Studio pottery is pottery made by professional and amateur ceramists working alone or in small groups, making unique items or short runs, especially those that are not intended for daily use as crockery. Typically, all stages of manufacture are carried out by the artists themselves. Studio pottery includes functional wares such as tableware and cookware, and non-functional wares such as sculpture, with vases and bowls covering the middle ground, often being used only for display. Studio potters can be referred to as ceramic artists, ceramists, ceramicists, or as an artist who uses clay as a medium.
Some studio potters now prefer to call themselves ceramic artists, or simply artists, for example, Grayson Perry, based in London. Studio pottery is represented by potters all over the world and has strong roots in Britain. Art pottery is a related term, used by many potteries from about the 1870s onwards, in Britain and North America; it tends to cover larger workshops, where there is a designer supervising the production of skilled workers who may have input into the pieces made. The heyday of British and American art pottery was about 1880 to 1940. Since the second half of the 20th century ceramics has become more highly valued in the art world. Several large exhibitions worldwide have been held, including the now defunct Sculpture Objects Functional Art and Design (SOFA Chicago and SOFA New York), which included ceramics as an art form. Ceramics have realized high prices, reaching several thousands of pounds for some pieces, in auction houses such as Bonhams and Sotheby's.
British studio pottery
Pre-1900
Notable studios included Brannam Pottery, Castle Hedingham Ware, Martin Brothers and Sir Edmund Harry Elton.
1900-1960: Development of contemporary British ceramics Several influences contributed to the emergence of studio pottery in the early 20th century: art pottery (for example the work of the Martin Brothers and William Moorcroft); the Arts and Crafts movement, the Bauhaus; a rediscovery of traditional artisan pottery and the excavation of large quantities of Song pottery in China. Leading trends in British studio pottery in the 20th century are represented by Bernard Leach, William Staite Murray, Waistel Cooper, Dora Billington, Lucie Rie and Hans Coper. Originally trained as a fine artist, Bernard Leach (1887–1979) established a style of pottery, the ethical pot, strongly influenced by Chinese, Korean, Japanese and medieval English forms. After briefly experimenting with earthenware, he turned to stoneware fired to high temperatures in large oil or wood-burning kilns. This style dominated British studio pottery in the mid-20th century. Leach's influence was disseminated by his writings, in particular A Potter's Book and the apprentice system he ran at his pottery in St Ives, Cornwall, through which many notable studio potters passed. A Potter's Book espoused an anti-industrial, Arts and Crafts ethos, which persists in British studio pottery. Leach taught intermittently at Dartington Hall, Devon from the 1930s. Other ceramic artists exerted an influence through their positions in art schools. William Staite Murray, who was head of the ceramics department of the Royal College of Art, treated his pots as works of art, exhibiting them with titles in galleries. Dora Billington (1890–1968) studied at Hanley School of Art, worked in the pottery industry and was latterly head of pottery at the Central School of Arts and Crafts. She worked in media that Leach did not, e.g. tin-glazed earthenware, and influenced potters such as William Newland Margaret Hine, Nicholas Vergette and Alan Caiger-Smith.
Lucie Rie (1902–1995) came to London in 1938 as a refugee from Austria. She had studied at the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule and has been regarded as essentially a modernist. Rie experimented and produced new glaze effects. She was a friend of Leach and was greatly impressed by his approach, especially about the "completeness" of a pot. The bowls and bottles which she specialised in are finely potted and sometimes brightly coloured. She taught at Camberwell College of Arts from 1960 until 1972. Hans Coper (1920–1981), also a refugee, worked with Rie before moving to a studio in Hertfordshire. His work is non-functional, sculptural and unglazed. He was commissioned to produce large ceramic candlesticks for Coventry Cathedral in the early 1960s. He taught at Camberwell College of Arts from 1960 to 1969, where he influenced Ewen Henderson. He taught at the Royal College of Art from 1966 to 1975, where his students included Elizabeth Fritsch, Alison Britton, Jacqui Poncelet, Carol McNicoll, Geoffrey Swindell, Jill Crowley and Glenys Barton, all of whom produce non-functional work. After the Second World War, studio pottery in Britain was encouraged by two forces: the wartime ban on decorating manufactured pottery and the modernist spirit of the Festival of Britain. Studio potters provided consumers with an alternative to plain industrial ceramics. Their simple, functional designs chimed in with the modernist ethos. Cranks restaurant, which opened in 1961, used Winchombe pottery throughout, which Tanya Harrod describes as "handsome, functional with pastoral but up to date air". Cranks represented the look of the period. Elizabeth David's food revolution of the post-war years was associated with a similar kitchen look and added to the demand for hand-made tableware. Harrod notes that several potteries were formed in response to this fifties boom. There was in turn a demand for potters trained in workshop practice and able to throw quickly. As this training was not offered by the art schools of the period, the Harrow Art School studio pottery diploma was created to fill the gap. According to Harrod, "the production potter of the Harrow type had a good innings well into the seventies", by which time the market for this style of pottery was falling away.
1960s-present: Modern British potters
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