King delighted with TV repair of favourite vase

King Charles was visibly moved to see a cherished piece of ceramics restored by the team at BBC One’s The Repair Shop.

The work was carried out for a special edition of the BBC One show filmed last year when Charles was still a prince.

He said the restoration of a Wemyss Ware piece made for Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee was “fantastic”.

Presenter Jay Blades’s visit to Dumfries House in Scotland highlighted a shared passion for training young people in heritage craftmanship.

The then prince said during the show that the lack of vocational education in schools was a “great tragedy”.

He had agreed to take part in the episode marking the BBC’s centenary, and invited The Repair Shop to the stately home near Cumnock in East Ayrshire where the Prince’s Foundation Building Craft Programme is based.

In The Repair Shop: A Royal Visit, the team helped with an 18th-Century bracket clock and a piece made for Charles’s great-great-great grandmother’s diamond jubilee in 1897 by Scottish ceramics maker Wemyss Ware.

The King said the damaged 19th Century ceramic piece fell over when someone was opening a window – “they didn’t own up,” he joked.

When ceramics expert Kirsten Ramsay showed the King the restored piece he was delighted.

“It’s fantastic,” he said. “I would never have believed that. I was thinking when I was coming, ‘I bet she hasn’t managed it,’ because it’s my favourite.”

He added: “I think it is utterly wonderful, I’m thrilled.”

Speaking about his love of clocks, the royal added: “To me I just love the sound, the tick tock but also if they chime, that’s why I love grandfather clocks.

“I’m afraid it is something I learnt from my grandmother, she had great fun putting a few together and trying to get them to chime at the same time in the dining room, which made it very enjoyable because everybody had to stop talking.”

Jay Blades previously told The One Show that filming with the future King was a “joy”.

“You never think someone like me, from a council estate, and then you’ve got someone from the royal estate, having the same interests where we basically want to continue heritage crafts.

“And if we can do it through apprenticeships and just the knowledge, and everyone at the barn feels the same way, it’s happy days, but I never thought I would get on like that.”

Blacksmith, stonemasonry and wood-carving apprentices from the Prince’s Foundation were introduced to the presenter during the programme.

The monarch said: “I still think the great tragedy is the lack of vocational education in schools, actually not everybody is designed for the academic.”

He added: “I think that’s been the biggest problem, sometimes that is forgotten. Apprenticeships are vital but they just abandoned apprenticeships for some reason.

“It gives people intense satisfaction and reward.”

King Charles said the thing he “really loves” is students returning as tutors year after year – “filling the skill gaps”, he said.

Prince’s Foundation graduate Jeremy Cash also went to The Repair Shop barn to work with metalwork expert Dominic Chinea on a third item – described as a fire set in the shape of a soldier – for a woman from Edinburgh.

Satinder Kaur, collections manager at Dumfries House, told BBC Radio’s Good Morning Scotland programme she thought the links between the Prince’s Foundation and The Repair Shop would continue.

“The King pays regular visits to Dumfries House as part of his presidency of the foundation, so he’s pretty involved in the house and the estate and the wider community,” she said.

“Jay Blades is an ambassador for the foundation as well, so he’s very involved in things like heritage crafts and I think there will be an opportunity to nurture a relationship between the crafts people that we are training and providing opportunities elsewhere for them.”

Referring to the items King Charles gave to the television team to restore, she said the Wemyss vase and clock had particular significance to the house.

Ms Kaur said the King had added 35 clocks to the house’s original three to give the house a “heartbeat”.

Wemyss Ware took its name from the Wemyss family, titled incumbents of Wemyss Castle on the east coast of Fife.

She added: “We actually have a Wemyss exhibition at the house right now so it all links together very nicely.”