clarice Cliff,

and this is where she broke the mould.

Against her parents wishes, Clarice chose to take on lesser-paid jobs,

working as a gilder, an enameller and pattern book keeper,

such was her determination to learn about the entire industry.

She was designing her own education.

Without a doubt. Clarice had a much bigger plan.

Which came to fruition when her talent was spotted by her employer,

factory owner Colley Shorter,

who sent her to study in Paris.

On her return, she would drag the British ceramics business

out of its blousy past...

FLAPPER MUSIC PLAYS

..and hurl it into a technicolour future

when her first range exploded onto the market in 1927.

The Art Deco lines appealed to liberated women of the era

with their own money to spend.

Called Bizarre Ware, it was painted by a team

who became known as The Bizarre Girls.

So, here you go.

SHE CHUCKLES

Oh, wow, look at that!

I mean, talk about shock of the new.

It's so bright, it's so bold.

And these shapes, they're really interesting.

I'm going to have a go at recreating Clarice's crocus design...

I'm in quite some trepidation here. THEY CHUCKLE

You'll be fine, Ruth, you're in good hands.

Righto.

..with the help of expert paintress Emma Bailey.

Clarice was very daring and free with her movement.

She left all the brush strokes in,

so you don't have to worry about being perfect.

So, you'd have, like, a pattern,

but there is a certain amount of creativity left to the paintresses?

I think those who know the Clarice

would know exactly who'd painted which crocus. Each one. Really?

You're doing it pretty quick.

You had to be quick because the more you did,

the more you got paid.

The Clarice girls would usually get through about

100 tea sets, coffee sets a day.

Doing 100 of those sets a day?!

Yeah. Jeepers.

No pressure, then. Now it's my turn.

You can do one of the mugs.

Into the middle of the paint... Load your brush.

Under Clarice's eagle eye, her girls produced a staggering

18,000 pieces each week for export all over the world.

That's my best effort!

Oh, I think that's lovely.

I'll get you that fired.

THEY LAUGH

By 1931, thanks to the huge commercial success of her work,

Clarice became the first female art director in the Potteries

and was running the two factories which produced her wares.

Things were on the up in her personal life, too.

Oh, my!

SHE CHUCKLES

In 1940, she married her former mentor, Colley Shorter,

and came to live here.

I can see why she'd love it.

It's very much got that feel of her work, hasn't it?

It's all there. Mm.

If you look at the shapes, you know, the outline,

the way that she herself painted her cottages, her... Yes.

Her whimsical landscapes, her beautiful flowers.

The design elements that she favoured are also here.

But the outbreak of war would disrupt the momentum

of Clarice's career.

The Bizarre girls were disbanded to help on the home front,

and her designs fell out of fashion.

But the signature that became

as iconic as her designs

is a reminder of her time here.

Etched on the window is her name.

Oh, yeah! But - Clarice Shorter.

Her married name. Legend has it, you know, that this was done

with her engagement ring.

What we're looking at is, "This is now my home."

A home that signified just how far she had come from that

two-up two-down in Tunstall.

Thanks to her tenacity and determination,

Clarice Cliff was the first to break through the glass ceiling

of ceramics and pave the way for a whole new generation

of female designers.

WHIRRING

SCRAPING

Back at the factory in Derbyshire,

my mugs are one day and 20 hours into production.

They've been moulded, had their handles added and fired.

Now they need their all-important pattern.

So I'm off to the glazing line, where Dean is introducing me

to the queen of colour - operator Sue Fletcher.

Are these my mugs?

These are your mugs.

Hello. Sue's one of our glazing operatives.

All right? You do the glazing?

Now, look, forgive me, I honestly do not know what glazing is.

In cooking, glazing is when you, like,

put a sugar over the top of it.

In very simple terms, glaze is a coloured glass

that is sitting on the outside of the clay pot.

In the last 40 years,

the factory has created 5,000 secret glaze recipes

made from a blend of different minerals and metals,

like cobalt and titanium mixed with water and a chemical

that makes the glaze liquid and easy to apply.

When heated in the kiln, these reactive glazes

melt to form a watertight glass-like layer and create beautiful colours.

Is that my glaze?

That is your black glaze.

But that is a creamy grey!

That is nothing like this colour.

And that's the difference between paint and glaze.

Paint is the colour at which you paint it on,

glaze is a chemical reaction.

It's the formation of the glass.

And that's the difference.

When people were practising a different-coloured glaze... Yep.

..they had to keep putting it on and then baking it

to see what colour it was going to end up?

And that's still what we do today.

So you don't actually know what colour it will turn out

until you've written a recipe for it?

We don't know until we physically make the recipe,

try it and apply it.

That putty colour makes black when cooked?

Yeah.

Sue? Yep. Can you show me how to do this, please?

I will, yes.

Sue starts by turning the mug upside down.

She presses a pedal which squirts a fountain of black glaze

into the inside and then coats the top edge of the rim.

Easy, right?

So, get a mug, hold it over it... Yep. ..and then press it.

Yeah. Whoa!

About there? Yeah.

It's gone a bit lopsided...

But that's all right, it's a bit of individuality.

What's wrong with that? No good.

Did you just sling that away, offhand?

Sue, you're a bit of a tough taskmaster.

OK, Sue may not be that impressed with my inside glazing,

so what about the outside?

Gripped tightly, the mug is dipped carefully into a bucket

of the white's outside glaze.

You've got to get to the top of the handle and the top of the mug

without going inside.

This is slightly nerve-racking here, Dean.

I've got every faith in you, Gregg.

So I give it a stir around.

Well, you have to do a fair bit of pressure because it's quite thick.

And then I've got to take it just up to the rim,

but I've also got to tilt it to get the handle in.

Is that enough?

They can't leave it in the glaze for too long

because it picks up more and more glaze.

My mug must have an even layer of glaze on it.

Too thin and it will become transparent when fired,

too thick and the glaze will slip down to the bottom.

This is hard!

Put it in the bin.

No good.

I'll tell you what amazes me is how quickly that dries.

I mean, that dries virtually immediately.

And that's a bit of a secret.

The glaze looks very watery,

but it actually only has about 25% water, so it dries very quickly.

When the glaze covers the mug,

the water is absorbed into the clay within seconds,

creating a dry, powdery texture.

How long do you have to practise before you've mastered this?

Quite a while.

Well, this is the simplest one we actually do.

Bum! So, again a...

No!

That's too thick there. Too thick on the bottom.

There's an air bubble underneath it.

It's all right, Sue, I know where it's going.

Sue, should I be putting this in at a slight angle?

Yeah. Yep.

Ta-da!

I can't do it.

I cannot do it.

That is a really skilful art.

The smashed pieces will go to recycling,

but my freshly glazed mugs now need to be heated

so the minerals and metals can chemically react

to form the patterned layer.

So I'm taking them to another enormous oven - the glazing kiln.

Where they are loaded up, ready for firing.

Can you explain to me exactly what happens

when that mug is in the kiln?

So you remember earlier we spoke about all the elements,

all the different elements that are going in the mug?

What's happening when they go into the kiln is they're reacting

together, they're starting to melt,

and this is basically going up to 1,200 degrees C.

The glass has been formed.

It's smoothing over, it's creating this glossy finish.

It's flowing and inter-reacting.

And then the way we cool from 1,200 degrees down to a lower temperature

freezes this structure that we get and gives the impression of texture.

I'm going to tell you and you tell me if I've got it wrong, all right?

They are all rough and they're powdery at the moment. Yep.

At a certain heat, they start to melt, but not just melt,

they start to mix with each other.

They start to mix and interact, yeah.

And then because there's more heavier mix at the top

where we dipped, it's now starting to drag down

and that's going through the other colours,

creating specks of even more colour.

Correct. Mate, I was rubbish at chemistry. I'm so proud of myself!

Right, mugs - my mugs - I'll see you on the other side, right?

Let's go.

It will take 18 hours for my mugs to travel through

the 60-metre-long kiln.

Now, glazing is one way to add design to a mug,

but Cherry's been learning how to apply intricate printed patterns.

The Burleigh Pottery factory in Stoke-on-Trent is famous

for a decorative technique that hasn't changed since the 1700s -

and is the last factory in the world still using it.

And part of their distinctive design has been to add colourful

and detailed patterns onto everything from teapots

to mugs and jugs.

I'm meeting Alison Howell...

Hello, Alison. Hello.

..who is one of only a handful of people keeping

this endangered craft alive.

This has got to be one of the prettiest factories

I've ever seen in my life.

It's like being in a Dickens novel, isn't it? It really is.

What are we making today?

So we're making Blue Calico.

To create the pattern, this 67-year-old printing machine

is fed with tissue paper.

An engraved roller that's been heated to 50 degrees is then

loaded up with a very sticky ink.

It's an oil-based paste and then it's got ceramic colours in.

And the purple colour is made by cobalt oxide,

and when that fires, that turns really rich blue.

As the inked roller revolves, the pattern appears on the paper.

Remember when you were younger and you'd have a transfer tattoo?

It's exactly... Is it like that? Yeah. OK!

As the wet paper emerges from the roller,

it's quickly collected to avoid smudging the pattern.

And you put it on a washing line?

Yep, it's the best way of transporting it.

The pulley system wafts the paper down to the transferring area,

where a crack team of decorators press the sticky design

onto the pottery by hand, in a process

called tissue transfer printing - and Chris is the expert.

Is she the teapot Don?

She is. OK.

I mean, it looks so fiddly. I don't even know what to say.

So what Chris is doing is she's cutting different-sized pieces

out of the print... OK.

..and then wrapping and folding them around the teapot body.

Pinching and teasing the tissue into place.

And because it's so sticky,

it's just immediately adhering to the ware.

Only 12 people in the world can manage this technique.

It takes two years to learn how to transfer the flat patterned sheet

onto the curved shape with no visible joins.

That's magic.

There's no separation.

There is not one seam.

There's not one break in the pattern.

Chris took just eight minutes to cover her entire teapot,

and now they're letting me have a go.

There's quite a lot that could go wrong.

Yeah.

Here goes.

And you want my pot to look like it's got no seams whatsoever?

It's all just one continuous pattern. Yeah.

Just as it is on the sheet.

I need to cut a section that is five inches square.

So sticky!

Let's pretend that's a square.

OK. Cut a small circle out of the centre.

Ah! I tore it.

The paper is then pressed firmly onto the lid.

And then just gently smooth it down.

Like a glove. Look at that.

Then the excess paper is trimmed off with a metal tool

called a kidney.

And a small piece of tissue is wrapped around the knob.

We had a little practice on that,

so now we're going to go for the teapot.

We're going to stick it around the middle of the pot.

Just bring it all the way round.

And round there? Yeah.

Alison, that is bad wrapping.

I'd recognise your presents at Christmas.

Ha-ha! Yeah.

Then some delicate trimming to remove the excess paper.

I'll look away.

The paper is kind of on the pot, but I need a brush

and some sticky stuff to finish the job.

That is gloopy!

Gelatine soap - just to lubricate the brush, so you don't tear

straight through the tissue.

Gently does it.

The design is firmly pressed in to the pot with the brush.

So around the more complicated bits, you can use a toothbrush.

OK. I am covered in ink and glue.

Is it done yet?

So, we're going to wash the tissue off now.

The pot washer removes the paper, but because the ink is oil-based,

my pattern is waterproof, so it stays put on the pot.

Done. Phew!

But will my efforts pass the Alison test?

I think for a first attempt, you've done really well.

We're going to fire it for you,

so you'll be able to see the finished thing.

After two visits to the kiln for my teapot

and a couple of nights at home to recover, for me,

it's been delivered.

Oh, wow!

OK.

Maybe my apprenticeship isn't in the bag,

but it's unique and I will treasure it.

HEAVY GRINDING

SLOPPING

HORN BLARING

It's been two days and 22 hours since production started on my mugs.

They've been fired, glazed and are hot off the press.

Or, in this case, coming slowly out of the kiln.

And like a butterfly emerging from a chrysalis,

the mugs have been transformed.

That is amazingly clever.

It's a little bit like magic, innit?

Can I touch them? Yeah.

They're about 60 or 70 degrees at this point.

Oh, OK! Yep. That's really nice.

The transformation between rough powdery vessel

and this beautiful, shiny mug is extraordinary.

That's right. The heat gives it a chemical reaction

and it's that that makes this beautiful pattern and finish.

Exactly like you said.

Coming down here, the chemicals working with each other

to make it shiny and patterned.

And, of course, all of this is just what somebody dug out

the ground, right? All of it.

My mugs are on the final leg of their remarkable journey

as they arrive at quality control.

CLINKING

Which is music to my ears.

The Blue Danube by Johann Strauss II

RHYTHMIC CLINKING

Conducting these pottery percussionists is

inspection supervisor Neil Brown.

Neil, is this quality control?

Because all I can hear is clanging and dinging.

Yeah, we check the mug for cracks, holes, chips and colour.

With a pattern like that, how do you check for a crack?

What we listen for with one of these is a ring.

It has to ring. MUG RINGS

If it's got a crack that we can't see,

it doesn't ring. DULL CLINK

So all that ting, ting, tinging through this hall... Yeah.

..I thought it was like an accident.

No. And that piece of metal tapping on the side will detect

every little crack? Yeah.

That's phenomenal.

Now it's time to see if I can make my mugs sing.

MUG RINGS

Perfect.

MUG RINGS

Well, I reckon that's a... MUG RINGS

..G-flat minor.

DINGING Move along the bus, please.

DULL RINGING

DULL CLINK

Whoa! Whoa!

DULL CLINKING

For all the mugs that pass through quality control,

just one in 1,000 hits a duff note.

DULL CLINKING

Bad!

Yeah, obviously, this wasn't from my batch. No, no.

Somebody must have smuggled a couple of duff ones in there. Yeah.

OK. Apart from that one, my mugs passed quality control,

and are heading to dispatch, where they are boxed,

wrapped, and after three days and six hours,

5,000 mugs are ready to leave the factory.

And I'm meeting up with muggins here, Dean,

to see them on their way.

Here we go!

Gregg Wallace lookalike.

Thank you, sir.

Dean! Hi, Gregg.

These are my mugs?

These are your mugs, ready to go on to the lorry, yep.

They're going out now? Yep.

How many pallets are going to get loaded on there?

There's 24 pallets per truck.

So how many mugs is that, mate?

There's about 478 per pallet,

so about 11,500 per truckload.

Really? And how many trucks go out every day?

There'll be two lorries a day going out.

So we could be sending out the best part of 23,000 mugs.

23... 24,000 mugs, yep.

It's been an incredible journey.

There it is. We're loaded.

Right, send her away.

HE CHUCKLES

From the factory, my mugs head to the main distribution warehouse,

where they are sent to 50 countries around the world,

including the US, South Korea, and the Middle East.

But it's the UK that's most crackers about this crockery.

Well, I feel a bit of a mug

because I had no idea what goes into making something

that I have used all of my life.

Oh! What's that bit shooting off?

I love how the skilfully applied glaze starts off grey and dull...

I can't do it.

I cannot do it.

..but is transformed by a complex chemical reaction

into colourful and intricate patterns.

That is amazingly clever.

It's a little bit like magic, innit?

But what really amazes me is a mug is made of something

that comes from the ground and is hundreds of millions of years old.

Now, you get a handle on that.