Nostalgia

I have always been nostalgic. I love new things but I always want to hang on to what is familiar and what I know to be good. New designs and new products do excite me, but then I have a deep fondness for things of the past, for our heritage and our traditions, our history. I think that was always in my character, but when I joined Wedgwood as a young man, pretty soon after I left high school, I was destined to head down a path that was steeped in nostalgia. The whole foundation of the Wedgwood brand was based on the fact that it had been made since 1759 and throughout its history the company had made china for heads of state, royalty and famous people of the time. That was a selling point. People loved the history of the designs, the shapes and even the factories themselves. And we sold our products as “heirlooms”, a term that itself has almost lost its meaning today. But the set of bone china you got for a wedding present could be passed down to your kids and your grandkids.

In the world of kitchenware, many of the old things I remember as a child have been superseded by new inventions that make the job of cooking and baking easier than it used to be. We now have digital scales, high tech food processors, rice cookers with “fuzzy logic” (whatever that means) and products made from, amongst other things, materials like silicone and titanium which had never even been heard of back then. The very world of cooking seems to revolve around the microwave, instead of the stove. I remember we would make toast when I was a kid using a big brass fork in front of the coal fire. We didn’t have a toaster, even though they have been around longer than even I have. More seasonally, we would roast chestnuts in front of the fire, too.

But then there are a few things I recall we had during my days at home which either have come back into use or are, at least, still around. I used to enjoy helping mum bake and one of my treats was to clean the last remnants of the cake batter off the hand mixer we had. And I mean a hand mixer, not a handheld electric mixer, but one which you turned a handle. Progressive came out with a revival of those last year, much to my delight and we have sold them pretty well. My good friends at Typhoon have enjoyed some success during the last several years with old style scales.

This reminds me of a story. If I can digress a little, at church the other week, a young child asked me the time. I showed her the watch on my wrist and she looked at me rather puzzled, until her parent came to her rescue pointing out that she could only read the time digitally. Do we need to do a class in store, teaching people how to read the weight on a non-digital scale

And then there seems to be a revival here for the good old pressure cooker. In our house, my mum would always use her Prestige pressure cooker to prepare Sunday lunch, cook steamed puddings and to prepare a Potteries delicacy, somewhat like a stew, called “Lobby”. There is a way to go before we can say that the pressure cooker is back in fashion, but there is certainly a lot more interest now in the benefits of using one. Again, we have plans to hold classes for people who might be curious to learn more about it.

Most people know how much I love my knives and, in that regard, nothing changes much. At the end of the day, there isn’t much you can’t do with a good old Wusthof 8” Cook’s Knife – probably Classic, as we are talking about nostalgia here. But I do like another of Progressive’s newer introductions – the potato cutter. This makes me nostalgic because we had something just like it when I was young to enable us to make chips (note: I mean the English version – not what they call chips where I live these days). This well made item beats a good knife any day.

So what I wonder is, having read during the last few weeks of the plight of the pottery industry in England, whether there will be revival of nostalgia for china tableware? I pray that there will, for the sake of the industry and the people of my home area in Staffordshire. It would be a shame to lose names like Wedgwood and Spode after 250 years. Corporate bean counters are treating them like brands and moving more and more to outsourcing in Asia. I do not believe that is what the customer wants. Or am I just being nostalgic? Does it really matter? I hope so.