For more information info@studio-pots.com	Harlequin Gallery
Phil Rogers A solo exhibition of new work with for the first time some wood fired pots. 8th to 29th October 2006
No.9 Wood-fired salt and ash glaze tall bottle. Height: 40.8cm (16.0”)	No.3 Large round nuka glazed bottle with finger wipes. Height: 38.0cm (15.0”)
Phil Rogers, who is one of the best known British studio potters, returns for his sixth Harlequin Gallery solo exhibition in October with a new batch of what promises to be exciting work. However, as an added bonus the exhibition will include for the first time some pots from his new wood-fired kiln that he fired during September. A great bonus for the exhibition that Observer readers living in and around London having been waiting months for! This page shows some of the pots still available.
No.39 Salt-glazed faceted bottle. Height: 19.8cm (7.8”)		No.52 Shino chawan. Height: 8.25cm (3.25”) Diameter: 12.7cm (5.0”) SOLD
No.21 Nuka and tenmoku jug. Height: 16.0cm (6.3”) SOLD		No.2 Wood-fired large round nuka jar Height: 31.5cm (12.4”)
To view more pots in the exhibition please click here. Since his first solo Harlequin Gallery exhibition back in 1993, Phil Rogers’ reputation within the world of studio ceramics has grown significantly. I think in the notes to his 2002 show here I stated that he was arguably the best known practising UK potter in the world today and in the intervening four years his star has continued to rise. A biography is to be published in the United States next spring and a film being shot in the UK is due out around the same time so we might yet see the day when someone goes up to Eric Clapton and asks him if he is Phil Rogers rather than the other way round! Despite all of this, Phil remains the “quiet, unassuming and approachable” personality that the American potter, Jeff Oestrich, highlights in an introduction to an exhibition of Phil’s work in the States during 2001. Originally trained as an art teacher, Phil is essentially a self taught potter, who uses as much local material as he can for his slips and glazes. These are sourced from around his pottery just outside Rhayader in mid-Wales, where he has been based since starting out as a potter in 1978, moving a short distance to his present workshop in 1984. Over the years he has continued to experiment, albeit slowly, as he believes as Shoji Hamada did that it is better to use a limited range of materials and glazes and come to know them well than have too great a choice and never fully explore the possibility of any of them. However, this exhibition is rather special in that it will be the first ever to include wood fired work by Phil, resulting from the second firing of his new kiln a week or so ago. This is a two-chambered kiln with a small “anagama” firebox to, as Phil says, “explore this element of controlled chance even more”. In the lower chamber Phil has begun to experiment with the use of shino glazes as well as other glazed work and then introducing salt to the upper chamber in order to expand his salt glaze repertoire. Phil admits that this is going to be an exciting new challenge but has sought help and advice not only from potters here in the UK but also from wood firing potters during his trips to Japan in the last year or so. Besides these pots we will be able to see a selection of reduction fired stoneware from his 75 cubic feet oil kiln, as well as more salt glazed work from his slightly smaller gas fired kiln. The reduced stoneware is as Phil says, “not highly decorated” but we will no doubt see varied techniques such as hakeme, combing, brushwork and wax resist between glazes being explored. From a selfish point of view I hope to see a good selection of his press-moulded bottles, as they are a personal favourite and in previous Harlequin shows have been snapped up before I have had a chance to purchase one. Most of you will be aware that Phil is a fellow and committee member of the Craft Potters Association of Great Britain and was elected to the International Academy of Ceramics in 1999. However, as a Welshman he is perhaps even more pleased to have become the first and only potter to be elected to the Royal Cambrian Academy, having previously been the preserve of “fine artists”. Phil will be at the Private View on Sunday 8th October and, although you will not as yet be able to say that you have read the book and seen the film you will be able to buy the pot.
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