William Blake was born in 1874. He was a photographer and stationer based in Longton. His most famous photographs are known as the ‘smokies’, such as the wryly-captioned ‘Fresh Air for The Potteries’. They depict the landscape of smoking chimneys and industry that once dominated the area from the late 18th Century to the mid-20th Century.

But Blake didn’t restrict himself to industrial landscapes. He travelled throughout The Potteries and into the adjacent towns, villages and countryside. The photographs he took tell us stories about people and places in and around north Staffordshire. They reveal his concern for social issues, a curiosity to explore, and an obsession to record his surroundings.

Blake died in 1957 and his surviving photographs form a unique archive that captures the working lives, social history, and landscapes of our region in the early 20^th century. This video is presented by Jon Heal - sharing his expertise on Blake’s work by using the collection of Blake's photographs in Stoke's Potteries Museum and Art Gallery and loaning postcards from his own collection.        47 minutes