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Patterns for Production | Eric Ravilious
Ravilious’ ceramics for Wedgwood – not as well known, perhaps, as his fine and graphic art – have become a sort of holy grail for design collectors. They are applied design at its very best; quite rare and certainly rarefied.
Spontaneous Drawing
Geographically Clive Bowen seems more than appropriately sited as a potter – living and working at Shebbear, in the remoter Devon valleys near Great Torrington. He is close to where the great earthenware tradition of the North Devon coast once thrived, where he learnt to make pots at Michael Leach’s … Read more
Lisa Hammond: Urban Potter
Each Lisa Hammond pot has a life of its own, its own sense of renewal. They all offer their own pleasures, an intimacy that adds another dimension to the way we eat and drink, to the ceremonies of the everyday, to the space we occupy. In short, to the way … Read more
Akiko Hirai Getemono
My pots display a lot of marks and traces of past events. To describe them in a conventional and very simplified way, they are ‘dirty’ and ‘broken’. On the other hand, they can be described in a more sophisticated way as wabi-sabi, which refers to the beauty of imperfection and … Read more
Sake and Ceramics
‘No blossoms and no moon And he is drinking sake all alone’ Haiku by Matsuo Bashō A love of nature, and of being part of the group, are intensely important to the Japanese, so this little haiku is a picture of sadness. Sake is meant to be drunk with others, … Read more
The Pleasures of Quiet Pots
‘I really hope that nothing I ever cook takes the attention away from any of Anne Mette’s work, but instead works with it, the two becoming one. Quiet food for a quiet pot.’ – Nigel Slater OBE (English food writer, journalist and broadcaster) My pots work for their living. When I … Read more
A Unique Gift
The sureness of hand and eye gives the work a childlike spontaneity only mastered through years of experience. This is the third solo exhibition of Jean-Nicolas Gérard’s pots at Goldmark. What more can usefully be written? I suspect many of the gallery’s patrons are already converted, enthusiastic to see his … Read more
An Uncompromising Vision
Sometimes a thing in front of you is so big you don’t know whether to comprehend it by first getting a dim sense of the whole and then fitting in the pieces, or by adding the pieces until something calls out what it is… As I sit to put finger … Read more
The Art of Tea
‘Tea began as a medicine and grew into a beverage. In China, in the eighth century, it entered the realm of poetry as one of the polite amusements. The fifteenth century saw Japan ennoble it into a religion of aestheticism – Teaism. Teaism is a cult founded on the adoration … Read more
Phil Rogers | Earthly Matters | Article
It was Mike Goldmark who introduced me to the work of Phil Rogers, at an exhibition at the gallery about fifteen years ago. As soon as I laid eyes on the pots I loved them, and bought a big one, nuka glazed, with fingermark decoration – very Phil Rogers mid-2000s … Read more
An Embarrassment of Riches
But what he had achieved, agreed Gil Darby, late curator of ceramics at the Victoria & Albert Museum, matched the finest Sung Dynasty pottery held in international collections. After six years shipwrecked on the ‘Isle of Despair’, some 40 miles from the mouth of the Orinoco river, Robinson Crusoe fashions … Read more
Grace and Resolve | Lisa Hammond
What is a potter’s most valued resource? Is it her supplies, her equipment? The pounds she pays for a studio space? I wager most potters working at the very highest level would agree that time, more than any material thing, is most precious. A potter’s life is all rhythm: a … Read more
The First Pot I Ever Bought | Mike Dodd
Those of you who are familiar with my book ‘An Autobiography of Sorts’ will know that the first essay I ever wrote was called ‘In Defence of Tradition: because of the heart, in spite of the head’. In it I made the case for viewing tradition not as something static … Read more
Pottery of Great Humanity
His work offers solace, not as something into which we may withdraw or retreat, but as a pottery that sustains through its form, through its warmth and confidence, and through the food it so naturally holds for us. His is pottery of great humanity; for it gives us the earth. … Read more
Ryotaro Kato and the Kobe Dynasty
A recent article described Ryotaro Kato as the ‘son of the seventh master of Kobe Kiln’. ‘Son of the seventh master’ – not the ‘eighth master’. That distinction is important, for it points to two critical aspects of traditional Japanese familial culture: the honouring of elders; and continuation of the … Read more
Takeshi Yasuda: An Enduring Reputation
Takeshi Yasuda has established a remarkable and enduring reputation across the world as a potter and teacher of great imagination and integrity. Fifty years of making and still ‘I love the clay’ – his enthusiasm is infectious. Many people have been influenced by his inventive, thoughtful approach, with his words … Read more
My Wood-Fired Kiln
‘I knew that one day I would have a wood-fired kiln’. Phil Rogers discusses the joy and the agony of firing studio pots with a wood-fired kiln.
Square Bottles by Anne Mette Hjortshøj
I don’t usually invent shapes or techniques: I like to understand those that people have made in generations before me. I think that’s what keeps me going, why I am still working as a potter. White slip landscapes of pillowy snow; dappled salt-glaze frostings on claret red fields; each square … Read more
An Interview with Clive Bowen | Slipware Potter
We spoke to slipware potter Clive Bowen about his love of clay… Looking around the studio, we’re surrounded by jugs and mugs, plates, dishes, platters, jars – all eminently usable. I’ve always made functional pots, pots for use in the kitchen or the home. This is my great love: how … Read more
Art Enables us to Find Ourselves
Art enables us to find ourselves and to lose ourselves at the same time. Thomas Merton When E.M. Forster wrote the prescient words ‘only connect’ in the early years of the 20th century, he foresaw the ways in which a technological revolution would happen at the expense of a deeper … Read more