For more information please contact us at info@studio-pots.com	Harlequin Gallery
David Leach
Below are some of the items of David’s work included in the “Potters of the Leach Pottery” exhibition.
Stoneware Weeping Willow jar Height: 34.0 cm (13.4 inches) Price: SOLD
Earthenware mug c1956 Height: 8.9 cm (3.5 inches) Price: SOLD		Octagonal stoneware vase c1992 Height: 13.7 cm (5.4 inches) Price: SOLD
David Leach, the first son of Bernard Leach, was born in Tokyo in 1911. David always seemed destined to become a potter, as he spent his late childhood and teenage years at the Leach Pottery and even before that received his first pottery lessons from Hamada Shoji. At the age of 19 David joined his father at the Leach Pottery and learnt skills from Bernard as well as other potters working there at the time. In 1934, David, against his father's wishes, attended a managerial and technical course at a college in the Potteries. This proved to be of great benefit to the pottery in St. Ives and I think that later Bernard was even able to accept this fact. Back at the Leach Pottery, the potter Harry Davis became a very great influence and teacher to David and they remained friends until Harry's death in 1986. David spent 25 years working at and then managing the Leach Pottery but in 1955 he moved with his family to the Lowerdown Pottery just outside Bovey Tracey in Devon. During the first four years at Lowerdown, David concentrated on working with earthenware but then changed over to stoneware and the development of work in porcelain, which he has continued throughout his career. In 2001 David told me that he wouldn't be making any more pots, but he started to do a little work again with the help of his son, Jeremy, a while later. This included the eight fluted stoneware tea bowls that were in the mixed exhibition of tea bowls at the Harlequin Gallery during March 2005 less than a month after his death on 15th February. David was a fine potter and a lovely man, who seemed to have had time for everyone – he is greatly missed.
RETURN TO LEACH POTTERS EXHIBITION		RETURN TO ARTISTS