World museums: Victoria & Albert Museum to launch a joint project with BBC

The BBC and V&A today announce Handmade in Britain, a year-long season of programming that will be the most wide-ranging and ambitious exploration of decorative arts ever to be undertaken on British Television.

From autumn 2011 to autumn 2012, Handmade in Britain on BBC Four TV channel featuring culture, art and cinema, will present three, three-part series and a selection of individual hour-long films, focusing on a wide variety of art and design disciplines: ceramics, wood, metalwork, textiles, stained glass and paper.

Handmade in Britain will draw on the collections and expertise of the V&A, one of the world’s greatest museums of art and design. V&A objects will be used to tell particular stories, highlight ground-breaking technical innovations and illustrate how the story of artistic development in Britain is one of multiculturalism and globalisation. The series begins this autumn with a three-part series on ceramics and a two single 60 minute programmes on stained glass and Chinese porcelain.

London Museum founded in 1852 is the largest museum of ornamental and applied arts in the world. It comprises 145 galleries and its holdings store objects of about 5 000 years old.