Antiques Roadshow's Lars Tharp holding Bowl with Bird by Svend Bayer from the Ismay Collection, on show at Wakefield Art Gallery.

Lars Tharp, the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow ceramics expert, has curated a trio of exhibitions across Yorkshire to show off the impressive collection of York Museums Trust.

Celebrating Ceramics, running until January 2006, features events at York Art Gallery, Scarborough Art Gallery and Wakefield Art Gallery, with a unique theme at each venue.

Each one is showcasing a selection of the 13,000 items in the trust’s world-class ceramics collection, which ranges from prehistoric pottery to outstanding examples of 20th century studio pottery.

Bursting dense garlic Bud Life Force Bottle by Kate Malone, on show at York Art Gallery.

Fired Up at York Art Gallery examines the story of pottery from the clay in the ground to the plate on the table, showing its development from prehistory through Roman and Iron Age times to the present.

The exhibits are grouped not by date but by common theme, appearance or function, including displays of pottery used for four centuries of tea and coffee drinking, ornaments for worship or admiration, sculptures and funerary figures.

Hippo by Rosemary Wren, on show at Scarborough Art Gallery.

Classical Roman urns sit next to iron-age storage jars and 20th century studio pitchers and flagons complement medieval drinking vessels.

An archive film accompanies the exhibits, showing craftsmen at work and contemporary potters talking about their favourite works.

Tall Vessel by Elizabeth Fritsch, on display at York Art Gallery.

In Wakefield, the Bill Ismay collection is celebrated. Ismay was an extraordinary collector of ceramics, amassing the largest collection of studio pottery in Britain over 40 years. Some three and a half thousand pieces were crammed into his modest terraced house in Wakefield and as the collection grew his available living space shrank.

Wakefield Art Gallery has recreated a room in his house with pots piled high on top of a bath. The exhibition not only celebrates the works of art themselves but also aims to recreate the physical sensation of being a collector.

Ismay’s passion led him to collect works from more than 500 potters, including influential figures such as Bernard Leach and William Staite Murray, many of whom became personal friends.

Seagull by Rosemary Wren, on show at Wakefield Art Gallery.

In FirePlace Lars Tharp has created 12 distinctive fireplaces at Scarborough Art Gallery, grouping pictures from the gallery’s collection with ceramic pieces from the Trust to create a colourful tableaux.

These range from Victorian to minimalist, combining historical recreation with the fantastical using ceramics by potters like Leach, Murray and Shoji Hamada and celebrated British painters Frank Brangwyn and John Atkinson Grimshaw.

Visitors are asked to submit photos of their own mantelpieces to be displayed anonymously on a special notice board.

Lars will award a prize to his favourite in early December 2005 and the winner will be asked to recreate their winning set as a final installation at the exhibition.