Wedgwood Etruria Pottery, Staffordshire (1926)

  • Description

    The Wedgwood Pottery provides the only internal sequence in the film - the potter at his wheel and the ladies at work in the painting room. This extract comes from Claude Friese-Greene's 'The Open Road' - originally filmed in 1925/6 and now re-edited and digitally restored by the BFI National Archive. Britain seen in colour for the first time was heralded as a great technical advance for the cinema audience - now we can view a much improved image, but one which still stays true to the principles of the colour process. The rather haphazard journey from Land's End to John O'Groats creates a series of moving picture postcards. Look out for shots containing the component colours - red and blue-green - such as when a little girl in a red coat and hat walks among peacocks in the grounds of a castle, and three girls with red curly hair pose by the sea at Torquay. The car is a Vauxhall D-type - considered a sporty model at the time. A long-distance journey by car was a relatively new concept, with none of the amenities en route now taken for granted. The visit to a petrol station shows smoking on the forecourt: no health and safety issues back then! The travelogue ends with a series of recognisable London landmarks. Much remains the same - one major exception being the volume of traffic on the roads. (Jan Faull) To buy the DVD click here - http://www.bfi.org.uk/filmstore All titles on the BFI Films channel are preserved in the vast collections of the BFI National Archive. To find out more about the Archive visit http://www.bfi.org.uk/archive-collections
  • Owner

    BFI
  • Source

    BFI (Youtube)
  • License

    What does this mean? Standard Youtube License
  • Further information

    Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xY6iHx_07tk
    Resource type: Video
    Last modified: 10 years ago
    Viewed: 671 times
    Picture Taken: Unknown
  • Co-Curate tags

Comments

Add a comment or share a memory.

Login to add a comment. Sign-up if you don't already have an account.

ABOUT US

Co-Curate is a project which brings together online collections, museums, universities, schools and community groups to make and re-make stories and images from North East England and Cumbria. Co-Curate is a trans-disciplinary project that will open up 'official' museum and 'un-officia'l co-created community-based collections and archives through innovative collaborative approaches using social media and open archives/data.

LATEST SHARED RESOURCES