62 - PAGODA-LIDDED BOWL: Bernard Leach, StIves, Cornwall, c. 1960–5

Summary

Thrown and turned stoneware with brown glaze and incised decoration. Marks: square seal with ‘BL’ and circular seal with ‘SI’ impressed. Height 22.5 cm. C.22–1972.

Bernard Leach (1887–1979) went to Tokyo in 1909 to teach etching, then unknown in Japan, but was so impressed by raku earthenware that in 1911 he decided to become a potter. He studied in Tokyo under Ogata Kenzan VI, and later worked at kilns elsewhere in Japan before setting up his own. In 1920 he returned to England and with the help of Hamada Shoji (1892–1978) founded a pottery at St Ives, the first in the West to have an Oriental wood-fired climbing kiln. Japanese raku glazed ware, slipware and stoneware were made during the pottery's early years, but it was Leach's stoneware which had the greatest impact on the development of studio pottery during the mid-twentieth century. His philosophy and publications, such as The Potter's Book, were also immensely influential.

Although he greatly admired Oriental ceramics, Leach also drew inspiration from traditional English pottery, such as medieval jugs and seventeenth- and eighteenth-century slipwares. He deplored the ‘inappropriateness of decoration and tawdriness of form’ of many early twentieth-century factory-made ceramics, and stressed the importance of creating each pot as a whole which had an expressive and satisfying balance between form, glaze and decoration. Rejecting the quest for novelty which dogged Western craftsmen, he concentrated on a few forms and decorative themes which he repeated with subtle modulations throughout his long career. This covered bowl is essentially functional, but its sweeping contours and simple incised decoration make it equally pleasing to the eye.