ART.
POTTERY AT THE COTSWOLD GALLERY.
ALL those interested in Ceramics should certainly visit the exhibition at the Cotswold Gallery (Frith Street) of Pottery made by Mr. Bernard Leach at St. Ives. Mr. Leach originally began the manufacture of pottery in Japan, where, in his early days, he received generous help from the sixth Kenzan, the last of a line of famous potters. After working in Japan, he spent two years in Peking, and then returned with increased experience to Japan, where he held yearly exhibitions of his work which, even among Japanese connoisseurs, aroused considerable interest. In the winter of 1921, having returned to England some months previously, he started work at St. Ives.
Mr. Leach believes that . the potter should execute the whole of his craft, that the pot should be his work from its beginning in the rough clay to its completion, and he himself and his Japanese assistant design, throw, paint, glaze and fire the pots themselves. Besides this, they have their own clay dug, procure a special sort of (fir) wood for the kiln, and prepare their own glazes, certain of the constituents of which they obtain from the ashes of the burnt wood fuel.
Mr. Leach is in no sense introducing Chinese and Japanese pottery into England. He studied the craft in the East because it was there that he was first attracted by it, but he haS also studied various European types and the early Staffordshire and Toft and Wrotham wares of England. His aim is to adapt his accumulated knowledge of his art to local conditions and his own ideas.
The most striking characteristics of Mr. Leach's pottery as seen at the Cotswold Gallery are beauty and simplicity of design and restrained colour. The prevailing colours, are cream, blue, brown and a beautiful stone grey. Within this scale he produces a quite extraordinary range of contrast. The brighter colours-Lthe reds, pinks and greeni—he uses with great economy, and by doing so he obtains very telling effects. The pieces on exhibition are for sale.
Mr. Leach's ambition to re-establish true craft methods instead of the pernicious factory method by which each man executes one stage only of the process is worthy of every encouragement, especially when it expresses itself in work of such beauty and originality. A series of etchings (ninny of them on a soft ground), also on exhibition, show that Mr. Leach is very much an artist in other mediums besides pottery.
Previous page
