info@studio-pots.com	Harlequin Gallery
St. Ives 9th to 30th September 2007
To see some of the pottery and other art in this exhibition please click on the links below:- POTS ART The autumn season at the Harlequin starts with a mixed exhibition of work associated with St. Ives and the surrounding area of West Cornwall. Perhaps the highlight will be the individual pots made by artists working at the Leach Pottery, although there will be other pottery as well as paintings and prints by significant names. The St. Ives Pottery was started by Bernard Leach and his Japanese friend, Shoji Hamada, a mile up the hill from the centre of town in 1920. There by the Stennack stream, in what was then countryside, they built the first traditional Japanese wood-fired three chambered climbing kiln to be seen in this country. Despite many problems, including the absence of a local supply of timber, the pottery continued in production until just a few years ago, with the planned re-opening of the new pottery complex due in March next year. Initial production at the pottery was a hit and miss affair but the exhibition will include a few small pieces of slipware from this early period before production went over to stoneware and porcelain at the end of the 1930s. However, most of the work in the exhibition dates from the late 1940s onwards, including several examples of work by Bernard himself. Over the twenty years that I have been collecting studio pottery it is noticeable how less common and more expensive individually marked works by Bernard have become, with a significant amount of it now in public and private collections in Japan. However, I believe that I have been able to secure some interesting examples for this show. The artist with the largest number of individual pots in the exhibition is Bernard’s third wife, Janet Leach, who if my correspondence over the last six months is anything to go by has become something of a cult figure. Her pots have long been a favourite of mine not only for their Japanese aesthetic and homage to Post-War Abstraction but also for their artistic integrity despite the enormous pressure she faced to compromise and produce “Leach pots”. Before taking up pottery, Janet had attended art school in her native Texas, followed by a sculpture course in New York which, as she later recalled was “the best basic art training any artist could have got…… and I’ve lived off it ever since.” I believe that it was this and her time spent with the Ichino family in the remote pottery village of Tachikui, centre of Tamba pottery, which made her one of the most significant figures in the Studio Pottery world. Her mature St. Ives pots show an ethos and force learnt long before. An exhibition of St. Ives pottery would not be complete without work by William Marshall, who sadly passed away earlier this year. Bill, as most of you know was Bernard’s right hand man and a central figure at the pottery for forty years. I can’t say how many pieces there will be available at the moment though, as it very much depends on what I feel I can part with! However, there will be examples from the Leach Pottery as well as later work from his own kiln in Lelant. Other pots in the exhibition will include ones by Trevor Corser, who worked at Leach Pottery from 1966 until it closure; Kenneth Quick, whose accidental death at the age of 32 in 1963 robbed the ceramic world of a significant presence; and Byron Temple, who during his life became a doyen of the pottery scene in the United States. Space limits discussion of other pottery and most of the art on paper but a print by Barbara Hepworth from the Aegean Suite will be available, as will other prints including ones by Trevor Bell, John Wells, Denis Mitchell and Bernard Leach. Paintings will include works by Douglas Portway, Bob Crossley and Sandra Blow as well as two small works by Terry Frost. Finally, the Private View will serve as a launch for a new book by Peter Davies, entitled St. Ives 1975-2005:- Art Colony in Transition. This includes a chapter on Studio Pottery as well as information on famous and less well known artists who have worked there in recent years. Please note that gallery will re-open at 11am on Thursday 6th September for anyone to call by and also allow me to prepare for the Private View on the following Sunday.
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