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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Letters

Grayson Perry’s nipple-tile maker squeezed out

Grayson Perry's A House For Essex
A House for Essex, an artistic collaboration between FAT Architecture and Grayson Perry, which overlooks the Stour estuary in north Essex. Photograph: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Grayson Perry’s ceramic house in Essex gets some well-deserved publicity (16 May). In the same week comes news that the specialist maker of the ceramic “nipple tiles” which adorn it – Shaws of Darwen – has been forced into liquidation and all its 39 employees made redundant. Shaws was one of few early 20th-century architectural terracotta manufacturers left standing in the UK and the consequent loss of the knowledge and skills it possessed is a tragedy.
Penny Beckett
Chair, Tiles & Architectural Ceramics Society

• Have any of those who want Fifa to suspend Israel’s “murderous regime” (Letters, 16 May) ever advocated the same treatment for such democratic upholders of human rights as North Korea, China, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Zimbabwe and Syria to name only a few.
Robert Philpot
Brighton, Sussex

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