14 March 2014
SOUTH BANKSY
I took these pictures of wall art by Loretto in south London. They're from a small area: New Cross, Peckham and Nunhead. It's not surprising that someone should copy Banksy - it's suprising that there should be so few people copying him.
If not for the signatures, you might think for a moment these were by Banksy, but, once you know they're not, you see, at least in two of the pictures, a less sardonic wit. The friendly policeman, happy in his destiny, is so not Banksy, and the hurrying commuter, about to be struck by Cupid, is also too nice for him. But the chilling "My Plan B" shows that Loretto has a darker side.
South London is not my manor and I've probably missed some of Loretto's work. For someone so talented, it's surprising there is so little information about this artist. More, please.
11 March 2014
CERAMIC HEAD BY GILBERT HARDING GREEN
Gilbert Harding Green was head of ceramics at the Central School of Arts and Crafts between 1955 and 1971. After the war, Dora Billington had built the ceramics department, with Harding Green's assistance, into the most innovative and liberal in the country. At that time the Royal College of Art was teaching design for the pottery industry, Farnham was very traditional and Camberwell was undistinguished. At the Central there was cross fertilization between disciplines and pottery students could work with Eduardo Poalozzi, William Turnbull or Alan Davie. Paolozzi was based in the textiles department, where Terence Conran was studying. The Central was one of the first art schools to teach Basic Design, a generic and analytic approach to both painting and design, derived from the Bauhaus course, that eventually shaped the foundation course in British art schools.
Harding Green took over the department on Billington's retirement and developed it - "beyond recognition" was her approving verdict. He expanded into the school's new building, and, post-Coldstream, steered the course into the Diploma in Art and Design. His students included Ruth Duckworth, John Colbeck, Robin Welch, Eileen Nisbet, Richard Slee, Alison Britton and Andrew Lord.
Billington and Harding Green subsumed their artistic careers in teaching, Harding Green the moreso. Harding Green's origins were exotic. Born in 1906, he was the illegitimate offspring of aristocratic parents, his mother English and his father Dutch or Russian according to differing accounts. Most of his childhood and youth were spent abroad, much of it in Italy. He told one of his students that, while living in the Vatican, he wandered into a room and looked idly into a chest of drawers, which he discovered to be full of marble penises. In his twenties he traveled in Brazil and learned Portuguese. He studied sculpture under John Skeaping and Frank Dobson at the Central School in the 1930s and turned to pottery. Of the little work by him that still exists, most is totally original and does not derive from any obvious ceramic tradition. In 1938 he became Billington's assistant, beating off competition from Henry Hammond, who went on to head the pottery department at Farnham, and Moira Forsyth, who is now better known for her stained glass.
I recently saw this sculpted head in clay by Harding Green, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1938. A review of the exhibition said "It held me by its stark truth and brute ugliness - the hard smileless mouth, the hollow cheeks and buried eyes, the repaired nose, the punched ears, and the imbecilic slope of the forehead, and these inelegant features were mercilessly gripped with economy of effort and absolute certainty." The subject was far removed from the artist's life. He was a man of wide culture and elegant taste who would attend the ceramics classes in the Central School in a suit, tie and cufflinks, always ready to advise students on a good restaurant or to give away complimentary theatre tickets that he had managed to get hold of.
Harding Green took over the department on Billington's retirement and developed it - "beyond recognition" was her approving verdict. He expanded into the school's new building, and, post-Coldstream, steered the course into the Diploma in Art and Design. His students included Ruth Duckworth, John Colbeck, Robin Welch, Eileen Nisbet, Richard Slee, Alison Britton and Andrew Lord.
Gilbert Harding Green with a student in the early 1960s.
(Central Saint Martins Museum Collection)
|
I recently saw this sculpted head in clay by Harding Green, which he exhibited at the Royal Academy with the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in 1938. A review of the exhibition said "It held me by its stark truth and brute ugliness - the hard smileless mouth, the hollow cheeks and buried eyes, the repaired nose, the punched ears, and the imbecilic slope of the forehead, and these inelegant features were mercilessly gripped with economy of effort and absolute certainty." The subject was far removed from the artist's life. He was a man of wide culture and elegant taste who would attend the ceramics classes in the Central School in a suit, tie and cufflinks, always ready to advise students on a good restaurant or to give away complimentary theatre tickets that he had managed to get hold of.
3 March 2014
MANUALS FOR POTTERS
A comment often made by 20th century studio potters is that
they embarked upon their craft without any books to guide them. George Cox’s "Pottery for Artists, Craftsmen and
teachers" (1914) and Dora Billington’s "The Art of the Potter" (1937) are singled
out as exceptions.
Cox, who trained with Richard Lunn at the Royal College of Art, came from an
Arts and Crafts background and his medievalising approach to the craft can be
seen from his frontispiece (above). The book’s
usefulness was limited by his indifference to science: “To the artist
craftsman, for whom chiefly this book is intended, a little scientific
knowledge is a dangerous thing; for that reason no great stress is laid on
formulas and analysis. Unless thoroughly understood they are a hindrance rather
than an aid.”
Billington’s book, in Oxford University Press's Little Craft Books series, combined historical and practical information and is the
most well-known of the early guides. Fred Burridge said in the preface, “The revival of the crafts is one of the most
marked elements in the present social and economic development of this country.
Increasing numbers of people are practising them with success and there are
admirable text-books for the worker. Hitherto, however, nothing has been
written that, in simple form, will help the public to knowledge and
understanding of the crafts in which their interest is awakened. The Little
Crafts Books are published as a response to this interest.”
There were, however, earlier manuals that studio potters could have made
use of. Many served the amateur pottery painting
craze of the 1870s, 80s and 90s, but others, particularly those published after 1900, gave a good grounding in pottery
making technique and they show that the secrecy commonly supposed to surround potters’ recipes
and practices was not universal.
Two books known to Billington and to Dora Lunn, another pottery pioneer, were Charles Binns’s “The Manual of Practical Potting”
(1901) and Taxile Doat’s “Grand Feu Ceramics” (1905). Binns was British; Doat, at
one time employed at Sèvres, was an innovator in high temperature art wares. Both moved to the USA where their careers flourished. Binns has a claim to
share with Bernard Leach the title “Father of Studio Pottery”.
Under Binns’s influence
there was a major change in art pottery. He wrote: “Certain occupations or
so-called crafts have offered easy paths to the unlearned and in consequence,
the country has been flooded by the product.” These occupations consisted in copying, and among them he listed china
painting, but there was now a feeling that one should create. “This
feeling has caused china-painting to give place to pottery-making. The former
consisted in buying finished china and painting upon it with ready prepared
colors using, probably, some published design or drawing. Some of the work done
under these conditions was, and is, good, even excellent … The fact remains
that the bulk of the work was copying of the poorest quality. … But the best of
these are now looking toward clay as a creative and expressive medium. In
ready-made china there is bound to be some deficiency. The artist is by nature
exacting and this purchased piece does not entirely please. It cannot be
altered, however, and it is this or nothing. Thus the artistic instinct is
violated, the standard lowered and one feels like a caged bird beating its
ineffectual wings against prison bars. When, however, the attempt is made to
work in the clay itself, liberty is found.” Similar changes were occurring in
Britain under the influence of W. B. Dalton, principal of Camberwell School of
Arts and Crafts and a potter of considerable talent, and Richard Lunn, who
taught at Camberwell as well as the RCA.
Here’s a list of some early manuals
published before Billington’s "The Art
of the Potter".
n.d.
|
J.C.Beard, Painting on China. What to paint and how to paint it
|
1813
|
Samuel Fletcher, A treatise on the art of enamel painting on porcelain etc.
|
1854
|
D. Lardner, "The
potter's art", in Museum of Science and Art
|
1860
|
E.L.Archer, Porcelain Painting. A
practical treatise for the use of amateurs
|
1864
|
M.D. Magner, M.D.
Nouveau manuel complet de porcelainier, faiencier poterie terre
|
1866
|
E.J.Leyshon, Operative
potter
|
1866
|
M.E.F.Rebouilleau, Manuel de la pientre sur verre, sur porcellaine, etc.
|
1873
|
T.J.Gallick and John Timbs, Painting popularly explained. (Inc. painting on pottery)
|
1873
|
Sidney T. Whiteford, A guide to Porcelain Painting
|
1877
|
William Morris, The Lesser Arts.( Not
normally treated as a manual on pottery-making, but Morris expressed
characteristically firm views on how pottery should and should not be made.)
|
1877
|
Amy E. Black, Practical Guide to Pottery Painting
|
1877
|
Mary Louise McLaughlin, China painting
|
1877
|
S.W.Tilton, Designs
and instructions for decorating pottery
|
1877
|
Madame Brasier de laVanguyon, Guide to painting on porcelain and earthenware
|
1878
|
M.C.Lockwood, Hand-book of ceramic art
|
1878
|
George Ward
Nichols, Pottery
|
1879
|
Hancock, E. Campbell, The
Amateur Pottery and Glass Painter
|
1879
|
John C. L. Sparkes, A Handbook to the Practice of Pottery Painting
|
1879
|
Louis Celibiere, Traite elementaire de pientre en ceramique
|
1880
|
Charles A. Janvier, Practical Keramics for Students,
|
1880
|
A. Chaivignne, Traite
de decorations sur porcelaine et faience
|
1880
|
M.L.McLaughlin, Pottery decoration under the glaze
|
1880
|
E.
Delamardelle and Goupilfesquet (Frédéric Auguste Antoine),
Practical
Lessons in Painting on China, Porcelain, Earthenware, Faience and Enamel
|
1881
|
H.R.Robertson, Painting on china, terra cotta, oil and water colour
|
1882
|
J.C.Beard, Painting on china. Practical instruction in overglaze painting in the decoration
of hard porcelain
|
1882
|
W.Harvey, China painting its principles and practice
|
1882
|
William Backshell, Practical guide to painting with colours on china and terracotta
|
1883
|
Florence Lewis Cassell, China Painting,
|
1883
|
Colibert.
Terra-cotta painting with practical hints on mixing colours
|
1883
|
Robert T. Hill, Porcelain painting after the Dresden method
|
1884
|
M.L.McLaughlin,
M.L. Suggestions to china painters
|
1883
|
Fred Miller, Pottery and Glass Painting
|
1885
|
Fred Miller, Pottery Painting
|
1885
|
Susan Ann Frackleton, Tried by Fire
|
1886
|
Henri Mayeaux, A Manual of decorative composition
|
1888
|
G.Leland, The
minor arts. (inc.porcelain painting etc.)
|
1891
|
Maxwell, Wm. H, The use of clay in schools
|
1892
|
L.Beard and A.B.Beard, The American girl’s handy book. (inc. clay modelling and china
painting)
|
1892
|
Aug. Klimke, Anleitung zum malen auf Porzellanu
|
1896
|
L. Vance-Phillips, Book of the china painter
|
1897
|
Felix Hermann,
Painting on glass and porcelain and enamel painting
|
1898
|
Charles Fergus Binns, The Story of the Potter
|
1899-1920
|
Keramic Studio.
A magazine for the china painter, potter and student of design.
|
1901
|
Charles Fergus Binns, Ceramic technology
|
1901
|
Charles Fergus Binns, The Manual of Practical Potting
|
1903
|
Richard Lunn, Pottery:
a hand-book of practical pottery for art teachers and students (Vol. I)
|
1904
|
Mary White, How To Make Pottery
|
1905
|
Taxile Doat. Grand Feu Ceramics.
|
1908
|
Katherine Morris Lester, Clay Work
|
1910
|
Charles Fergus Binns, The Potter’s Craft
|
1910
|
Frederick Hurten Rhead, Studio Pottery
|
1910
|
Richard Lunn, Pottery
(Vol. II)
|
1914
|
George Cox, Pottery for Artists, Craftsmen and teachers
|
1921
|
Alfred B. Searle, The Clayworker’s Hand-book
|
1925
|
Wilfrid Norton, The Art of the Potter
|
1927
|
Henry and Denise Wren, Handicraft Pottery,
|
1928
|
Denise Wren, Handcraft
Pottery for Workshop and School
|
1931
|
Dora Lunn, Pottery
in the Making,
|
1932
|
Denise Wren, Pottery: The
Finger Build Methods
|
1932
|
Harry Barnard, Peeps at The Art of the Potter
|
1934
|
Gordon Mitchell
Forsyth, The Art and Craft of the Potter
|
1934
|
Dora
Billington, “Pottery” in Davide C. Minter (ed.) Modern Home Crafts
|
1935
|
Gordon Mitchell
Forsyth, M. P. Bisson, F. Jefferson Graham, W. Hartley, Pottery, Clay
Modelling, and Plaster Casting
|
1937
|
Dora Billington, The Art of the Potter
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