british studio pottery

B R I T I S H S T U D I O P OT T E RY
THE COLLECTION OF A DISCERNING ACADEMIC
MONNOW VALLEY ARTS
MMIX
B R I T I S H S T U D I O P OT T E RY
T H E C O L L E C T I O N O F A D I S C E R N I N G AC A D E M I C
Foreword by Andrew Renton
Head of Applied Art, National Museum Wales
Introduction
One Collector’s Approach by David Whiting
E X H I B I T I O N D AT E S
26 September - 8 November 2009
The exhibition is supported by Patrons and Friends of Monnow Valley Arts.
Please enquire about membership of these groups
MONNOW VALLEY ARTS
Middle Hunt House, Walterstone, Nr.Hereford HR2 0DY
Tel: 01873 860529 E mail [email protected]
www.monnowvalleyarts.org
MMIX
Acknowledgements
This collection has been formed over the last 25 years and includes major
works by all the significant studio potters working in Britain in the 20th
century. The collection is an historical survey starting with Bernard Leach,
who brought the Japanese tradition to Britain, through his apprentices
and students and through the European influence brought to the UK by
Lucie Rie and Hans Coper.
We are delighted that the owner, who wishes to remain anonymous,
has agreed to the loan of these precious works for the benefit of our
Patrons, Friends and visitors.
Our thanks are also due to Andrew Renton, head of Ceramics at the
National Museum, Wales, for selecting the works for the exhibition, and
David Whiting for his introduction.
Photographs by Hanneke van der Werf, Monnow Valley Arts Centre
Designed by Helen Swansbourne, London
Printed by Disc to Print, London, in an edition of 500
ISBN 978-0-9559575-4-3
I L LU S T R AT I O N S
Front cover:
Inside front cover: Shoji Hamada, Stoneware slab bottle-vase. Cat. no. 12
Title page: Jennifer Lee, Tall coil-built stoneware pot. Cat. no. 61
Left: William Staite Murray, Stoneware bowl with red-brown glaze. Cat. no. 3
Contents page: Hans Coper, ‘Poppy Head’ stoneware pot. Cat. no. 39
Inside back cover: Estella Campavias, Stoneware shallow flared bowl. Cat. no. 35
Back cover: Sutton Taylor, Deep earthenware bowl. Cat. no. 56
Contents
Foreword by Andrew Renton
4
Introduction by David Whiting
20th Century British Studio Pottery:
One Collector’s Approach
6
Catalogue
11
Foreword
‘The collector’s enemy is the museum curator’, wrote the porcelain
collector Kaspar Utz in Bruce Chatwin’s eponymous novel. ‘In any
museum,’ he explains, ‘the object dies – of suffocation and the public gaze
– whereas private ownership confers on the owner the right and the need
to touch.’1 With a foot firmly in each camp – as David Whiting describes
in his essay – the creator of this distinguished and engaging collection
understands and thrives on this opposition. He has indulged his private
enthusiasms, notably for Lucie Rie, Hans Coper and William Staite
Murray, with an art historian’s sensitivity to contexts, influences and
significant stories.
This is, certainly, a collection conceived not only to punctuate and
enliven domestic spaces, but also to be enjoyed directly, to be viewed
intimately and to be handled. Murray’s bowl Winter, for example, with its
confident foot-ring, demands this kind of attention. This is the sort of
well-turned foot-ring that engaged the connoisseurship of the Japanese
tea masters, that Shoji Hamada taught Murray how to make, and that was
one of the sources of shared pleasure underpinning the somewhat uneasy
friendship between Murray and Bernard Leach. Utz, again, would have
understood. ‘The passionate collector,’ he wrote in a sentiment worthy of
Leach, ‘his eye in harmony with his hand, restores to the object the lifegiving touch of its maker.’
Leach protested against the ‘divorce from life’ he saw in the applied
(and fine) art of his time.2 As a contemporary reviewer observed, he
4
William Staite Murray, ‘Winter’. Cat no. 7
‘abandons what may be called the museum attitude, and comes down
into the living room.’3 Appropriately, then, this collection is rooted in the
spontaneous enthusiasm that inspired its first serious acquisitions, when
the collector happened upon a sale of studio pottery while on other
business and came away with a handful of pots that included the striking
dark blue and possibly unique vase by Lucie Rie – a vase that now adorns
his living room.
This uninhibited and enduring passion has nurtured an exemplary
collection, one that is imbued with a belief – to use Leach’s words –
that ‘pottery has its own language and inherent laws,’4 but has not been
drawn into the aesthetic cul-de-sac that Leach’s polemic often seems to
imply. The collector has instead been eager to reflect on those values and,
in the company of potters who have often learned directly from each
other, to teach himself about the history and potential of the discipline of
the fired clay vessel in the twentieth century. Favourite potters have been
given due prominence: Murray and his individual approach to form and
decoration, Rie in a long series of works both magnificent and deceptively
modest, Coper in a choice group rounded off by a splendid vase. Formal
and intellectual correspondences within the collection are made evident
through its arrangement in the domestic setting, allowing the slab-built
vessels of John Maltby and the leaning vases of Joanna Constantinidis to
sit comfortably in the company of the classical thrown forms of the Leach
and Murray traditions.
The quality, range and structure of the collection reveal its author’s
enthusiastic engagement with museums and their methods. Private
collections like this retain a vital role as a foil to public collections that are
necessarily edited, possibly too dispassionate, and subject to orthodox
interpretations that are worth challenging. It is fortunate that a local
collection of this quality is to be given a public airing, thanks to its
collector’s desire to share his passion for studio ceramics.
Andrew Renton
Head of Applied Art, Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales
1.
2.
3.
4.
Bruce Chatwin, Utz, London, 1988
Bernard Leach, A Potter’s Book, London, 1940, p.13
1928, quoted in Edmund de Waal, 20th Century Ceramics, London, 2003, p.90
Leach, A Potter’s Book, p.xxi
Lucie Rie, Large stoneware baluster vase with deep blue cobalt glaze. Cat. no. 20
5
20th Century British Studio Pottery:
One Collector’s Approach
The critic Herbert Read’s often quoted evaluation of pots in The Meaning
of Art is always worth repeating because it provides such a useful
summary:
“Pottery is at once the simplest and the most difficult of arts. It is
the simplest because it is the most elemental; it is the most difficult
because it is the most abstract….Judge the art of a country, judge
the fineness of its sensibility, by its pottery; it is a sure touchstone.
Pottery is pure art; it is art freed from any imitative
intention…pottery is plastic art in its most abstract essence”.1
Read’s words principally address a particular kind of pottery, such as
that he illustrated, an elegant Chinese stoneware jar from the Song
dynasty. He was thinking mainly of these clay vessels – not only Chinese
wares but perhaps medieval English jugs, Korean bowls or 17th century
slipware dishes – rather than broader figurative and sculptural work. His
appraisal was clearly influenced by his wider advocacy of abstract art, an
arch modernist concerned with pure and essential non-narrative form.
Little wonder that among the pots one saw at Stonegrave, his Yorkshire
home, were pieces by the studio potter Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie –
bottles and bowls of obliquely Oriental conception, subsumed into her
own very English sense of colour and texture, pottery at its simplest and
‘most elemental’. Read’s statement is in fact just as relevant to British
potters such as Pleydell-Bouverie and the other studio pioneers – figures
like Bernard Leach, William Staite Murray and Michael Cardew – who
6
took from Eastern and European functional traditions to find their own
voices as artists and artist craftsmen.
It is this kind of studio pot, based in the vocabulary of function –
bottles, bowls, jugs, dishes and so forth – that has been so passionately
collected here, and has formed the backbone of studio practice
throughout the 20th century. While this collection is as much a reflection
of personal taste and does not aim to show the entire stylistic breadth of
this history, it still demonstrates the remarkable range of style and
philosophy within the almost archetypal language to which Read was
alluding. The collector – a distinguished retired professor of art history –
has been acquiring studio pots for the best part of fifty years – pieces from
Charles Vyse in the 1960s, Geoffrey Whiting teapots bought in Cambridge
in the 1970s, and a succession of major pieces from auction houses and
dealers from the mid 1980s onwards. His acquisitions have centred not
only on the Leach School (Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada and their
followers) but the circle of William Staite Murray and the lasting legacy of
Lucie Rie and Hans Coper.
Our collector has a considerable knowledge of early Oriental pieces.
They were a familiar part of his London household when growing up, and
he would eventually, like Herbert Read at the V&A, look after historical
ceramics in a major English museum. It is this appreciation that has
clearly influenced and guided his acquisition of modern pots. The
majority of pieces here are essentially of organic form – objects which
have risen and expanded on the potter’s wheel with decoration that adds
motion and lift to that form. They are shapes that encompass so much,
not only about the continuing tradition of the vessel, but our intimate
relationship to pottery and to clay – right down to the terms we use to
describe the physical elements of pottery, ‘body’, ‘lip’, ‘foot’, ‘neck’ and so
on. It is the most direct and intimate of art forms, only fully realised when
touched, held and contemplated about the house.
In ‘Towards a Standard’, the opening chapter of his famously
influential A Potter’s Book (published in 1940), Leach addresses the
progress from the anonymous craft traditions of pottery to that of maker
as artist;
“The potter is no longer a peasant or journeyman as in the past, nor
can he be any longer described as an industrial worker. He is by
force of circumstances an artist-craftsman, working for the most
part alone with a few assistants… In the work of the potter artist
who throws his own pots, there is a unity of design, execution, cooperation of hand and undivided personality, for designer and
craftsman are one…”2
Leach spoke much about the spirit and ‘heart’ in good pottery, but it
was heart with a new intellectual consciousness in the emerging studio
wares, the product not of vernacular craftsmen but of men and women
from ‘educated’ backgrounds, producing pots for a generally middleclass audience.
Leach (1887–1979) set up his pioneering workshop in St Ives in 1920,
with the help of Shoji Hamada (1894–1978) the great Japanese potter he
had first met in that country. Hamada took as much from English pottery
as Leach did from Oriental. He was, like Leach, inspired by our native
medieval forms and later slipwares, and both drew much from Chinese,
Korean and Japanese exemplars. They soon developed work where form
Bernard Leach, Stoneware flat-sided slab bottle. Cat. no. 10
7
and decoration, brushed and incised, in increasingly deep and varied
glazes, seemed in complete and fluid accord. Leach and Hamada’s bottles,
bowls and big dishes were functional but also, most certainly, works of
art. Leach, after all, had trained as a fine artist (at the Slade School and
London School of Art) and Japanese potters have long been regarded
as such.
William Staite Murray (1881–1962) was particularly conscious of this
status, exhibiting in galleries with painters and sculptors such as Ben
Nicholson, Christopher Wood and Barbara Hepworth, and becoming a
member of the influential Seven and Five Society of fine artists. Murray
echoed Herbert Read’s evaluation of ceramics, calling it “a very pure art, a
direct formal expression”, and going on to say that this “formal beauty lies
in the sympathetic or complementary relationship of its parts, its lyrical
beauty in its painting or decoration, its tonal beauty in its colour and its
timbre in the quality of its surface. It connects the art of painting and
sculpture…”3 Like Leach, Murray was strongly influenced by Chinese
pottery, but as these words show, he had no interest in the functional
aspects of clay. His pots – bowls and tall bottles, often heavily thrown with
prominent bases – had an almost bodily anthropomorphic sense of form,
with strong brushwork. His designs made a significant impact on
Murray’s pupils at the Royal College of Art in the 1930s – potters like
Henry Hammond, Gwilym Thomas, Percy Brown, Sam Haile and Robert
Washington, some of whom carried Murray’s legacy into the 1980s and
90s. Henry Hammond (1914–89) used pottery as a vehicle for beautiful
and lyrical brushwork, while Sam Haile (1909–48) and Robert
Washington (1913–97) were more experimental, their decoration
reflecting some of the current trends in modern art. Other important but
largely underrated pioneers of the inter-war studio movement were two
Chelsea-based figures who trained at Camberwell School of Art, Charles
William Staite Muirray, Tall stoneware baluster-shaped vase. Cat. no. 6
8
Vyse (1882–1971) and Reginald Wells (1877–1951). Both achieved
technically rich glazing on Orientally inspired forms, but Leach and
Murray’s prominence as teachers as well as practitioners has helped
eclipse Vyse and Well’s reputations.
The Leach School has certainly spread its influence far and wide,
initially in the work of his early pupils, like Michael Cardew (1901–83),
Katharine Pleydell-Bouverie (1895–1985) and Norah Braden
(1901–2001). Cardew, a magnetic and complex figure, played a pivotal
role in the revival of English slipware, producing pots with vibrant
brushwork and trailed glazing. An important writer and teacher,
vehement about the role of useful pottery, he went on to make superbly
glazed stoneware in Africa and Cornwall. Pleydell-Bouverie and Braden’s
soft ashes on simple Chinese derived forms had a strong sense of our
temperate climate, of the countryside from which their raw materials
came. Bernard Leach’s sons David and Michael also became potters, with
David (1911–2005) managing his father’s St Ives workshop and
introducing its range of Standardware before moving to Devon in 1955.
His language, most typically achieved in celadon fluted bowls and bottles
with flowing willow decoration, had a modern elegance quite distinct
from his father’s. David Leach’s son John (b. 1936), based in Somerset,
makes woodfired tableware and individual smoke-fired pots, while
David’s other students include John Maltby (b. 1936), originally a maker
of vibrantly painted bowls and dishes and now known for his imaginative
and poetic figures, and Tim Andrews (b. 1960), a leading exponent of
raku vessels.
The late William Marshall (1923–2007), Bernard Leach’s foreman and
master thrower at St Ives, developed a robust style of his own, imbued
with some of the qualities of Japanese pottery and of his own Cornish
coast and weather. Leach’s third wife, the Texan-born Janet Darnell
(1918–1997), who went on to train with Hamada in Japan, also explored
the bolder aspects of ceramics, in porcelain, ashglazed and black
stoneware of considerable power. The work of Richard Batterham
(b. 1936) has certain affinities with Pleydell-Bouverie and Braden with
simple glazes on concentrated and confident forms. Having trained at St
Ives in the late 1950s, he went on to produce tall stately bottles, faceted
bowls and lidded pots in deep ashes and irons, as well as a succinctly
designed range of tableware.
Away from St Ives, potters like Ray Finch (b. 1914) and Geoffrey
Whiting (1919–88) greatly admired Leach and Cardew’s functional ethos.
Finch took over the running of Cardew’s first pottery at Winchcombe,
producing thrown slipware and then stoneware, while Whiting ran
another production workshop at nearby Droitwich, developing a
particular reputation for his well designed teapots. The Leach inheritance
continues today in younger figures like Jim Malone, Phil Rogers, Andrew
Crouch and Mike Dodd. Rogers (b. 1951), Malone (b. 1946) and Dodd
(b. 1943) are based in remoter landscapes, keen to process locally sourced
materials in their pursuit of the ‘essential pot’, objects with a strong
modern feeling for medieval English and early Oriental ceramics. Andrew
Crouch (b. 1955), working in Ludlow, is respected for his fine jugs and
technical ability with glazes.
The émigrés Lucie Rie (1902–95) and Hans Coper (1920–81), from
Austria and Germany respectively, shared, through the 1940s and 50s,
Rie’s mews studio in West London. They brought a fresh mid-European
modernity to wheel-made ceramics, an approach still based in function
but which had strong sculptural qualities. Their clean pared-down
shapes, in Coper’s case inventively thrown and altered, had an urban
quality that were a far cry from bucolic notions of country pottery. They
were pots that seemed particularly conscious of the spare elegance of the
Modern Movement in architecture, but still drew on a variety of historical
sources. Their fresh aesthetic left its mark – in different ways – on the
work of Waistel Cooper (1921–2003), Joanna Constantinidis
(1927–2000), John Ward (b. 1938) and Jennifer Lee (b. 1956), with Ward
9
and Lee able to explore the vessel at its most simple and elemental
through the process of handbuilding. While Cooper’s textured forms had
strong affinities with Coper, Constantinidis’s surfaces, in stoneware and
porcelain, had a softer purity and elegance. James Tower (1919–88) was
one of a significant group of potters associated with London’s Central
School and Institute of Education. They brought a new sculptural climate
into British ceramics through throwing and handbuilding. Tower’s
expressive tin-glaze vessels reflected his interest in landscape and organic
form. There is a close relationship between his lustrous surfaces and the
lustre glazes of Alan Caiger-Smith (b. 1930) and Sutton Taylor (b. 1943),
potters who explore rhythmic patterns and colour to enliven pots again
made more for contemplation than use.
The integrity of this collection lies in its essential domesticity, its
owner’s belief in pottery as an integral aspect of civilising art, an art which
encompasses sculpture and painting, chemistry and geology and so much
more. The way pottery can exist in our homes, animating their spaces,
casting shadows and adding rich texture and colour, provides not only
deep and lasting pleasure, but a real broadening of sensual experience.
First and foremost, this is what this collection is so engagingly about.
David Whiting
Lucie Rie, Porcelain conical bowl. Cat. no. 25
10
1. Herbert Read The Meaning of Art, London 1944, pp 32–33
2. Bernard Leach A Potter’s Book London 1940, pp 1–2
3. William Staite Murray, quoted in Paul Rice, British Studio Ceramics, Ramsbury, 2002,
p 58
Catalogue
The catalogue is arranged in the chronological order of the date of birth of the potters.
Measurements are in cms.; h. = height and d. = diameter.
RE GI N A L D W E L L S
(1877 – 19 5 1 )
Studied sculpture at the Royal
College of Art, and then ceramics at
Camberwell School of Art. c. 1900
sets up a pottery making slipware at
Coldrum, near Wrotham, in Kent,
moving it to Keppel Street in
London in 1909 and, after the war, to
King’s Road, Chelsea. His final move
was to Storrington, Sussex, in 1925.
He worked largely in stoneware,
using delicate and translucent glazes.
1. Stoneware dish with tripod foot,
with light blue and violet glaze,
c. 1910–24. d. 23.5.
1
11
WILLIAM STAIT E M URR AY
(1 88 1–1 962 )
Born in Deptford; studied painting and
then pottery at Camberwell School of Art.
Set up his own pottery in Rotherhithe in
1919 and then in Wickham Road, near
Lewisham. In 1925 appointed pottery
instructor (in preference to Bernard Leach)
at Royal College of Art, becoming Head of
Ceramics in 1926. In 1929 moved to Bray
in Berkshire. In 1939 visited Rhodesia,
where he was caught by the war and ceased
potting, spending the rest of his life there.
Considered pottery as ‘fine art’ rather than
‘craft’, exhibiting in London galleries with
painters and sculptors, such as Ben
Nicholson and Henry Moore. Named many
of his pots, and charged high prices for
them.
2. Stoneware red brown pot with incised
‘vorticist’ decoration revealing white
ground. Dated 1924 on base. h. 16.
2
12
3. Stoneware bowl with red-brown glaze
on unglazed narrow base, c. 1926.
d. 17.5.
Illustrated on page 2
4. Stoneware grey-glazed vase with dark
brown painting of two fish and
underwater foliage, c. 1930. h. 27.5. (Ex
Ballantyne Collection)
4
13
WILLIAM STAIT E M URR AY
(continued)
5. Aulos. Stoneware two-handled jar
decorated with bands of beige, brown
and green with circular discs, c. 1932.
h. 28.
6. Tall stoneware baluster-shaped vase
with flared neck and tapering to
unglazed base, the brown ground
overlaid with poured grey glaze,
c. 1937. h. 39.
Illustrated on page 8
7. Winter. Footed stoneware bowl, glazed
in speckled olive/grey, the foot
unglazed, c. 1928. h. 12. (Exhibited,
Leicester Galleries, November 1958,
No. 42, illustrated)
Illustrated on page 4
5
14
CHAR LE S VYSE ( 1 8 8 2 –1 9 71 )
Born in Staffordshire; apprenticed to
Doulton’s in 1896 and studied at The Royal
College of Art 1905–10. In 1919 set up
studio in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea, with his
wife Nell, an expert in ceramic chemistry.
For some years they concentrated on
producing ‘popular’ pottery cast figures,
but became increasingly interested in
making high-fired stoneware pots in the
Chinese tradition and and reproducing
some of the most effective Chinese glazes.
In this they were much influenced by their
neighbour and friend, George
Eumorfopoulos, who encouraged their
glaze experiments.
8. Stoneware cup-shaped pot with regular
carved lappets on shallow foot,
decorated inside and out in a lightly
crackled celadon glaze. h. 10.
8
9. Stoneware cup-shaped bowl on shallow
foot, decorated inside and out in a pale
blue ‘jun’ glaze. h. 11.
9
15
BE RNARD LEAC H
( 18 87– 197 9)
CBE C H
Born in Hong Kong and grew up in Far East; at
Slade School, 1903–5, studied drawing under
Henry Tonks, and London School of Art,
1907–9, studied etching under Frank
Brangwyn. In 1909 to Japan to teach etching,
and soon discovered pottery at a Raku party;
worked under Ogata Kenzan 6th, and inherited
the title of 7th Kenzan. Met the Japanese potter
Shoji Hamada and returned to England with
him in 1920. Established pottery at St. Ives, and
became the most influential figure of the craft
pottery movement, potting, exhibiting,
teaching, lecturing and writing prolifically; A
Potter’s Book was published in 1940. In all his
work he stressed the marriage of East and West,
and in his pottery he expressed the importance
of individuality based on tradition and
craftsmanship.
10. Stoneware flat-sided slab bottle, pressmoulded in two pieces with added foot and
neck, with inlaid willow tree design on
both sides, covered with a brownish-grey
glaze. h. 20.
Illustrated on page 7
11
16
11. Stoneware ‘Leaping Salmon’ bottle vase,
with short neck and everted rim, covered in
a mushroom coloured glaze and decorated
in iron-brown brush work with two
contniuous bands of twelve leaping
salmon, c. 1950. Leach produced many
variations of this pot, the first about 1930.
h. 29.5.
SHOJ I H A MA DA ( 1 8 9 4 – 1 9 78 )
Born in Tokyo, where he studied ceramics at the
Technical College. Met Bernard Leach in 1918
and accompanied him to England in 1920 and
helped build the climbing kiln at St. Ives. Had
two exhibitions in London before returning to
Japan in 1924, after a European tour. Paid return
visits to England and toured USA with Leach in
1952, returning there frequently in later years.
Was declared a Living National Treasure in 1955.
He had a strong influence on the development of
British studio pottery.
12. Stoneware slab bottle-vase with curved sides;
reddish-brown glaze with wax resist designs
on both sides. h. 18.
Illustrated on inside front cover
K ATH E RI NE P L E Y D E L L BOUV E RI E ( 1 8 9 5 – 19 8 5 )
Born at Coleshill, Berkshire. Studied at Central
School of Art; pupil at Leach Pottery, 1924. Sets
up own Cole Pottery at Coleshill in 1924, and
moved it to Kilmington Manor, Wiltshire, in
1946, when Coleshill estate was sold. Devoted
herself to ash-glazed stoneware, and was
considerable pioneer in the development of
glazes.
13. Stoneware elongated oviform vase with
short and narrow neck, with a band of cut
flame decoration and a finely crackled
lavender-blue wood-ash glaze with brown
veining, thinning to reveal area of body,
c. 1975. h. 20.
13
17
NO RAH BRAD EN
( 190 1– 200 1)
Trained at Central School of Art and Royal
College of Art; pupil at Leach Pottery
1921–25, and considerd by Bernard Leach
as one of his best pupils. Worked with
Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie at Coleshill,
1928–36. Virtually ceased to pot in 1939,
and in her later years destroyed many of
her remaining pots.
14. Stoneware shallow bowl on small foot,
the interior with abstract wax-resist
decoration, brown through grey glaze,
the exterior with a mottled white and
sage-green glaze. d. 21.
14
18
M ICH AE L C A R DE W
( 1901– 83 )
Born London; read Greats at Exeter
College, Oxford, and learned pottery
during vacations in Devonshire. Bernard
Leach’s first apprentice, 1923–6; set up own
pottery near Winchcombe, Gloucestershire,
in 1926, moving to Wenford Bridge,
Cornwall in 1939. 1942–65 spent largely in
Africa teaching and making pottery in
several centres, including Achimota College
in Ghana and Abuja in Nigeria. Returned to
Wenford Bridge in 1965, and produced
stoneware. His autobiography, Michael
Cardew – A Pioneer Potter, published in
1988.
15. Blue earthenware vase, slip glazed with
grey linear decoration and a slightly
flared rim. c. 1947. h. 23.
15
19
DAME LU C I E RI E (1 90 2–95)
Born in Vienna into a wealthy Jewish
family; studied pottery at the
Kunstgewerbeschule, Vienna, 1922–26,
under Michael Powolny. Quickly developed
her own pioneering style, and exhibited her
work internationally, winning Silver Medal
in Paris in 1937. Emigrated to London in
1938; visited Bernard Leach, who gave her
some encouragement but whose influence
she largely rejected, though they became
close friends. In 1939 set up her own small
workshop in Albion Mews, near Marble
Arch, where she remained for the rest of
her long life. After the war she designed and
made ceramic buttons for the fashion
trade, and was joined in 1946 by Hans
Coper. Her first exhibition at the Berkeley
Gallery in 1949 was followed by frequent
exhibiting of her work world-wide. Started
teaching at Camberwell School of Art in
1960, and also taught occasionally at the
Royal College of Art, where she was
awarded an honorary doctorate in 1969.
Awarded OBE in 1968, CBE in 1981, and
created DBE in 1991.
16
18
17
20
16. Earthenware cylindrical vase covered in
a thick and occasionally pitted mottled
brown and beige glaze. Made in Vienna
in about 1935, and one of the few pots
brought by Lucie Rie with her to
London. Acquired shortly after her
death at Albion Mews. h. 12.
17. Stoneware white-glazed beaker, with
matt black glaze inside, made with
Hans Coper, c. 1950. h. 11.
18. Small stoneware bottle-vase, with shiny
white glaze flecked with fine brown
speckles, and stamped ‘1951’ on one
side. Made for sale at the Festival of
Britain in 1951. h. 16.5.
19. Tall stoneware bottle vase-with bulbous
body tapering to foot and long slender
neck with everted rim, covered in a
minutely crackled white glaze with
brown flecks. c. 1954. h. 40.
20. Large stoneware baluster vase with
deep blue cobalt glaze (rare in Lucie
Rie’s work) and run matt manganese
rim. c. 1955. h. 32.
Illustrated on page 5
21
21. A pair of small stoneware pouring jars,
dark grey with blue flecks, white
interiors and bases. c. 1955. h. 10.5.
22. Small stoneware oval salad bowl, white
with brown flecks. c. 1956. These salad
bowls were made for sale at Heal’s.
d. 17.
19
22
21
DAME LU C I E RI E
(continued)
23. Porcelain bottle-vase, the rounded
body rising to long narrow neck; very
pale green glaze with shades of pink
and a brown rim. c. 1958. Acquired at
the Lucie Rie Studio Sale, Bonhams,
17.04.1997. h. 22.5.
24. Mirror black porcelain bottle-vase with
trumpet neck; base unglazed with
white glaze below, c. 1962. h. 25.
23
22
24
25. Porcelain conical bowl with a dark
brown spiral on a pale green glaze,
c. 1968. d. 16.5.
Illustrated on page 9
26. Porcelain bowl on deep foot, covered
inside and outside with a translucent
finely crackled emerald green speckled
glaze, with metallic bronze running
and fluxing to rim, c. 1980. d. 20.
27. Small porcelain sgraffito bottle vase,
with trumpet neck and rim, the
bulbous body on tall cylindrical foot,
covered with a pitted black manganese
glaze, the shoulder and neck with
unglazed rings inlaid with thin purple
lines flanking matt-blue and black
bands with vertical sgraffito lines, the
rim with identical band. The base is
also decorated with matt-blue and
sgraffito lines. This is one of Lucie Rie’s
most elaborately decorated and
feminine pots, which, like most small
pots, has to be handled to be fully
appreciated. h.16.
26
27
28. Golden bronze and white porcelain
bowl, sgraffito radiating lines inside
and inlaid lines outside. Lucie Rie
called this sort of decoration her
‘knitting’. c. 1982. d. 20.
28
27
(mark)
23
DAVI D LE AC H
( 19 11– 200 5)
OBE
Born in Tokyo, eldest son of Bernard Leach;
joined St. Ives Pottery as an apprentice in
1930. Attended Pottery Managers’ Course
at Stoke-on-Trent, 1934–36, returned to St.
Ives as Manager and partner, and worked
there, with interruptions for war service
and several teaching appointments. In 1956
established his own pottery at Lowerdown,
Bovey Tracey, Devonshire, where he
produced stoneware pottery and porcelain.
Exhibited widely and travelled to lecture
and demonstrate.
29
29. Porcelain footed celadon bulbous bowl
decorated with vertical fluting. Dated
1971. d. 12.5.
30. Stoneware squared bottle-vase with
waisted neck, covered in grey-green
glaze, partially poured, and decorated
with brush stroke motif in tenmoku
glaze, 1989. h. 47.
31. Large stoneware globular pot with
tenmoku glaze inside and out, largely
covered on the outside in a pale green
glaze with the wax resist design of a
willow tree, 1989, when bought at
Lowerdown Pottery and then said to be
the largest pot made by David Leach.
h. 47.
31
24
30
HENRY H A MM ON D
( 1914– 89 )
Studied at Croydon School of
Art and then at the Royal College
of Art, under William Staite
Murray. Taught at West Surrey
College of Art and Design,
1946–80. Studio at Bentley,
Hampshire, from 1948. His
pottery largely oriental in
inspiration, often with lively
brushwork.
32. Grey green globular vase,
with a broad rim; brown
painted decoration of two
willow trees, c. 1938. h. 23.5.
RAY FI N CH ( b.1 9 1 4)
Studied at the Central School of
Art under Dora Billington, and
in 193 joined Michael Cardew at
Winchcombe, taking over the
pottery when Cardew moved in
1939, producing largely welldesigned and well-crafted
tableware. In 1961 Winchcombe
supplied the first Crank’s
vegetarian restaurant in London.
32
33. Stoneware jug, iron glazed in
tenmoku and purple, with
decorative band at centre.
h. 26.
33
25
GWILY M TH O MAS (1914–95)
Born in Swansea. Won scholarship to
Swansea School of Art in 1931, and then
moved to Royal College of Art in 1935 to
study under William Staite Murray, who
had a strong influence on him. Part time
teaching at Putney School of Art, 1937–38,
and at Bromley School of Art, 1946–49. He
was a conscientious objector during the
war; in 1951 began teaching at
Hammersmith College of Art, where he
became Head of Ceramics in 1973. In 1956
moved to Orpington, Kent, and built a
pottery studio.
34. Tall stoneware bottle vase with slender
neck and unglazed tapered base,
covered in pale grey glaze with abstract
decoration in dark blue and brown,
c. 1962. h. 48.
ES TELLA C AMPAVIAS
( 191 8– 90)
Born in Turkey. Settled in London in 1947
and studied at Chelsea Pottery. Ceased
making pottery in 1961 and took up
sculpture in 1974.
35. Stoneware shallow flared bowl, the
interior covered with streaked lavender
and purple glazes, the exterior with a
run pale turquoise glaze. d. 25.
Illustrated inside back cover
34
26
JANE T L E AC H ( né e D a r n e l l ,
1918– 9 7)
Born in Texas; to New York in 1938, studied
sculpture and after the war became interested in
pottery. Set up her own pottery in 1948; met
Hamada and Bernard Leach in U.S. in 1952 and
travelled to Japan in 1954, working with Hamada.
Came to England in 1956 and married Bernard
Leach as his third wife. Helped to run the St. Ives
workshop until his death, and continued there
until her own death.
36. Stoneware bottle-vase with tall cylindrical
neck and lug handles, the exterior covered in
an iron-speckled white slip, the interior with
dark brown, some of which has been trailed
over the exterior, c. 1975. h. 20.
GEOF FR EY W H IT I N G ( 19 1 9 – 8 8)
Born in Northumberland; trained as architect at
Birmingham School of Architecture. After army
service (1939–48), latterly in India, taught himself
pottery under influence of Bernard Leach and
with encouragement from his cousin, Herbert
Read. In 1949 set up pottery and teaching
workshop at Avoncroft College, Worcestershire,
which he moved to Hampton Lovett in 1955.
Became famed for his teapots. Appointed potter-in
residence at St. Augustine’s College, Canterbury in
1972, and also taught at King’s School. Father of
David.
37. Stoneware bulbous oviform pot, with speckled
pale brown glaze and prominent grey splash.
h. 20.5.
36
37
27
JAM ES TOWE R (1 919 –88)
A sculptor and painter by training at the
R.A. and Slade Schools; began potting in
1949, though ten years later he largely
returned to sculpture in bronze for twenty
years. Resumed pottery for the last ten of
his active years. Head of Fine Art at
Brighton College of Art from 1966 to 1986.
Inspired by patterns and shapes from the
natural world, many of his pots have
sculptural qualities.
38. Winter Grasses – Opus 204.
Earthenware vessel, with a green/black
glaze on white tine glaze with sgraffito
decoration. Inscribed with title on base
and dated, 1985. h. 50.
38
28
HAN S C O P E R ( 1 9 2 0 – 19 8 1 )
Born in Germany of Jewish parents;
emigrated to England 1939, and after
internment enrolled in Pioneer Corps. Met
Lucie Rie in 1946 and began to work with
her at Albion Mews. Began exhibiting in
1950, and from 1953 showed in numerous
exhibitions in Europe and America. Set up
own studio at Digswell, Hertfordshire, in
1959, moved to Hammersmith in 1963 and
then to Frome, Somerset, in 1967. Taught at
Camberwell School of Art, 1961–72, and at
Royal College of Art, 1966–75.
Commissioned to make the monumental
altar candlesticks for Coventry Cathedral in
1962. The most original and influential
British potter of his day.
39. ‘Poppy Head’ stoneware pot globular in
form, the buff speckled glaze decorated
with eight vertical painted brown ‘flags’,
surmounted with a flat matt black rim,
c. 1953. h. 30.
Illustrated on contents page
40. Stoneware black composite vase, discus
at centre, with conical base and neck,
c. 1965. h. 27.
41. Stoneware bulbous bottle form, the
buff body with four impressed dents
and surmounted by a dark brown disc
top, c. 1972. h. 20.
40
41
29
WAIS T E L C O OPE R
( 19 21– 200 3)
Born in Ayr, Scotland. Trained as a painter
at the Edinburgh College of Art, 1938–9
and 1945–6. Established pottery at Porlock,
North Devon, 1952–5, then at Culbone,
near Porlock, 1955–83 and finally in
Penzance. One of the earlier potters to
experiment with textured surfaces.
42. Stoneware bottle vase with swollen
cylindrical body, short neck and flared
rim; iron brown glazed body beneath
mottled stone and green. h. 20.5.
30
WILL I AM M A RS H A L L
( 1923 – 20 0 7 )
Born St. Ives Cornwall; joined Leach
Pottery as fist true apprentice in 1938,
becoming (after war service) foreman in
1947. Set up own pottery at Lelant, near St.
Ives, in 1977.
43. Tall cut-sided stoneware bottle, with
mottled white glaze and combedthrough ‘brush-stroke’ decoration,
c. 1980. h. 29.
COLI N P E A R SO N ( b. 19 2 3 )
Born in Herefordshire; 1947–52 studied
painting at Goldsmith’s College,
discovering pottery in his final year.
1953–54 worked with Ray Finch at
Winchcombe, and then, 1955–61, helped
David Leach set up Carmelite Friars’
pottery at Aylesford, taking over as
manager in 1956. Set up own Quay Pottery
at Ayleford in 1961 making domestic ware,
and concentrating on individual pieces
from about 1971. Winner of the 33rd
Grand Prix at Faenza in 1980. Moved to
Islington in 1981.
44. Small porcelain bowl on stem with
applied wings, covered in semi-matt
white glaze, c. 1990. h. 12.
43
44
31
JOANN A C O NSTANTIN IDIS
( 19 27– 200 0)
Born in York, studied at Sheffield College of
Art. Set up studio at Great Baddow, Essex,
in 1950. Much of her work is semisculptural, sprayed with metal oxides to
produce lustrous effects.
45. Porcelain cylindrical vase, with
compressed sides covered in a pale blue
glaze with cobalt blue spiralling
striations, c. 1985. h. 18.
46 and 47. Two tall, slender and leaning
stoneware bottle shapes sprayed with
lustrous ‘golden’ metal oxide, c. 1994.
h. 36 and 39.
46 and 47
32
45
ALAN C A I G E R- S M I T H
( b. 19 3 0)
Born in Argentina; in 1947 studied painting
at Camberwell School of Art, and then,
1949–52, read history at King’s College,
Cambridge. Took evening classes in
ceramics at Central School of Art with
Dora Billington, and in 1955 set up his
pottery at Aldermarston, Berkshire. In 1963
began use of reduced lustre decoration.
48. Dark grey lustre glaze earthenware
bowl with red and light green
decoration, dated 1982. d. 26.
49. Lustre glaze earthenware bowl, with
symmetrical burgundy foliate design
on white ground, dated 1988 . d. 27.
48
49
33
R IC HARD B ATT E R HAM
( b.19 36 )
Introduced to pottery at Bryanston School;
two-year apprenticeship at Leach Pottery,
St. Ives, 1957–8. Established own pottery in
Dorset in 1959, making pots for use, in
stoneware and porcelain, using delicate
glazes.
50. Very tall stoneware ribbed bottle-vase,
with shallow neck with everted
flattened rim, covered in celadon ash
glaze on slip, 1989. h. 79.
JO H N M ALTBY (b. 1936)
Born in Lincolnshire. Studied sculpture at
Leicester and Goldsmith’s College, London.
Worked with David Leach at Bovey Tracey,
1962–4, and then set up own workshop at
Stoneshill, near Crediton, Devon. Has
lectured and exhibited widely in England
and elsewhere, and received several awards,
including a Gold Medal at Faenza in 1975.
51. Small Suffolk Seaport. Stoneware spade
form on narrow base, covered with pale
grey glaze with semi-abstract scenes
painted and splashed on front and
back, and black glaze in interior, 1991.
h. 19.
50
34
51
JOHN WA RD ( b. 1 9 3 8 )
Born in London. Studied at Camberwell
School of Art, 1966–70, when Lucie Rie and
Hans Coper were visiting teachers there. Set
up own London studio in 1970, and moved
to near Newport, South Wales, in 1979.
52. Straight-sided pitted white hand-built
stoneware pot on curved base. d. 12.5.
EMAN U E L C O O P E R ( b. 1 93 8 )
Born in Derbyshire. Studied ceramics at
Bournemouth School of Art and Hornsey
School of Art, 1960–62, and worked with
Gwyn Hanssen and Bryan Newman. Set up
Fonthill Pottery in North London, where he
still works, in 1964. Author of several
books, including biography of Bernard
Leach (2003), and Editor of Ceramic
Review.
53
52
53. Stoneware bowl in pink grey with
heavily pitted surface; fired in electric
kiln, 2003. d. 11.
JOHN L E ACH ( b. 1 9 3 9 )
Born in St. Ives, eldest son of David Leach. On leaving school
worked with his father, and also for short periods with Ray
Finch and Colin Pearson; apprentice at Leach Pottery, St. Ives,
1961–62. Established his own pottery at Muchelney,
Somerset, in 1965, and is still there. Produces large range of
very utilitarian kitchen ware as well as individual pots.
54. Wood-fired stoneware dark grey pot with white band, c. 2005. h. 12.
54
35
JE NI FER J ON ES (b. 1 940)
Read History of Art at Courtauld Institute,
1959–62; Ceramics Course Central School
of Art and Design, 1962–64. Part-time
teaching at Brunel University, 1976–86.
Studio in Richmond Surrey for many years
and then moved to Cornwall. Specialises in
large frost-resistant coiled vessels for
outdoors.
55. Tall urn with wide rim; coiled heavily
grogged clay with incised linear
decoration covered with black metal
oxide, 2007/8. h. 70.
55
36
SUT TO N TAYL O R ( b. 1 9 43 )
Born in Yorkshire. Self-taught potter,
setting up pottery in Jamaica in 1966.
Returned to England in 1970, and had
various studios in and around Leeds.
Moved to Cornwall, near Lands End, in
1996. Uses local clays and throws incredibly
thin pots.
56. Deep earthenware bowl on narrow
foot, with mottled semi-lustrous pink
and gold glazes inside and outside, and
a gold rim, c. 1990. d. 28.5
Illustrated on back cover
57. Large earthenware dish on shallow foot
with random abstract lustre decoration
in a variety of colours, including red,
gold, blue and black. The rim is gold
and the back is covered in a deep black
glaze, c. 1994. d. 46.5.
57
37
JI M M ALO NE ( b. 19 46)
Born in Sheffield. Studied ceramic at
Camberwell School of Art, 1972–76, and
was briefly a student at Winchcombe in
1975. Had studio in Wales 1976–82 and
established present studio at Ainstable,
Cumbria, in 1984.
58. Tall stoneware bottle vase with narrow
neck and everted rim, with a rusty
brown glaze, unglazed base and sparse
wax-resist white decoration, 1990.
h. 40.
AND RE W C ROUCH (b. 1955)
Studied at Shrewsbury School of Art and
then at Bath Academy of Art, 1976–81;
established Marches Pottery, Ludlow, in
1982.
59. Tall stoneware jug, slightly facetted and
covered in vertical black stripes over
oxblood glaze, c. 2003. h. 26.
58
38
59
JU LIA N S TA I R ( b. 1 9 5 5 )
Studied ceramics at Camberwell School of
Art, 1974–78, and Royal College of Art,
1978–81. Shared London studio with
Edmund de Waal before setting up on his
own nearby.
60. White porcelain vase decorated with
incised horizontal blue lines, 1992.
h. 21.5.
JENN I F E R L E E ( b. 1 9 5 6 )
Born in Haddo, Scotland. Studied ceramics
and tapestry at Edinburgh College of Art,
1975–79, and ceramics at the Royal College
of Art, 1980–83. Lives and works in
London. Her pots are hand-built, and she
has developed a method of colouring them
by mixing metallic oxides into the clay as
she makes them.
61. Tall coil-built stoneware asymmetric
grey-beige pot with angled rim and two
bands of paler colours, 1991. h. 29.5.
Illustrated on title page
62. Blue stoneware hand-built pot with flat
shelf rim, 1992. h. 17.5.
60
62
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T IM ANDR EWS ( b. 19 60)
Learnt pottery at school; apprenticed to
David Leach and then at Dartington
Pottery Training Workshop, 1979–81. Set
up first pottery in Exeter in 1981 and from
1986–93 worked with David Leach at
Lowerdown. Started new pottery at
Woodbury near Exeter in 1994. Much of his
work is raku, on which he has written a
book.
63. Tall porcelain baluster shaped bottle
vase covered in oxblood glaze with
regular vertical tenomoku stripes, 1989.
h. 53.
ED MU N D D E WAAL (b. 1964)
Apprenticeship with Geoffrey Whiting,
1981–83. Read English at Trinity Hall,
Cambridge, 1983–86. Studios in Hereford
and Sheffield 1986–92. Post-graduate
Diploma in Japanese language, Sheffield
University, 1991–92 and worked in Tokyo,
1992–93. Opened studio in London in
1993, shared with Julian Stair. Has become
well-known for his ambitious installations
of porcelain vessels, as at Blackwell on Lake
Windermere and Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge
64. Porcelain white glazed ‘Jar for a
Branch’, 1997. h. 36.
63
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64