Studio: international art (90.1925)

THE POTTERY OF MR. BERNARD LEACH

when he first saw photographs of English
slipware, especially the magnificent dishes
of Toft. Immediately he realized that
England had produced | pottery which
was artistically worthy to rank with that
of almost any country or period, and set
about to " make something like it/' using
the Raku technique as the natural and
only available medium. 000

It must be remembered that the artistic
and literary environment in which Mr.
Leach's earlier work was produced had
an important bearing on it. That environ-
ment was a lively movement of young
Japanese artists and writers, many of whom
had studied in Paris and returned pro-
foundly influenced by contemporary Euro-
pean thought and the contemporary Euro-
pean movement in art. Into this coterie
representing the " Young Japanese "
movement in the arts, Leach was received
as one of themselves ; and the thrilling
discovery of a true family likeness between
the early Oriental and early European
ceramics synchronized with the still more
thrilling discovery of a spiritual affinity of
Cezanne with some of the old masters of
Chinese painting. 0000

In 1920 Mr. Leach returned to England
with Shoji Hamada, a Japanese artist-
craftsman, and settled at Saint Ives.
Here his first object has been to continue
the making of stoneware as far as possible
with indigenous materials, using the Cor-
nish Kaolin, felspar and China-stone.

His Galena slipware is not merely
derivative ; still less is it an imitation of
the seventeenth century work. It is better,
with no historical preconceptions, to look
upon these large and generous circular
disks as affording a splendid field to a
designer with ambition and imagination,
to carry out a broad treatment of strong
original designs—just as the old workers
used them for carrying out their original
designs. 0000a

At the same time many of the details
of the design and technique are directly
suggested by the old work ; for example,
the use of lettering on the border, and the
criss-cross work, which was a Toft inven-
tion, and is peculiarly effective and well
adapted to the technique of the " slip-
trailer "—the instrument with which slip-
decoration is applied. 000

"THE WELL-HEAD." ENG-
LISH SLIPWARE DISH (BROWN
ON BUFF, WIDTH I7INS.)
BY BERNARD LEACH

The price and size of these dishes make
them obviously more suited for pure
decoration than for use, though the
smaller " comb-ware " dishes, the tech-
nique of which he has rediscovered since
coming to England, are (experto crede)
admirably adapted for use as bread-plates,
salad-bowls, etc. 0000

But the very size of the larger dishes—
some of them measure as much as twenty
inches in diameter—makes them an unique
and striking decoration in any place ; and
one or two of them in a fairly large room
produce, with very little other furnishing,
a wealth and warmth of decoration which
could hardly be got in any other way.
The proper background for them is
probably a small country house of Old
English character, and they look their
best with white walls or in combination
with oak ; in fact they are as necessary
to the interior decoration of such a house,
as the" Romney Green furniture and the
Mairet textiles. 0000

It is surely permissible to consider
them as created purely for their decorative
value, in places where such is spiritually
necessary and desirable, as, for example,
the living-room of an English home. In
this respect, too, they are the genuine and
lineal descendants of the old dishes,
which were made primarily for presenta-
tion to the lucky friends of the seventeenth-
century craftsmen, Ralph Toft and his
followers. Michael Cardew.

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