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A lifetime collection of studio pottery by prominent British 20th-century ceramicists went under the hammer in a North Yorkshire saleroom recently. Antique Collecting lifts the lid to reveal the names every collector should know
Whether you are starting out, or an experienced collector, studio pottery is a delightful area to immerse yourself in. Ranging from high-end decorative pieces to rustic table ware, it has a charm that is both immediately apparent and greatly sought after by collectors across the world.
Studio pottery refers to pieces made by an individual artist, either professional or amateur, who carries out all stages of creating the pottery themselves. The pieces are usually unique and made in small batches. Most have maker’s marks of either the studio or the artist’s signature.
British Studio Potters
While some pieces can sell for thousands (most notably Lucie Rie), others can be bought for less than £100. A collection of studio pottery, including pieces by Rie, Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada, among others was recently offered for sale in North Yorkshire at Tennants Auctioneers.
Dame Lucie Rie
Dame Lucie Rie (1902-1995) is one of the most accomplished and celebrated studio potters. Known for her extraordinarily fine, hand-thrown porcelain pots, bottles and bowls, Rie has become one of the most sought-after ceramicists of the 20th century.
Rie was born in Austria at the turn of the century. Having trained in pottery at the School of Art and Design in Vienna, she was beginning to build a reputation in the city as an accomplished potter during the 1930s. However, aged 36, Rie found herself in London, a Jewish émigré who fled from the Nazi’s rise to power in her homeland.
Under difficult circumstances, Rie began making hand-made ceramic buttons for the couture industry. With rationing for traditional button materials and the requisitioning of button factories, Rie spotted a gap in the market and found a way of making a living.
Hans Coper
Fellow potter and émigré Hans Coper began working for her, and together they produced tableware, such as tea and coffee services. Elegant, angular and modern, their wares soon found a following and began to be stocked in fashionable outlets such as Heals.
Coper was to share a studio with Rie until 1958, and they remained friends until Coper’s death in 1981. As her commercial success in domestic wares grew, Rie was able to return to making art pottery. Using porcelain (the most difficult of materials to throw), Rie created delicate, almost gravity-defying pieces, experimenting with synthetic colours and glazes.
Her work was not initially admired in the UK, being very different to the heavy earthen and stoneware studio pottery being produced in the country by the likes of Bernard Leach. She was told her walls were too thin
and her pot ‘feet’ were too small – the very features so admired in her work today. However, her more European, minimalist style was appreciated on the Continent and her reputation began to grow. Soon she began to be appreciated at home too and would go on to achieve great success and acclaim during her long career.
Eastern influence
Shoji Hamada (1894-1978) was one of the most influential studio potters of the 20th century. After studying ceramics at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Hamada discovered the work of Bernard Leach in his Tokyo exhibition.
After seeking an introduction, the pair became great friends, and in 1920 Hamada returned to England with Leach and during his three-year stay in the country helped him establish his studio and influenced the foundation of the studio pottery movement in Britain.
Following his return to Japan, he set up his own studio in the small town of Mashiko, which would later become a centre of excellence for Japanese studio pottery and the folk-art movement. Here he brought traditional Japanese forms of pottery into the modern age, while using locally-sourced materials from his clays and glazes to his brushes and tools.
Lasting legacy
Bernard Leach (1887-1979) was the pre-eminent artist- potter of the 20th century. Both a great maker and a
great teacher, Leach exerted the utmost influence on the development of studio pottery, which is felt to this day.
Having been born in Hong Kong, Leach spent his early years in Japan and Hong Kong, before moving to London to study at the Slade School of Fine Art. Here he developed a deep fascination for Japan and moved to the country in 1909 with his young wife. Initially teaching etching, he was introduced to Japanese ceramics in 1911 and began to study pottery.
In 1919, Leach met fellow potter Shoji Hamada, who would accompany Leach back to England in 1920 having been asked to join the emerging Guild of Handicrafts group in the artistic colony of St Ives. Here he established a studio with the aid of Hamada and built the first Japanese kiln in the West.
Leach thought of pottery as a combination of Eastern and Western philosophies and drew on technical and aesthetic influences from both regions in his simple, utilitarian forms. From his studio he strove to elevate ceramics to the status of the Fine Arts and challenge homogeneous mass-produced pottery, and his influence was disseminated across the world through his numerous studio apprentices.
After WWII, Leach reached the height of his artistic powers. He was the most highly-regarded British potter and was accepted as an artist in Japan.
Dorset boy
Richard Batterham (1936-2021) was a master of his craft who quietly dedicated himself to producing an outstanding body of thrown stoneware pots from his Dorset studio.
Batterham was first introduced to pottery aged 13 at Bryanston School in Dorset, but it was a week-long visit to a country pottery in Surrey during a period of leave from national service that was to set the course for his life.
After leaving the military, he served a two-year apprenticeship with Bernard Leach, the pre-eminent artist-potter of the 20th century. Leach’s St Ives studio drew heavily on influences from the Far East as well as British medieval and vernacular pottery, creating a style that filtered down to its students and followers including Batterham.
In 1959, Batterham set up his own studio in Durweston in Dorset, where throughout his long career he never employed assistants, preferring to have complete control of his craft, from mixing his own clay to firing the kiln.
He was both industrious and disciplined and was resolute in producing beautiful and functional objects that were not subject to passing fashions or external influences. Once he had established his style and technique as a young man, it remained largely unchanged, with forms and glazes instead going through a steady development and refinement process with no radical reinvention.
Marked by a quiet modernity and subtlety of form and decoration, Batterham’s style is immediately recognisable to collectors of studio pottery.
The Collectors
Brenda (1935-2024) and David (1932-2017) Pearson were both born in the Midlands and spent much of their working lives in Birmingham. Brenda trained and initially worked as a nurse, while David studied medicine and worked as an anaesthetist.
It isn’t known when they started their interest in studio ceramics, but without doubt the Peter Dingley Gallery in nearby Stratford-upon-Avon not far from Birmingham, played a pivotal role in it. From its opening in 1966, Peter Dingley (1924-2019) showcased the works of outstanding contemporary potters such as Bernard Leach and Lucie Rie. Many of the examples in their collection were purchased at the gallery.
Trip to Japan
In September 1972, David visited Japan to attend a medical conference, unable to resist visiting the Hamada pottery at Mashiko, northeast of Tokyo. David met two of Hamada’s sons, Shinsaku and Atsuya, who were also distinguished potters, and he purchased items now in this collection.
In the early 1980s, Brenda and David left Birmingham and retired to Grange-over-Sands in Cumbria where they had more time to pursue their artistic interests. Brenda excelled in embroidery and was an active member of the Embroiderers’ Guild. David was a prolific painter, sculptor and poet (with a particular interest in Haiku). As well as creating his own work, David also assisted the Cumbrian sculptor Josephina de Vasconcellos (1904-2005) with one of her later works Escape to Light.
As well as the ceramicists mentioned, their collection included pieces by Leach’s wife, Janet (1918-1997), an American studio potter who joined the Leach Pottery in St Ives after studying pottery under Shoji Hamada in both America and Japan in 1954. She was the first foreign woman to study pottery in Japan and only the second Westerner, after Leach himself.
The David and Brenda Pearson Studio Pottery Collection, comprising 33 lots, went under the hammer at Tennants Auctioneers in Leyburn on October 5, 2024.
