Iconic Japanese potter and designated Living National
Treasure Shoji Hamada, said there were two kinds of pots. The first
he compared to hot house plants, the second to the tree growing
on the mountainside. In his own work he aspired towards the latter
and I, in so much as I am able, have endeavored to do likewise.
This has involved a particular
approach to both work and lifestyle in general. I knew from the
start that what Michael Cardew referred to as a deliberately willed
injection of personality would not do. This was not the way to make
worthy pots.
I had looked at those historical
examples I admired and loved so much, be they sixteenth century
Korean, thirteenth century Chinese, or medieval English, and realized
that their essential beauty and vitality was a direct product of
the working environment in which they were made. I knew that if
I was to have any hope of achieving even a hint of such breadth
and character in my own work I would have to create for myself (in
so far as was possible in the late twentieth century) a similar
living and working situation.
I left the hot house of London, where I had been
a student in the late nineteen seventies, and set up a workshop,
initially in North Wales and later in Cumbria working, as I do now,
within sight of the Cumbrian Fells. This involves a necessary slower
pace of life, in touch with essential values, from which pots can
grow, naturally and unforced and free from the superficiality of
urban demands. My work is a reflection of my life and my concerns
to understand and communicate beauty, as I see it, through pottery
form.
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