Studio: international art (88.1924)

MR. W. S. MURRAY'S FLAMBE STONEWARE

reached its highest development — China,
Japan and the Nearer East. Too many have
sought by short cuts to arrive at the goal,
thinking by various simulative expedients
to achieve the effect of the wares they would
emulate ; the results are inevitably lacking
in the qualities of surface and depth of tone
with which the stern rigours of an intense
firing - temperature have endowed the
Eastern wares. 0000
Mr. W. S. Murray, who has since the
war been working as an independent potter
in London, has faced the difficulties of the
situation. In frank admiration of the wares
of ancient potters which he has seen in the
national museums, but in no mood of
slavish imitation, he has set himself to
follow in their steps. His apprenticeship
was passed in making soft earthenware,
with painted decoration on Persian lines.
In the latest years he has given himself to
the stiff discipline of hard-fired stonewares
with transmutation glazes of the type which
the Chinese first gave to the world. In
these so-called flambe wares the metallic
glazes are, by control of the fire, made to
yield up a part of their oxygen, and the
result is the lovely gradations of subtle
colour that add so vastly to the initial
beauty of shape in the pots. To succeed
with this very masculine type of ware is
no easy task. It is sometimes thought that
the qualities of these glazes are the work
of happy chance. This is not so. The
potter who has overcome the hardships of
experiment knows his aim and how to
reach it—though, alas, an unhappy mis-
chance in the kiln may undo the toil of
many days. The wares shown in illustra-
tions on these pages are the token of Mr.
Murray's success. A keen sense for beauty
of form, yielding to no delusive temptation
to seek originality in shapes foreign to the
genius of clay, is blended in them with a
recognition of the enhancement lent by
the endless subtleties of glaze colouring.
In his wares of this class Mr. Murray has
been content to win his effect from these
attributes alone ; he feels that abstraction
in colour is more easily realised in pottery
than in any other form of art. But it is fair
to say that he does not ignore the accen-
tuation of beauty that can be added with
the brush or the graving tool. In other
types of ware he has proved his power in

the use of both instruments, and though
he is to be congratulated on his successes
with glaze and glaze alone, we must hope
that he will not throw over altogether those
other phases of the craft. To say that the
one kind of pottery decoration is better
than the other is to be unfair to both. They
are different and both are good ; that is all.

Bernard Rackham.

STONEWARE POT, WHITE GLAZE WITH
GOLD AND SCARLET MARKINGS. DE-
SIGNED AND EXECUTED BY W. S. MURRAY

(By courtesy of W. Guthrie, Esq.)

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