Leach Pottery

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The Leach Pottery, Museum Entrance The Leach Pottery, St. Ives, Cornwall - Museum Entrance.jpg
The Leach Pottery, Museum Entrance
Interior of the Leach Pottery The Leach Pottery, St. Ives, Cornwall.jpg
Interior of the Leach Pottery

The Leach Pottery was founded in 1920 by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada in St Ives, Cornwall, in the United Kingdom. [1]

The buildings grew from an old cow / tin-ore shed in the 19th century to a pottery in the 1920s with the addition of a two-storey cottage added on to the lower end of the pottery, followed by a completely separate cottage at the top of the site added by Leach in 1927.

In 1922 Tsuronosuke Matsubayashi came from Japan to rebuild an unsuccessful climbing kiln for the pottery. Matsubayashi built a three chambered traditional Japanese Noborigama, the first Japanese climbing kiln in the western world, [2] and this was used until the 1970s. [3]

Bernard's son David Leach who trained at the North Staffordshire Technical College, became manager in 1937 abandoning production of earthenware, developing a new stoneware body and taking on local apprentices. [4] Michael Cardew was an early student and William Marshall an apprentice. [5] Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie became an apprentice in 1924 [6] Warren MacKenzie from the US, Charmian Johnson from Canada and Len Castle from New Zealand also worked here. [7]

The pottery's Standard Ware was first issued in 1946 [8] and can be found in the V&A collection. [9] Mail order catalogues were distributed and the range was produced until 1979. [10] Three basic glazes were used for the ware: Celadon, Tenmoku and oatmeal with overpainting in brown and blue. [4]

After Bernard's death in 1979, his wife Janet Leach stopped production of standard ware to concentrate on her own pots until her death in 1997, after which the pottery was purchased by Alan Gillam. [5] The property was acquired by Penwith District Council as part of the Leach Restoration Project [11]

The site was renovated and restored in 2005-08 before being reopened to the public in March 2008 as a working studio pottery, museum and gallery. [12] The restoration cost £1.7 million which preserved the original buildings whilst adding an exhibition space and shop. [13] It is now managed by the Bernard Leach (St Ives) Trust Limited, a registered UK charity founded in 2005. [14]

There are two exhibition areas, the Entrance Gallery with work by Bernard Leach, Janet Leach, David Leach, Shoji Hamada, William Marshall, Michael Cardew, and Kenneth Quick and the Cube Gallery with a changing exhibition. [15]

The Leach Pottery's director is Libby Buckley and the lead potter is Roelof Uys. [16]

Related Research Articles

St Ives, Cornwall Human settlement in England

St Ives is a seaside town, civil parish and port in Cornwall, England. The town lies north of Penzance and west of Camborne on the coast of the Celtic Sea. In former times it was commercially dependent on fishing. The decline in fishing, however, caused a shift in commercial emphasis, and the town is now primarily a popular seaside resort, notably achieving the title of Best UK Seaside Town from the British Travel Awards in both 2010 and 2011. St Ives was incorporated by Royal Charter in 1639. St Ives has become renowned for its number of artists. It was named best seaside town of 2007 by The Guardian newspaper.

Bernard Leach British studio potter (1887–1979)

Bernard Howell Leach, was a British studio potter and art teacher. He is regarded as the "Father of British studio pottery".

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Mashiko is a town located in Tochigi Prefecture, Japan. As of 1 August 2020, the town had an estimated population of 21,841 in 7914 households, and a population density of 240 persons per km². The total area of the town is 89.40 square kilometres (34.52 sq mi). Mashiko is known for its pottery, called Mashiko ware (益子焼).

Troika Pottery

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Leonard Ramsay Castle was a New Zealand potter.

Shōji Hamada Japanese artist (1894 – 1978)

Shōji Hamada was a Japanese potter. He had a significant influence on studio pottery of the twentieth century, and a major figure of the mingei (folk-art) movement, establishing the town of Mashiko as a world-renowned pottery centre. In 1955 he was designated a "Living National Treasure".

Michael Cardew

Michael Ambrose Cardew (1901–1983), was an English studio potter who worked in West Africa for twenty years.

David Leach (potter)

David Andrew Leach OBE was an English studio potter and the elder son of Bernard Leach and Muriel Hoyle Leach, Bernard's first wife.

Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie

KatherineHarriot Duncombe Pleydell-Bouverie was a pioneer in modern English Studio pottery.

William "Bill" Marshall was an English studio potter, known for his Japan-influenced style.

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott Australian artist (1935–2013)

Gwyn Hanssen Pigott OAM (1935–2013) was an Australian ceramic artist. She was recognized as one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. By the time she died she was regarded as "one of the world's greatest contemporary potters". She worked in Australia, England, Europe, the USA, New Zealand, Japan and Korea. In a career spanning nearly 60 years, influences from her apprenticeships to English potters were still apparent in her later work. But in the 1980s she turned away from production pottery to making porcelain still-life groups largely influenced by the Italian painter Giorgio Morandi.

Winchcombe Pottery

Winchcombe Pottery, near Winchcombe in Tewkesbury Borough, North Gloucestershire, is an English craft pottery founded in 1926.

St Ives School

The St Ives School refers to a group of artists living and working in the Cornish town of St Ives. The term is often used to refer to the 20th century groups which sprung up after the First World War around such artists as Borlase Smart, however there was considerable artistic activity there from the late 19th Century onwards.

Janet Darnell Leach, was an American studio potter working in later life at the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall in England. After studying pottery at Black Mountain, North Carolina under Shoji Hamada, a visiting artisan, she traveled to Japan to work with him. She studied with him for two years and always considered him to be her principal mentor. She was the first foreign woman to study pottery in Japan and only the second westerner.

Harry Clemens Davis was a Welsh-born New Zealand potter, and husband of May Davis.

Ray Finch (potter)

Ray Finch MBE, formally Alfred Raymond Finch, was a respected English studio potter. who worked at Winchcombe Pottery for a period spanning seventy five years.

William Alfred Ismay British collector and librarian (1910–2001)

William Alfred Ismay or Bill Ismay was a librarian, writer and collector in Wakefield, West Yorkshire known for his significant collection of post-war studio pottery. The collection called the W.A. Ismay Collection was bequeathed to the Yorkshire Museum and is one of the world's largest collections of 20th-century studio pottery. It includes work by Bernard Leach, Hans Coper, Shoji Hamada, Takeshi Yasuda, David Leach Dan Arbeid and Lucie Rie.

Jack Doherty is a Northern Irish studio potter and author. He is perhaps best known for his vessels made of soda-fired porcelain. He has been featured in a number of books, and his work has been exhibited widely in both Europe and North America. Articles of his have appeared in various pottery journals and he has been Chair of the Craft Potters Association.

Asahi ware Type of Japanese pottery

Asahi ware is a type of Japanese pottery traditionally from Uji, Kyoto.

John Leach was a studio potter, the eldest son of David Leach and the eldest grandson of Bernard Leach. Born in St Ives in 1939, he studied under his grandfather and father at St Ives and under Ray Finch at Winchcombe. Leach left school in 1957 and worked with his father at Lowerdown Pottery Bovey Tracey, Devon and from 1961 to 1962 he was an apprentice at the Leach Pottery St Ives. He founded Mulcheney Pottery on the Somerset Levels in 1964, and developed a range of pottery using local clay and wood to fuel the kiln.

References

  1. ↑ "The Leach Pottery". leachpottery.com. 2014. Retrieved 16 October 2014.
  2. ↑ "The relationship between Eastern and Western ceramics | The Cornishman". cornishman.co.uk. 2015. Archived from the original on 21 August 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  3. ↑ "Tsuronosuke Matsubayashi". studiopottery.com. 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  4. 1 2 Watson Oliver (1994). Studio Pottery. Phaidon Press. pp. 199–206. ISBN   978-0714829487.
  5. 1 2 "Leach Pottery". studiopottery.com. 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  6. ↑ "Pioneers and their practice - Visual Arts Data Service: the online resource for visual arts". vads.ac.uk. 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  7. ↑ "The New Craftsman Gallery | St. Ives | Cornwall - Bernard Leach". newcraftsmanstives.com. 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  8. ↑ "History — The Leach Pottery". leachpottery.com. 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  9. ↑ "Standard Ware | Leach, Bernard | V&A Search the Collections". collections.vam.ac.uk. 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  10. ↑ "Leach Pottery, St. Ives - Standard Ware". ceramike.com. 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  11. ↑ "History — The Leach Pottery". leachpottery.com. 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  12. ↑ "Bernard Leach Pottery In St Ives To Become Centre Of Excellence". culture24.org.uk. Retrieved 4 December 2014.
  13. ↑ Campbell, Sophie (10 September 2008). "UK heritage: All fired up in St Ives - Leach Pottery - Telegraph". The Daily Telegraph . London: TMG. ISSN   0307-1235. OCLC   49632006 . Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  14. ↑ burns, Carol (2015). "Bernard Leach Pottery". cornwalllife.co.uk. Archived from the original on 16 January 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  15. ↑ "Museum Exhibition — The Leach Pottery". leachpottery.com. 2015. Archived from the original on 28 April 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.
  16. ↑ "Who We Are — The Leach Pottery". leachpottery.com. 2015. Retrieved 5 May 2015.

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