31 May 2013

GRANADA, THE POMEGRANATE


By means of a pun, the city of Granada in southern Spain has become associated with the pomegranate. The Moors, who ruled the city for seven hundred years, called it Garnata, a word possibly taken from the name of the district that had for a long time been occupied by the Jews, Garnata al yahud. Neither to the Moors nor the Jews did the name of the city have anything to do with the fruit, which was ruman in Arabic and rimmon in Hebrew, but in Latin it was pomus granata, meaning an apple with seeds, and so it became granada in Spanish and Granada became associated (or confused) with it.

In Granada earlier this month I saw representations of the pomegranate everywhere, from the sublime to the ridiculous, from jewellery in smart shops to graffiti in the Albaicin area from where, as the sun sets, you have a magical view over the Alhambra to the Sierra Nevada beyond (top).

3 May 2013

THE DIFFICULT ART: BRITISH TIN-GLAZED POTTERY SINCE 1900

Cutlery drainer by Marshall Colman

A Crafts Council survey in 2004 estimated that there are about 6,000 professional  potters in Britain. In 1950 there were probably fewer than 200.  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. Bernard Leach had exerted a powerful influence, partly through A Potter's Book and partly through his apprentice system.

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 really caught on in Britain in the way that  high-fired stoneware or slipware has and it's disregarded by most studio potters and aficionados. 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 twee by British potters.

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

It's 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 some cannot draw and try to get way with meaningless splashes.Ironically, it's the two artists who are most closely associated with rough, country-style pottery, Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew, who were the most fluent decorators.  From modern potters I would single out Phil Rogers’ direct and simple surface decorations. 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
‡ Michael Casson
‡ Walter Cole and Jack Cole (Rye Pottery)
+‡ Harriet Coleridge
    Marshall Colman (illustrated above)
‡ David Constantine White
   Kim Donaldson
‡ Adam Dworski
+‡ 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
   Kate King
Phyllis Keyes
‡ David Leach
‡ Dora Lunn
  Agalis Manessi
+ Myra McDonnell
*+ Lawrence McGowan
   Roger Mulley
William Newland
+‡ Judith Partridge
+‡ Simon Rich
   Kate Scott
+ Jason Shackleton
* Owen Thorpe
‡ Marianne de Trey
‡ 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

1 May 2013

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.