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
The size of the pottery-painting craze can be judged from the increase in the number of manuals and guides published in the 1870s and 1880s: 5 between 1850 and 1869, 29 between 1870 and 1889, 12 between 1890 and 1909 and 7 between 1910 and 1929.  My list may not be comprehensive, but the trend is unmistakable. It was between 1910 and 1929 that studio pottery emerged in Britain (although were parallel movements in France and the USA that we insular Brits tend to overlook), and so it is understandable that the pioneers felt they were in a new land without maps. The manuals published after 1900 tended to be more about clay and less about painting than those of the 1870s and 1880s.  I have found 7 manuals from the 1930s, where my survey ends.  In 1940 Bernard Leach published "A Potter's Book", a revolution in craft pottery, based on Japanese and English country pottery rather than Stoke-on-Trent and the drawing room. Leach inspired a generation of potters, amateur and professional, and in the 1960s, 70s and 80s the number of pottery manuals increased again, most in the Leach tradition, and more books were published than ever before.

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