For more information please contact us at info@studio-pots.com	Harlequin Gallery
David Leach (1911 -2005)
NOTE: Several recently obtained works by David will be available during the March 2012 exhibition, “The Harlequin goes to Mayfair”. These include a long necked porcelain bottle, as well as a large jar with geometric pattern made during his time lecturing at Loughborough College of Art. If you would like to receive notification of this exhibition please contact the gallery using the link above.
The following items are currently available
Stoneware vase with painted decoration. David’s personal seal and Lowerdown Cross seal. Height: 10.7 cm (4.2 inches) Price: £240		Altered stoneware cylinder with incised decoration. David’s personal seal and Lowerdown Cross seal. Height: 14.6 cm (5.75 inches) Price: £175
Earthenware lidded pot with personal seal made at Lowerdown c1957. Height: 16.25 cm (6.4 inches) Price: £80		Small stoneware coffee pot c1988. Lowerdown Pottery seal only. Height: 14.0 cm (5.5 inches) Price: £25
A tall bottle vase with personal seal. Height: 43.4 cm (17.1 inches) Price: £550
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 ARTISTS