Paul, Eleni, and Ian of the Potteries Museum with some of the Goya prints about to be loaned to Ceuti. Courtesy The Sentinel newspaper.

A Stoke-on-Trent museum is to loan a collection of original prints by Spanish master Francisco de Goya to a town in his homeland.

The prints, belonging to Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, will be taken to Spain on Wednesday February 15 2006 where they will be displayed at CeutImagina, a museum in the Spanish town of Ceuti. The town is informally linked in friendship to Stoke-on-Trent.

Spotted by Isabel Serna, director of CeutImagina, the prints have never been seen in Murcia, the Spanish region where Ceuti is situated.

Ms Serna had come to stay with friends Paul and Eleni Brammer, whom she had met through Stoke-on-Trent’s International Twinning Association. The couple run an advertising agency, Exesios, which has recently designed and produced an exhibition for the Potteries Museum.

The outside of CeutImagina, in Ceuti, Murcia, where the Goya prints will be displayed. © Exesios.

“This, we feel, will be an opportunity to widen horizons,” said Phil Drew from Exesios. “It will be a small but significant step towards reclaiming for our home region its historical reputation as a climate infused with art and creativity.”

Stoke-on-Trent is known as the centre of the ceramic world. It hosts the great names of English china, such as Wedgwood, Spode, Portmeirion and Moorcroft, many of which open their doors through visitor centres and factory tours.

After Ms Serna spotted the prints, Mr and Mrs Brammer organised an informal lunch with the museum’s officials during which the loan between the two museums was agreed.

“The exchange created such excitement that the Spanish museum commissioned 20 leading Spanish artists of international repute to create as many modern interpretations as there are originals (20),” said Mr Drew. The new interpretations will be in a variety of media, including sculpture, manuscript, musical composition and paint.

Stoke-on-Trent Potteries Museum & Art Gallery, which will loan its collection of Goya prints to CeutImagina Museum in Spain.

The collection will be displayed at the Potteries Museum when it returns in March 2007 together with the contemporary Spanish interpretations. “It will be a unique showcase of Goya past and present,” added Mr Drew.