A NORTH-EAST museum has gone to pot with the opening of a new exhibition of 1950s and 1960s crockery.

The Bowes Museum, in Barnard Castle, County Durham, is showing a display of studio pottery and glass, which will run until April 22.

The exhibition shows that the Scandinavian influence on interior design is not a recent phenomenon, with many of the items on display, such as glazed earthenware storage jars, teapots and vases, made in Sweden.

Long before IKEA opened stores around the country there were specialist shops where Scandinavian ceramics and furniture could be bought.

Now, more than 40 years on, the crockery is considered to be valuable historically, and is noted for its combination of craft tradition and modern standards of design.

The exhibition also features items of melaware, a coloured plastic used as a rival to ceramics during the 1960s, craft pottery, folk art and blown glass