THE DIFFICULT ART: BRITISH TIN-GLAZED POTTERY SINCE 1900

Wherever You Go I Will Go, tin-glazed earthenware, diameter 33cm. 

Made by me in 2009

A Crafts Council survey done in 2004 estimated that there are about 6,000 professional  craft potters in Britain. When Bernard Leach published A Potter’s Book in 1940 – a hugely influential title that encouraged many people to take up studio pottery and which has been in print ever since – there were probably fewer than 100.  There was a brief period in the 1950s and 1960s when demand for studio pottery outstripped supply and when Harrow Art School started its studio pottery course to increase the number of production potters who could make domestic wares quickly.  Most of these wares were stoneware. Leach had exerted a powerful influence, partly through his apprentice system and partly through his effective propagandising of peasant pottery in the Oriental style. The Leach school espoused a romantic primitivism that had been fed by four streams: Ruskin’s advocacy of savageness in art (set out  in The Nature of Gothic), Morris’s anti-machine ethic and his myth of the peasant craftsman, modernist hostility to ornament, and a sort of Zen anti-egoism.

In the 1950s a few potters swam against the stream and made tin-glazed earthenware. The most notable were Alan Caiger-Smith at the Aldermaston Pottery, William Newland, Margaret Hine and Nicholas Vergette (known as “The Bayswater Three”),  Eileen Lewenstein and Brigitte Appleby at the Briglin Pottery, and Jack and Walter Cole at the Rye Pottery.  All except the Coles had trained with Dora Billington at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, and Walter Cole had studied sculpture there and had come into contact with her in the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. Billington, who was a skilled exponent of decorating on tin-glaze, encouraged the younger English potters and wrote an article in The Studio in 1953 praising them and arguing that there was too much dull brown pottery and that there was room for more colourful work, including tin-glaze, in the European tradition.  The Bayswater Three secured lucrative interior design contracts decorating coffee bars, scores of which had sprung up in the 1950s offering a place where young people could meet without buying alcohol or an expensive meal. Aldermaston, Briglin and Rye were production potteries and the potters who worked there made a living without having to teach.

Despite this strong counter-current, tin-glazed earthenware has never caught on in Britain in the way that  high-fired stoneware or slipware has and it is disregarded by most studio potters and by aficionados of studio pottery. William Newland called tin-glaze potters “the softies”. Out of the Craft Potters Association’s 350 members, only ten per cent work in earthenware and only one per cent in tin-glazed earthenware.  Daphne Carnegy, a British tin-glaze potter, says in her book Tin Glazed Earthenware that it has always been regarded as a bit twee by British potters.  There is certainly in British studio pottery a macho element, which has, oddly enough, increased as society has become less macho and despite the fact that there are so many female potters. When Leach wrote A Potter’s Book there were few potters with wood-fired kilns.  Now there are many, who build very big kilns, take three days to fire them and who are usually identifiable at pottery fairs by their permanently red faces.  In studio pottery circles there is a view that this is the only real pottery.

As a result of this attitude, I think only about fifty British studio potters have ever worked in the medium of tin-glaze, twenty of whom are no longer doing so. When I exhibit in pottery fairs I am invariably the only tin-glaze potter.

It is a difficult medium.  Everything on the surface remains visible after the firing and mistakes cannot be covered up.  You can't pretend they are happy accidents, the unpredictable but delightful gifts of the fire.  The glaze has to be put on with  care because it's viscous and hardly moves at its maturing temperature, essential so as not to disturb what is painted over it, but easily disfigured by runs.  In this it differs from many stoneware glazes, into which the pot can be dipped roughly in the knowledge that any patches will  appear as pleasant variation.  Because earthenware  remains porous, the bottom of a tin-glazed pot should not be left unglazed, which means gently placing it on little pointed stilts in the kiln. Decoration requires a good design sense, skilled handling of the brush and a sense of colour as well.  Although some stoneware potters are good with the brush and make superb designs (historically, Michael Cardew was excellent, and among modern potters I would single out Phil Rogers’ direct and simple surface decorations), some cannot draw and try to get way with meaningless splashes.

Pottery connoisseurs, like all fans, want those they admire to keep doing the same thing and they are often unwilling to look at anything new. The tin-glaze potter, in my experience, is most appreciated by people who know little about studio pottery and are free from its prejudices.

Here is a list of British studio potters who have worked in tin-glaze in the 20th and 21st centuries, inlcuding a couple who work in stonware rather than earthenware.  It's not complete and I'd be glad to know of anyone I've missed out.

 ‡ Brigitte Appleby and Eileen Lewenstein (Briglin Pottery)
   Alan Baxter
 ‡ Sylph Bayer
 ‡ Quentin Bell
 ‡ Vanessa Bell
+ Julian Bellmont
   Rob Bibby
‡ Dora Billington
   Carlo Brisco and Edward Dunn (Reptile)
+‡ Alan Caiger-Smith
+‡ Nick Caiger-Smith
+‡ Edgar Camden
   Daphne Carnegy
‡ Walter Cole and Jack Cole (Rye Pottery)
+‡ Harriet Coleridge
    Marshall Colman
 ‡ David Constantine White
    Kim Donaldson
+‡ Geoffrey Eastop
   Anthony Edmondson and Di Edmonds (Tydd pottery)
 ‡ Duncan Grant
   Morgen Hall
 *+ Mo Hamid
  + Andrew Hazelden
    John Hinchcliffe and Wendy Barber
 ‡ Margaret Hine
    Liza Katzenstein
    Michael Kay
  ‡ Phyllis Keyes
  ‡ Dora Lunn
    Agalis Manessi
 + Myra McDonnell
*+ Lawrence McGowan
   Roger Mulley
   William Newland
+ Judith Partridge
+ Simon Rich
   Kate Scott
+ Jason Shackleton
 *Owen Thorpe
‡ Nicholas Vergette
+ Ursula Waechter
   Alan Wallwork
+ Nicola Werner

+ worked at the Aldermaston Pottery
* works in stoneware
‡ retired, deceased or no longer working in tin glaze

IS IT WORTH THE TROUBLE TO MAKE YOUR OWN COLOURS?

Parmigianino, An Assistant Grinding Colours

Anyone who works with colours, especially on earthenware, knows that reds and yellows are the most difficult.You usually have buy them as commercial stains.  These are designed to be stable and so they don't have the qualities that studio potters look for, reacting with glaze, showing variation and creating texture. I prefer to use the common oxides, cobalt, copper, iron and manganese, rather than industrial colours - but I do like red and yellow!

The old maiolica potters couldn't get a true red, but they got a lovely yellow from lead antimoniate, a rich egg-yolk colour that we know as Naples yellow.  It has qualities unlike any commercial stain but you won't find it in the catalogues of potters' suppliers because it's so toxic. Naples yellow is, however, used by painters and it's available from L. Cornelissen & Son, the old-established artists' colourmen near the British Museum in London.  I've  tried it and it works, but it's expensive at £60 a kilo. (For comparison, iron oxide, which tin-glaze potters use as a brown stain, costs about £2.50 a kilo.)  So I made it in the studio.

The recipe I used was:
Red lead (Litharge PbO) - 60%
Antimony trioxide - 20%
Tin oxide - 20%
Calcine at 950 degrees C, grind and sieve through 200 mesh.

It costs about £10 a kilo but I've decided that it's not worth the trouble. A kilo would last me three years, so I'd be saving about £17 a year. First, the material takes time to prepare - a long time to grind and sieve - and crucibles have to be made for calcining. Second, there are the safety precautions that you have to take with such poisonous materials. I always bear in mind what Professor Nigel Wood told us in our first ceramic lecture at the University of Westminster, "Everything you use in pottery will kill you if you don't use it properly."  Lead antimoniate must not be swallowed, breathed in or allowed to come into contact with the skin even in small quantities, so you must wear gloves and a high-quality dust mask.  Those builders' masks made of paper will not do - I use a Moldex mask. Bench, tools and equipment have to be washed scrupulously after making. The washings cannot  be flushed down the sink: everything must be washed into a receptacle, waste allowed to settle, clear water poured off and solids melted into a glass before being disposed of. Any rags used for wiping up must also be disposed of safely and not simply put in the dustbin. During calcining, the studio has to be vacated in case of noxious fumes. There comes a time in your life when you realise what shops were invented for.

DANDIES IN THE STUDIO

Having discovered the photo of Taxile Doat so suavely dressed for a photo in his studio, I began to look for photos of other artistic dandies.  Here are a few.The first are the Futurists in their bowler hats.  Bowlers became a symbol of bourgeois mediocrity but when (l-r) Russolo, Carra, Marinetti, Boccioni and Severini wore them they were still compatible with their aggressive modernity.  Marinetti, a mate of Mussolini, who was another another bowler hat wearer, became a Fascist.



Severini looks like an office clerk on the right of the picture but he scrubbed up well for the opening of his exhibition at the Marlborough Gallery in London in 1913 (left). At around the same time, Picasso (below left) was similarly buttoned up, with hat, stick and pipe. He was a cool dresser and pretty well invented the fashion for striped Breton shirts. When he came to England in the 1950s he wore English tweeds but gave them a French accent with a beret (below right, with Anthony Penrose, "The Boy Who Bit Picasso"). Before the war bow ties and spats might be seen in the studio, as in the picture of Mario Tozzi at the easel (bottom left), but surely Josef Hoffman (bottom right) couldn't have gone into the studio with that silk scarf and those kid gloves? Right at the bottom there's a picture I've posted before, Isaac Button, the country potter filmed by Robert Fournier in about 1970, by no means a dandy, but a man who, working alone at Soil Hill Pottery near Wakefield, could throw a ton of clay a day wearing a tie - and, you will notice, sufficiently concerned about his clothes to put on an apron over his boiler suit. Don't get the wrong idea about Isaac Button: he and Robert Fournier went to the opera together.

ADVICE FOR THE VICTORIAN CHINA PAINTER

The pottery-painting craze drew forth many articles from the press from the 1870s to the 1890s.  Below is one that was published in The Leicester Chronicle and The Bristol Mercury on 7 June 1879, in “The Ladies Column” by "Penelope".  "Penelope" reviews the fourth annual exhibition of painted china by Howell and James in Regent Street, who exhibited 1,350 pieces by lady amateurs and professional artists.  “Penelope” is particularly interested in the potential for genteel employment offered by pottery painting at a time when ladies were not supposed to work but when many ladies did not have enough to live on.

The article is most interesting for its opinion of the quality of contemporary china painting. Not surprisingly, in a branch of art expanding so rapidly and a show that exhibited everything entered, its quality was mixed and it is obvious that many exhibitors had neither inspiration nor ability. "Penelope" puts it more politely than that, but her meaning is plain:

  “I find that a great many people who have had no training, and can only just draw a little in a school-girl sort of way, without any great love of art or knowledge of composition, think that they can paint on china, and that have only to get a box of colours and a white plate to produce a great effect.  In this they are entirely mistaken,  China painting is a branch of art which requires special study and direction, after the facility for drawing has been acquired.  The best artists will, of course, make the best china painters, and I do not recommend anyone to attempt it until they have gone through a careful course of study, and are pretty sure as to their correctness of outline in drawing, either form the living human form, or from nature herself, as seen in growing trees and flowers.  This once achieved, the subsequent study for the special work of painting on china is simply technical, and can be accomplished in a short time.”  

She recommends schools that will provide the proper training and a book, Amateur Pottery and Glass Painter by Campbell Hancock. Hancock’s book was one of the earliest on the subject, others coming out fairly regularly for the next thirty years. He came from a long line of Staffordshire potters and applied his expertise for the benefit of keen hobbyists and aspiring professionals:

"Here is surely a more profitable occupation for our young ladies than the endless production of the piles of needlework to which at present their talents are too often exclusively confined. Moreover, pottery painting affords a profitable resource for those whose circumstances necessitate their making some contribution to the household expenses.”  

Many ladies with a passion for pottery painting not only could not paint but had no idea what to paint:

“’What shall I paint’ is the first question asked by the tyro,” said Hancock.  “To this the answer is — Let the first essays be made in monochrome on the glaze — that is to say, with one colour heightened by one or two others. Photographs of casts or bas-reliefs afford  good copies for this purpose; there are also now photographs of flowers to be obtained at many of the best photographers' shops, which are eminently suitable for the beginner's first lessons.”

Here is "Penelope's" review of Howell and James's exhibition:

POTTERY PAINTING AT MINTON’S ART POTTERY STUDIO: KENSINGTON VERSUS SÈVRES

The extract below comes from an article in The Times about the employment of art students in Minton’s Art Pottery Studio in South Kensington in the 1870s, which I mentioned in my last post. It indicates that pottery painters in the studio, under the direction of W.S.Coleman, recognised that their art was different from painting on paper or canvas. Minton’s products are favourably compared with those of Sèvres, for whereas at Sèvres the pottery paintings "give light and shade and the illusion of distance and relief", at South Kensington "it is maintained that pure decoration should only form a pattern on the surface. These are nothing more than the principles of the old Italian majolica painting, and nearly the whole art practiced in the studio is in imitation of this or of the Japanese school, which also, though not entirely, deals in purely superficial decoration."

"Art Industries at South Kensington", The Times, 12 February 1872, p.10

ARTS AND CRAFTS RULES FOR POTTERY PAINTING

As well as thinking about how I decorate my own ceramics, I've been reading about the Victorian pottery painting craze.  Just as pottery cafes are popular today, with children's parties and the like, pottery painting was a popular hobby in the late 19th century. It seems to have been encouraged by Mintons, who set up a London studio in 1870 under the direction of the painter William Stephen Coleman.  Coleman specialised in  exotic pictures of half-naked girls, like The Potter's Daughter (left), although for  Minton's he developed a series of naturalistic transfer printed illustrations of flowers and birds.

Minton's studio burned down in 1875 and it wasn't replaced, but by then the craze was established.  It was especially popular with ladies, for whom it was an acceptable recreation and rather more demanding than sewing or embroidery. Many pottery painters in industry (though by no means all) were women and so the amateur lady and the professional were ranged along a spectrum and might move from the "amateur" room to the "artist" room at Howell and James's big annual exhibition, rather as the evening class tyro and the full-time studio potter are ranged along a spectrum today. Studio pottery arguably occupies a similar place in modern culture to pottery painting in the 1880s and there are historical links between them . (The subject of pottery painting is covered in Cheryl Buckley's Potters and Paintresses and Moira Vincentelli's The Gendered Vessel.)  Although professional craftspeople understandably distance themselves from amateurs, amateurism is the submerged nine-tenths of the craft iceberg and deserves more study.

Painting was big in the pottery syllabus of the art schools of the period, taught by, among others: John Sparkes at the National Art Training School  (later the RCA) and the Lambeth Art School; Richard Lunn, who took over pottery at the RCA in 1905; and Alfred Powell at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. Painting for the pottery industry was important in the Burslem and Hanley art schools.

To feed the pottery-painting craze, the retailers Howell and James put on annual exhibitions with prizes in the west end of London; there were "how-to-do-it" books, often recognising that the hobbyist  didn't know either how to paint or what to paint and so including patterns with detailed instructions on colour and treatment; and there were artists' suppliers, like Lechertier and Barbe (above), who sold handy sets of materials for the tyro at very high prices (the cheapest set cost what a shop worker earned in a month).  The dominant style of pottery painting was naturalistic, sentimental and often incredibly sickly. Although the artistic ladies were influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, they appear to have been completely ignorant of Arts and Crafts design principles. Probably with them in mind as well as the professional, William Morris set out his principles of pottery making in The Lesser Arts (1877). His ideas are familiar, though he is far too prescriptive for the post-modern mind, e.g. a complete ban on moulding and printing and an insistence on roughness. Nevertheless, it's interesting to read the passage again:

First. No vessel should be fashioned by being pressed into a mould that can be made by throwing on the wheel, or otherwise by hand. 

Second. All vessels should be finished on the wheel, not turned in a lathe, as is now the custom. How can you expect to have good workmen when they know that whatever surface their hands may put on the work will be taken off by a machine? 

Third. It follows, as a corollary to the last point, that we must not demand excessive neatness in pottery, and this more especially in cheap wares. Workmanlike finish is necessary, but finish to be workmanlike must always be in proportion to the kind of work. What we get in pottery at present is mechanical finish, not workmanlike, and is as easy to do as the other is hard: one is a matter of a manager's system, the other comes of constant thought and trouble on the part of the men, who by that time are artists, as we call them. 

Fourth. As to the surface decoration on pottery, it is clear it must never be printed; for the rest, it would take more than an hour to go even very briefly into the matter of painting on pottery; but one rule we have for a guide, and whatever we do if we abide by it, we are quite sure to go wrong if we reject it: and it is common to all the lesser arts. Think of your material. Don't paint anything on pottery save what can be painted only on pottery, if you do, it is clear that, however good a draughtsman you may be, you do not care about that special art. You can't suppose that the Greek wall-painting was anything like their painting on pottery; there is plenty of evidence to show that it was not. Or take another example from the Persian art; it is easy for those conversant with it to tell from an outline tracing of a design whether it was done for pottery-painting or for other work. 

Fifth. Finally, when you have asked for these qualities from the potters, and even in a very friendly way boycotted them a little till you get them, you will of course be prepared to pay a great deal more for your pottery than you do now, even for the rough work you may have to take. I'm sure that won't hurt you; we shall only have less and break less, and our incomes will still be the same.

FOUR FACES OF THE SAME POT

My pottery is in the maiolica tradition but I avoid maiolica clichés (birds, flowers, fruit and fishes) and try to make designs for today. The theme I've been exploring for some time is the arabesque - a curving line that follows the form of the pot and the shape of the brush.  Believe me, birds and flowers would be easier  because their shape is given and doesn't have to be invented.  They also have a wider appeal.

The particular problem with decorating a cylinder is to draw a few marks that go right round the pot but which fill the space and look balanced from any angle. The design may look good from one angle but not from another, usually because it's too empty. Then the temptation is to fill the space with tiny, busy marks, but I don't want to do that either. I want a loose, open design in which there is harmony between foreground and background.  The size of the brush also has to be taken into account in relation to the size of the pot. It has to be not too thick and not too thin, though there are acceptable variations in the weight of line on both small and large pots.

On this pot (above) I've got the effect I want after much trial and error.  (The pictures show  four faces of the same pot.)  It was painted with a long,  round sable brush with a square end, which gives a slight variation in thickness as the brush turns, keeping the design lively. This couldn't have been done with any other brush than the one I used. For many years I bought synthetic brushes to save money but now I use sable brushes for most things.  They are responsive and hold the paint until the end of the line. For washes I  also use brushes with natural hair (squirrel, ox or goat) because they have a soft edge, which suits my style more than the hard-edged synthetics.

DO YOU DRESS PROPERLY FOR WORK?

Taking a break from working in my filthy overalls, I’ve been looking at old manuals of pottery.

The Arts and Crafts movement stimulated an interest in pottery and other applied arts, and as well as the famous art potteries (like the Ruskin Pottery, Pilkington’s Lancastrian, William de Morgan’s and Bernard Moore’s) there was an upsurge in amateur pottery. Pottery painting became especially popular with women in the 1870s and there was an annual exhibition of their work in London (left). Pottery manuals aimed at the craft potter, amateur and professional, were published from the 1880s, usually with a section on painting. At the end of the century the art schools began to teach pottery and china painting for the craft worker.

The great challenge for the potter was high-fired ceramics. Hard paste porcelain had been discovered in the 1700s by Meissen, after centuries of fruitless experiment, but decorating at high temperatures, rather than with low-temperature enamels, remained elusive. A big step forward was taken at Sèvres by Taxile Doat, who published a series of papers on the topic in 1903, Grande Feu Ceramics, with an American edition two years later. The wonderfully-named Mr. Doat began the development in art pottery that resulted in the reduced stoneware made at the Leach Pottery in the 1920s.

This, however, is just a pretext for posting a picture of Taxile Doat at work in his bow tie, stiff collar and well-polished shoes, which should be an example to all potters and which I intend to emulate.

A RARE MAIOLICA PLATE BY DORA BILLINGTON

I have been privileged to see this maiolica plate by Dora Billington in a private collection.  It is a charming work, strongly rooted in the tin-glaze tradition.  Like most of her work, it is difficult to date.  It has an exhibition label on the back, but that gives no clue. Her work appears diverse (for example, in my last post I showed a tenmoku bowl in the Stoke on Trent Museum), but without dating it is hard to say whether she gradually developed, moving slowly from one technique to another, or used several methods at the same time.

The drawing of the cockerel is lively and convincing (it stands on its toes as it crows), but we would expect that from the artist because she trained in drawing at the Slade.  What is more remarkable is the lettering on the plate, which is superb.  It is very likely that it was done while she was teaching at the Central School of Arts and Crafts, which had a tradition of calligraphy, started by Edward Johnston and continued by such letterers as Graily Hewitt.  So she had good models.  But it is the only lettering by her I have seen in any medium. It demonstrates the potential Dora Billington had to establish herself as an artist, which she subsumed almost completely in her teaching, enabling other people to shine where she might have done herself.

A LARGE PLATE BY EDGAR CAMDEN AND A LITTLE BROWN BOWL BY DORA BILLINGTON

This plate was made by Edgar Camden at the Aldermaston Pottery.  Camden worked for a long time with Alan Caiger-Smith, who founded the Aldermaston Pottery in the 1950s and who was the most outstanding practitioner of tin-glazed ceramics in Britain until his retirement a few years ago.

The picture doesn't do justice to the plate, which is huge, about 60cm wide.  It is displayed at the entrance to the ceramics section of the Stoke on Trent Museum and Art Gallery, Hanley. You must go and see it for yourself (and, indeed, the excellent collection in the museum, rivalling in quality the collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum).  Stoke have a large collection of work from the Aldermaston Pottery, demonstrating Alan Caiger-Smith's energetic making and decorating.

The museum also has a little bowl by Alan Caiger-Smith's teacher, Dora Billington (left).  When Caiger-Smith went to the Central School of Arts and Crafts, he knew that he wanted to make decorated pottery but didn't know much else.  It was Miss Billington who told him that what he wanted to make was tin-glazed pottery.  She championed this sort of work in the fifties against the dominant  style of brown and grey stoneware, as made by Bernard Leach and his school.  She excelled at tin glaze herself because she drew well and handled the brush with ease.  But that is not what you will see in Hanley.  It is a little tenmoku bowl that she made in the mid 1930s, and it is exactly what you would expect from Leach.  In The Technique of Pottery she advised anyone wanting to make a career as a studio potter to decide what technique they want to work in and then to stick at it - exactly what Caiger-Smith did, and what his assistant Camden did, producing the vigorous decoration on this plate.  But Miss Billington did not do that.  She was a teacher and had to know about all techniques, including the technique of Anglo-Oriental stoneware