Wide N.Z. Pottery Interest Surprises Expert

Press, Volume CI, Issue 29746, 13 February 1962, Page 15

Wide N.Z. Pottery Interest Surprises Expert

The widespread interest in pottery in New Zealand has astonished Bernard Leach, the famous English potter, who arrived in Christchurch yesterday in the course of a New Zealand tour which began three weeks ago. Mr Leach, who has travelled widely and is the author of several standard works on pottery, said New Zeeland had the strongest pottery movement on the Commonwealth. outside England. In Dunedin, for instance, 140 persons had come to hear him at a meeting which was for potters only. As well as being surprised by the amount of interest in oottery in New Zealand. Mr Leach is impressed by the quality of much New Zealand work, although he was not unaware of it when he arrived. Two of New Zealand’s finest potters, Peter Stiehbury and Lent Castle, worked and studied with him at his studio at St. Ives. Cornwall. and he has maintained other contacts with New Zealand potters. On his New Zealand tour Mr Leach is meeting and addressing potters in the main centres Napier and Palmerston North, and lecturing to Japan societies. His visit to New Zealand is being sponsored by the Arts Advisory Council. Crown Lynn Pot♦eries. societies of potters and the Japan Societies of New Zealand. In Christchurch he will meet local patters at the Risingholm Community Centre on Wednesday and talk on Japan to the Friends of the Museum and Japan Society Thursday. Born in Orient

Mr Leach’s contact with the Orient began when he was born in Hong Kong 73 years ago. the son of an English Colonia] Judge He was educated in England from 1897 onward, after having lived in Japan and Singapore as well as Hons Kong In 1903. at the age of 16, he went to the Slade School of Art. At 21 he went to

Japan, where he married a cousin and remained for the next 11 years. His sons, David and Michael, who are both potters themselves, were born in 1911 and 1913 respectively. In the former year Bernard Leach began to study pottery with a Japanese potter. In Japan. Mr Leach became associated with a group of young writers and artists whom he interested both in contemporary craftsmanship and the preservation of Japanese traditions of craft One of them was Shoji Hamada, whom he inspired to become a potter. Now Hamada ranks with Mr Leach as the best-known potter in the world. Hamada accompanied him on his return to England in 1920, and together they founded the Leach Pottery at St Ives. There were thin times in the earlv years, but soon their nottery became known in England. Good students began to come to St Ives, first from England ♦hen from all over the world as the fame of the Leach Pottery grew

Mr Leach returned to Japan in 1934 and 1952-54 He has made two lecture tours of America and exhibitions of his work have been held in Janan. London. Sweden Norway. Denmark. Holland, and the United States His work is represented in museum collections in New Zealand and Australia as well as those countries where he has exhibited Modern Potter’s Task

From these beginnings has grown the studio pottery movement, of which Mr Leach suoke yesterday. “The task of the contemporary potter is something new in this century.” he said “Craftsmen are being forced to become artist-craftsmen." The modern artist-ootter was the inheriter of all lhe pottery of the past and needed a “strong digestion to select that which soaks back into the unconscious and comes back afresh stamped with his own character." f

The most one could hope for in a piece of pottery was that the natural character of the individual potter should be apparent, Mr Leach said To amplify his point he quoted Confucius: “The wise man is he who in his maturity can make natural use of the gifts with which he was born ”

This tfieme runs through Mr Leach’s beliefs on art and he believes that our civilisation does not employ art as a part of life, but as an addition. "We exclude feeling, imagination and intuition from our society," he said.

Mr Leach sees the need for machine-made pottery to supply “plain, honest things we can’t make in enough quantity by hand” And tie thinks some machine-ware that is “plain and honest to the machine” is being made, mostly in Scandinavia "There was not much, however. in England, where porcelain manufacturers were still sunk in a morass of the second-rate values of Sevres and Marie Antoinette” He has also found some good Japanese machine-ware, and this was a case where the Japanese had been influenced by Europe, in contrast with the widespread Japanese influence on Western studio pottery, especially in the United States Mr Leach does not think ‘ the present Western interest in Japanese art and life is in any way akin to the desire for the exotic which marked the Chinoiserie of the eighteenth century Japanese Influence

But. he said, “Japanese potters know far more about us than we know about them.’’ He told how the Japanese had acclaimed an exhibition of thirteenth century English pottery sent to Japan by the City of London as the finest pottery they had seen from Europe This early English pottery stands very high in Mr Leach’s estimation, too. He believes that New Zealand pottery shows the dual influence of England and Japan, but he detects no specifically New Zealand character in it. "That.” he said, "is bred out of centuries."