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Harlequin Gallery |
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Alan Wallwork |
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Alan Wallwork, who as far as I am
concerned is one of the most important hand builders the United Kingdom has
ever produced, was born in Hertfordshire in 1931. However, having Alans pots
at the Harlequin Gallery is a bit like a homecoming, as he studied ceramics a
few miles up the road at Goldsmith's College in the 1950's. His tutors at
Goldsmiths were Gordon Baldwin and Kenneth Clark, who were very influential
on him and many of his contemporaries. After
leaving Goldsmiths he set up his first workshop and gallery in Forest Hill in
1957 before moving just around the corner from what is now the Harlequin
Gallery in 1960. In
those days Alan worked with a number of assistants and sub-let part of his
pottery to Bernard Rooke and Robert & Sheila Fournier.
Much of the work produced during that period was sold through Heals, the
department store in London's West End. However, since the 1970's he has lived
in Dorset and for the last twenty years he has worked alone producing
individual pieces. Alan
states that "enigmatic traces of earlier lives have always intrigued him
and influence his work - traces of people and their responses to the sun,
moon, the seasons, fertility - and traces of much earlier life forms that
have left their mark so abundantly in the landscape where he lives." At
auction his work has sold for over five times the price of comparable work at
the gallery and it can be found in a number of public collections worldwide,
including the V&A Museum in London and the Kyoto Museum in Japan. Alan moved to France at the end of 2004 and an
exhibition of the last pots to be made in this country was held at the
Harlequin Gallery during November 2004. Before moving Alan also sold off a
large number of seconds from a market stall for very low prices. Most of
these will have a groove cut through the AW mark and now many are coming onto
the second hand market. They are decorative (my garden is full of them) but
they should be priced at not more than £20 or so. An Exhibition of New Work by Alan begins at the Harlequin on 3rd
February 2008 to see examples click on 2008 EXHIBITION Below
are three pots by Alan that have sold recently. |
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