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This is a film
about people who make pots.

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Big pots.

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Little pots.

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Cool pots.

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Honest pots.

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Even pots that don't
look like pots at all.

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All of them crafted by hand.

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One person making one pot.

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This was once how all pots
were made.

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But then came the factories.

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The Industrial Revolution

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had made Britain the richest
nation on the planet.

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But the strength of these factories
was also a weakness.

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Everything coming off
the production line looked the same.

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Something had been lost,

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and that was the artisan potter,
and the hand-made pot.

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So from the end of the 19th century,
a fight-back began.

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Not by politicians or reformers,
but by potters.

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They became known as studio potters,

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men and women who made pots

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that returned to the values that
ran deep through the British psyche.

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Craftsmanship and tradition.

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Imagination and ingenuity.

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It's the thrill of creation.

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This came from somebody's hands,

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and it ended that way because
they wanted it to end that way.

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And why did they want it?
Because they thought it looked good.

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They thought it had life.

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By placing their work at the heart
of the British home,

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the studio potters were fighting
for more than art.

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They were fighting
for the nation's soul.

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If your heart doesn't get joy
in making,

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how do you expect people
who use the things that you make

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to have their hearts touched?

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The story of ceramics in Britain
in the 20th century

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is utterly compelling.

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It's a story about intimacy,
and national identity.

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It's also a story of taste,

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of how British studio pottery

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would swing between
revitalising the traditional

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and a search for the new.

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Craft was this sort of
weird dalliance for an artist.

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"You're interested in craft?
How very interesting."

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"That's dead, isn't it?
Craft's dead, I believe."

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Many of the potteries

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of Stoke-on-Trent
are deserted these days.

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But in the 19th century,
they were vast factories,

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churning out cups, plates
and pots to fill British homes.

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Pottery workers were proud
of their products,

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which required some flair
and creativity.

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But the dominance of Stoke-on-Trent
and its factories

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meant pottery as a great artisan
craft had mostly disappeared.

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In the 1860s, a handful
of determined young artists

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decided they'd had enough.

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Spearheaded by William Morris,

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it became known as
the Arts and Crafts Movement,

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dedicated to reviving
traditional craftsmanship.

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And in its ranks it had a potter.

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An enterprising young man
named William De Morgan.

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William Morris and William De Morgan
were tremendous friends

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when they were very young men,
living in Bloomsbury,

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quite close to each other,

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and both enthused with the idea

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of discovering lost skills
in hand-making.

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Morris went on to experiment
with all sort of crafts.

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But De Morgan was a bit more
specific.

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He was really concentrated
on lost techniques in pottery.

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De Morgan had trained
at the Royal Academy schools,

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but found them too old-fashioned.

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In William Morris,
he discovered a kindred spirit.

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He worked for him until 1872,

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when he founded his own
pottery studio in Chelsea.

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His great passion was for Italian
Renaissance and Persian designs,

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but he also possessed
a remarkably vivid imagination.

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Inhabited by fantastical creatures,
his pottery was also very English.

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This wasn't ceramics
from a dull production line.

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This was art.

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De Morgan was a great enthusiast
for this sort of elaborate form

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of leaves, fronds,
flowers and creatures.

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And this, I think, was more of an
English thing than a foreign thing.

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He somehow managed to fuse
this love of Eastern decoration

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with this very English, Victorian
sense of rather whimsical humour

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that you get in, say,
Alice In Wonderland.

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Lewis Carroll was a great admirer,
not surprisingly,

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of De Morgan's wonderful pots.

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And beautiful as they are,
they are fantastical creatures,

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and somehow wonderfully Victorian.

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De Morgan's works can still
produce a sense of wonderment,

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especially in a modern-day potter.

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Well, this is the first time

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I've had a William De Morgan
pot in my hands,

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and it's a wonderful moment
for a potter.

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It's extraordinary. It's so light.

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It's a beautifully, beautifully
balanced, lyrical kind of object.

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But, and this is extraordinary,
this is lustreware,

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this is a pot where every single bit
of shimmering iridescence,

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all the way round it,

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is a different kind of metal oxide
that's been applied in a wash,

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and each time that's been done, it's
had to go through the kiln again.

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So that there are four or five
different firings

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that have created this pot.

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But it's un-warped, it's intact,

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but beyond that, it's doing
something quite extraordinary.

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He's telling a story,
but it's a simple story.

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What he's telling is here,
a small deer, in foliage,

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just about to take flight.
Hesitancy, a moment.

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You can almost feel the breeze
in this wood,

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and so what this is doing is
making the pot as a lyrical poem.

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It's a great moment.

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Today, a first rate De Morgan pot
would fetch up to £100,000.

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But in his lifetime,

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his own enthusiasm
was not shared by the public.

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He achieved these
enormously skilful effects.

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Maybe they didn't fit the taste.

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People were looking
for something else.

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They didn't want history,

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they didn't want something which
was too rooted in historical shape.

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They wanted something which was
now becoming more progressive.

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But William De Morgan
had achieved more with his pots

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than he would realise.

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They played a key role
in establishing British ceramics

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as more than just manufacture,
but as an art form.

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And if money was no object,

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then there was no end to what
an art potter could achieve.

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Down in the West Country,
a maverick nobleman,

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aided by his loyal gardener,
would show precisely that.

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The magical pots known as
Elton Ware reveal their maker

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as a forgotten genius
of British studio pottery.

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In 1868, Edmund Elton
married his cousin Agnes

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and inherited the family's
ancestral home,

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Clevedon Court, outside Bristol.

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Wealthy, and with time on his hands,

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he could've chosen idleness
over enterprise.

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Instead,
he taught himself to make pots.

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He started off putting pots
in the kitchen oven,

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and the cook used to be amused.

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He would come in, in the evening
once the oven

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had stopped being used for food,
and would load up the oven with pots.

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And he would give her
some of the pots.

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Well, that didn't go on
for all that long,

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because after a while he built
a small kiln in the garden.

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He started off with himself
and two boot boys,

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so that he had two boys
from the village,

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and the elder of the two,
George Masters,

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became his absolute
right-hand man.

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There's a very nice piece
in the Clevedon Mercury

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in which Sir Edmund is saying,

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if Masters was to go,
the whole concern would collapse.

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He was very hunchbacked,

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but clearly
he was immensely talented.

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And Sir Edmund and George Masters
became tremendous friends,

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and colleagues.

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They made an unlikely duo.

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George Masters had been
Sir Edmund's head gardener,

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but he was now throwing pots,

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which left Sir Edmund with time
to concentrate on decoration.

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Sir Edmund became
a manic experimenter.

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He developed
highly sophisticated glazes,

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often using gold and platinum.

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They looked like nothing before,
or since.

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The actual work
that he was producing

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draws on some of the same sources

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that other artist potters
were producing.

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But his ceramics
are highly individual,

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and the surfaces are almost unique

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in terms of their use
of crackled lustre glazes.

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Quite extraordinary, ethereal pots.

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One of the major distinguishing
characteristics of Elton Ware

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are these glorious,
jewel-like colours.

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They're sort of peacock colours.

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He clearly had a really good eye
for colour,

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and mixed them very creatively.

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But this very high gloss,
and, in fact,

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if you can see on this one...

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this wonderful peacock bluey-green,

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and the floriated decoration
is very pretty in this green,

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and then the great splodge
of gold at the top.

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The colours
are absolutely marvellous,

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with this very, very high gloss.

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And once you know it,
it's unmistakeable.

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Elton Ware received
some commercial success,

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attracting buyers
in Europe and America.

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But for much of his lifetime,

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Sir Edmund's talents
went largely unrecognised.

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He died in 1920,

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followed within a year by
the ever-faithful George Masters.

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Between them, they had produced
a staggering amount of pots.

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I met somebody only the other day

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who said that his father
was employed to break up

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the enormous surplus still sitting
in all the outhouses in the 1950s,

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to form a foundation for the pigsties
my uncle was then building.

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Every cupboard, every bit
of storage space, is stuffed with it.

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Sir Edmund Elton,
like William De Morgan,

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offered an alternative
to the industrial production line.

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Others also made their mark,

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such as
the Martin Brothers of Southall,

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whose highly decorated wares
showed a passion for the Gothic

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and a dark humour that has always
been a part of the British psyche.

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But taste is a fickle mistress.

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In the years following
the First World War,

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the Victorian fashion
for the grotesque and the ornate

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seemed dated and fussy.

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As Britain struggled to recover
from the trauma of war,

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such frivolity appeared
to belong to a long-lost era.

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Life had gained a new moral purpose.

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And a new generation
of young artists

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sought an authenticity to their work

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that the frippery
of the Victorian age seemed to lack.

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The fashion was now for pots
that were timeless and useful.

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And what was needed was someone who
would revolutionise British pottery,

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by producing handmade pots that
were both attractive and practical.

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Someone who would put
the handmade pot

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into the ordinary British kitchen.

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Bernard Leach would become not only
Britain's most famous potter,

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but one of the nation's
leading artists.

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To clay,
what Henry Moore was to stone.

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But Bernard Leach's revolution
in British pottery began

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not within these shores,
but on the other side of the world.

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I was born of English parents
in China, and educated in England.

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By 21,
I had heard a good deal about Japan,

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and finally decided to go back
to the Far East to find out,

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if I could, something of its
meaning,

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and its different art and life.

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For Leach, Japan offered
an exciting vision of a society

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untainted by the evils
of industrialisation.

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I came to believe that
we can relearn from the East

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much that we lost
in the Industrial Revolution.

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For the machine leaves out
the heart of labour,

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feeling, imagination
and directness of control.

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And I found that the craftsman is
almost the only kind of worker left

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employing heart, hand and head
in balance.

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Leach fell in with a group of
young artists and intellectuals.

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One of their pastimes was decorating
and firing ceramic pots,

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using a technique known as raku.

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The evening that Leach joined in
would change the course of his life.

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There was a portable kiln
with technicians available,

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pots already formed,

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on which these writers and actors
and poets were invited to

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draw a design. The technicians would
then glaze them,

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the pot would be fired in the kiln
as the party proceeded,

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and 30 minutes later,

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it would be taken out of the kiln,
and there was this pot.

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Leach writes in his memoirs
how totally amazed he was

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by seeing how something,

245
00:16:36,200 --> 00:16:40,440
the sketch he had done on this pot
that was given him,

246
00:16:40,440 --> 00:16:43,320
was transformed into
this extraordinary object

247
00:16:43,320 --> 00:16:45,120
that came out of the kiln red hot,

248
00:16:45,120 --> 00:16:47,960
and you can imagine
it was quite a dramatic experience.

249
00:16:47,960 --> 00:16:51,640
He writes that is the moment
he decided pottery was for him.

250
00:16:55,000 --> 00:16:58,880
Leach was convinced he had seen
the future for British pottery.

251
00:16:58,880 --> 00:17:01,280
An Anglo-Oriental style
that would recapture

252
00:17:01,280 --> 00:17:05,440
the glories of craftsmanship lost to
the monotony of the production line.

253
00:17:14,200 --> 00:17:17,760
The challenge facing him was
to achieve back home in England

254
00:17:17,760 --> 00:17:19,240
what he had seen in Japan.

255
00:17:23,720 --> 00:17:26,680
But returning to these shores
proved a rude awakening.

256
00:17:28,800 --> 00:17:30,240
He felt out of place.

257
00:17:30,240 --> 00:17:34,880
Everywhere he looked, he saw
the ugly, soulless modern world

258
00:17:34,880 --> 00:17:36,640
encroaching on the countryside.

259
00:17:42,800 --> 00:17:45,920
So when an offer came
to fund a pottery in Cornwall,

260
00:17:45,920 --> 00:17:47,880
Leach jumped at the opportunity.

261
00:17:50,920 --> 00:17:53,680
In 1920, I had returned from Japan

262
00:17:53,680 --> 00:17:55,800
with all that I had learnt
during 11 years,

263
00:17:55,800 --> 00:17:57,240
to start a pottery in St Ives.

264
00:18:00,280 --> 00:18:03,880
It seemed an unlikely spot
to ignite a pottery revolution.

265
00:18:06,200 --> 00:18:08,000
He comes to St Ives
for the first time,

266
00:18:08,000 --> 00:18:12,240
he brings with him an idea of
what English pottery should be,

267
00:18:12,240 --> 00:18:15,320
and an idea of what Oriental pottery
should be.

268
00:18:15,320 --> 00:18:17,280
And then he has this great challenge

269
00:18:17,280 --> 00:18:20,000
of trying to bring
these things together...

270
00:18:23,240 --> 00:18:27,520
..to a public who have
absolutely no interest at all

271
00:18:27,520 --> 00:18:33,600
in this young, middle-class,
odd, moustached Englishman.

272
00:18:35,640 --> 00:18:38,000
It was a huge risk
for a man with a young family

273
00:18:38,000 --> 00:18:41,920
and no previous experience of
running a business, let alone a
pottery.

274
00:18:43,960 --> 00:18:48,360
Production began in 1921. But things
quickly started to go wrong.

275
00:18:51,440 --> 00:18:53,880
The Leach Pottery
from the outset was really

276
00:18:53,880 --> 00:18:57,000
fraught with technical problems.
They had to rebuild the kiln,

277
00:18:57,000 --> 00:19:02,040
they had problems maintaining
a high standard of ware.

278
00:19:02,040 --> 00:19:07,120
And although Leach had arguments
to suggest that

279
00:19:07,120 --> 00:19:11,160
perhaps these kinds of technical
issues were not of prime importance,

280
00:19:11,160 --> 00:19:16,240
nevertheless they affected
the efficient running of the pottery

281
00:19:16,240 --> 00:19:20,080
and its ability to
actually be sustainable.

282
00:19:23,760 --> 00:19:26,840
It wasn't a good start,
and things didn't improve.

283
00:19:26,840 --> 00:19:30,280
Leach had discovered,
like many before him,

284
00:19:30,280 --> 00:19:33,320
that it was fiendishly difficult
to make a profit from pots

285
00:19:33,320 --> 00:19:34,720
without a production line.

286
00:19:38,160 --> 00:19:42,120
And yet his sense of what made a
good pot was taking recognisable
shape.

287
00:19:44,920 --> 00:19:49,880
A pot is a living thing,
its associations are markedly human.

288
00:19:49,880 --> 00:19:54,040
We talk of the foot, belly,
the shoulder, the neck and the lip,

289
00:19:54,040 --> 00:19:59,320
and we intuitively feel a good pot's
honesty, strength, nobility,

290
00:19:59,320 --> 00:20:02,960
warmth, delicacy or charm,
much as we do with people.

291
00:20:06,600 --> 00:20:10,280
This stoneware bottle from
that period is as alive in spirit

292
00:20:10,280 --> 00:20:12,120
as the leaping fish
that decorate it.

293
00:20:15,600 --> 00:20:18,200
East and West are effortlessly
brought together

294
00:20:18,200 --> 00:20:19,520
to create something new.

295
00:20:26,880 --> 00:20:29,000
Despite this,
for the next ten years,

296
00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:32,040
the Leach Pottery remained
constantly in debt.

297
00:20:34,840 --> 00:20:38,320
But Bernard Leach wasn't alone
in finding the going tough.

298
00:20:39,520 --> 00:20:44,440
The '30s was a decade that saw
Britain as a nation hit hard times.

299
00:20:46,840 --> 00:20:50,760
The Great Slump, as it became known,
was the largest economic depression

300
00:20:50,760 --> 00:20:53,960
experienced by this country
in the 20th century.

301
00:20:58,200 --> 00:21:01,680
It was little wonder Leach was
struggling to make ends meet

302
00:21:01,680 --> 00:21:03,120
through his pottery.

303
00:21:03,120 --> 00:21:07,360
His traditional methods of
production were admirable,
but expensive.

304
00:21:09,000 --> 00:21:12,240
On the verge of going
out of business, his son David,

305
00:21:12,240 --> 00:21:14,440
who had worked with him
at St Ives since 1930,

306
00:21:14,440 --> 00:21:16,320
decided to take radical action.

307
00:21:18,960 --> 00:21:22,920
While Bernard was away in Japan,
for about 18 months,

308
00:21:22,920 --> 00:21:25,480
David consorted with
the enemy, really,

309
00:21:25,480 --> 00:21:28,680
and went on a pottery manager's
course up in Stoke-on-Trent,

310
00:21:28,680 --> 00:21:33,360
finally learnt some practical
nuts and bolts of how to make pots

311
00:21:33,360 --> 00:21:36,960
and the technical requirements
that were needed.

312
00:21:39,240 --> 00:21:40,880
David made key improvements,

313
00:21:40,880 --> 00:21:44,320
such as converting the kiln
to being oil-fired.

314
00:21:45,960 --> 00:21:48,200
Very soon,
Bernard's idea of producing

315
00:21:48,200 --> 00:21:51,920
a range of practical, honest pots
became a real possibility.

316
00:21:55,080 --> 00:21:58,360
From the late 1930s, Bernard
and David Leach began to make

317
00:21:58,360 --> 00:21:59,880
what they termed standard ware.

318
00:22:01,400 --> 00:22:03,640
Everyday pots for domestic use,

319
00:22:03,640 --> 00:22:06,280
they captured the essence of
Leach's philosophy.

320
00:22:06,280 --> 00:22:08,880
And the business finally
began to make money.

321
00:22:17,240 --> 00:22:19,680
The Leach Pottery inspired others

322
00:22:19,680 --> 00:22:23,320
to try and breathe new life
into a lost art.

323
00:22:23,320 --> 00:22:25,840
His first pupil at St Ives,
Michael Cardew,

324
00:22:25,840 --> 00:22:28,920
was also devoted to reviving
the vernacular style

325
00:22:28,920 --> 00:22:31,680
with his own useful pots,
made in the slipware tradition.

326
00:22:36,880 --> 00:22:38,960
They possessed
a wonderful coherence,

327
00:22:38,960 --> 00:22:41,000
with the body and the glaze united

328
00:22:41,000 --> 00:22:43,520
by being fired together
in a single kiln firing.

329
00:22:45,480 --> 00:22:48,720
The transparent honey glaze
enhanced and revealed

330
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:50,440
the warmth of the red clay itself.

331
00:22:58,600 --> 00:23:02,320
But there was an alternative vision
for British pottery.

332
00:23:06,200 --> 00:23:09,040
William Staite Murray was
an artist potter inspired by

333
00:23:09,040 --> 00:23:11,880
the simple elegance of
Song Dynasty Chinese pots.

334
00:23:15,040 --> 00:23:19,280
Staite Murray believed that ceramics
was the most radical art form,

335
00:23:19,280 --> 00:23:22,480
and every bit the equal
of painting or sculpture.

336
00:23:24,680 --> 00:23:27,240
His pots were not useful.

337
00:23:27,240 --> 00:23:29,960
They were for the art gallery,
and priced accordingly.

338
00:23:33,760 --> 00:23:38,720
He was a true artist potter.
And he did the most wonderful work.

339
00:23:38,720 --> 00:23:43,360
And I think one has to see him
more as an artist.

340
00:23:43,360 --> 00:23:47,440
He didn't try and set up
a school of potters,

341
00:23:47,440 --> 00:23:53,320
he didn't have an idea of pots in
relation to lifestyle, if you like.

342
00:23:53,320 --> 00:23:56,440
He was just interested in
the piece of work.

343
00:23:58,000 --> 00:24:03,240
He was a really important
and incredibly impressive potter.

344
00:24:14,640 --> 00:24:16,480
Together with Bernard Leach,

345
00:24:16,480 --> 00:24:19,200
William Staite Murray achieved
the extraordinary,

346
00:24:19,200 --> 00:24:22,560
by turning the making of pottery
into both an intellectual pursuit

347
00:24:22,560 --> 00:24:24,800
and a serious artistic endeavour.

348
00:24:28,080 --> 00:24:31,520
"A child may ask
when our strange epoch passes,

349
00:24:31,520 --> 00:24:35,120
"during a history lesson,

350
00:24:35,120 --> 00:24:37,880
"'Please, Sir, what's an intellectual
of the middle classes?

351
00:24:37,880 --> 00:24:40,920
"'Is he a maker of ceramic pots?'"

352
00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:49,160
But Leach's most significant
production would come not with clay,

353
00:24:49,160 --> 00:24:50,200
but with words.

354
00:24:52,240 --> 00:24:54,240
In 1940,
he published A Potter's Book.

355
00:24:58,720 --> 00:25:01,600
More than just a technical manual,
A Potter's Book was

356
00:25:01,600 --> 00:25:05,040
a powerful assertion of the art
and philosophy of the potter.

357
00:25:07,680 --> 00:25:12,600
When it was published, it was
regarded as the potter's bible,

358
00:25:12,600 --> 00:25:16,960
because it describes, to begin with,
the aesthetic approach.

359
00:25:19,440 --> 00:25:22,280
It describes how to
set up a pottery.

360
00:25:23,680 --> 00:25:28,280
It gives you a bit of history,
it tells you how to make clays,

361
00:25:28,280 --> 00:25:33,480
how to make bodies, and so the whole
thing is 90% a how to do it,

362
00:25:33,480 --> 00:25:37,720
but it's all imbued with
a rather elegant way of working.

363
00:25:41,840 --> 00:25:44,040
If you just sit reading
A Potter's Book,

364
00:25:44,040 --> 00:25:48,560
especially the last chapter,
which is a kind of idealised account

365
00:25:48,560 --> 00:25:53,480
of his workshop, in which he is
working in harmony with his sons,

366
00:25:53,480 --> 00:25:58,520
and a few likely lads who have been
trained up locally,

367
00:25:58,520 --> 00:26:05,160
then you do get a sense of an art
that's embedded in a moral framework.

368
00:26:07,600 --> 00:26:11,400
1940, though, was not a good year
to publish your first book.

369
00:26:13,520 --> 00:26:17,720
But when the Second World War ended,
the values of A Potter's Book
chimed perfectly

370
00:26:17,720 --> 00:26:21,160
with the mood of
the new austerity Britain.

371
00:26:27,320 --> 00:26:29,520
It had a massive impact
in the post-war period,

372
00:26:29,520 --> 00:26:32,160
because I think it offered something

373
00:26:32,160 --> 00:26:35,200
that people felt had been lacking
in their lives.

374
00:26:35,200 --> 00:26:42,680
Perhaps it was a return to some form
of simplicity, of a rural ideal.

375
00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:46,160
You can imagine the power
of this book

376
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:50,440
for servicemen coming back,
coming back deracinated, footloose,

377
00:26:50,440 --> 00:26:55,320
in need of a sense of direction.

378
00:26:55,320 --> 00:26:59,400
You pick up this book
and you know what you can do.

379
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:02,200
You can go off and become
a post-war English potter.

380
00:27:03,840 --> 00:27:06,520
Pottery has always been
a communal activity,

381
00:27:06,520 --> 00:27:10,880
and pots were made to serve a need
at once utilitarian and aesthetic.

382
00:27:10,880 --> 00:27:14,360
Today, in the background
of mechanisation,

383
00:27:14,360 --> 00:27:16,160
the handworking potter is being

384
00:27:16,160 --> 00:27:19,800
pushed away from utility,
towards artistry.

385
00:27:19,800 --> 00:27:22,440
And there is a danger of
craftsmanship becoming

386
00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:24,480
over-conscious and eclectic.

387
00:27:26,600 --> 00:27:30,440
He came forward with a philosophy,

388
00:27:30,440 --> 00:27:34,640
he came forward with
an aesthetic view,

389
00:27:34,640 --> 00:27:38,040
and that caught people's imagination.

390
00:27:39,600 --> 00:27:44,280
For the next 25 years,
he was the major guru of pottery.

391
00:27:50,760 --> 00:27:54,200
Leach's philosophy would come to
dominate post-war British ceramics.

392
00:27:56,240 --> 00:27:59,080
It resonated with the back-to-basics
mood of the public.

393
00:28:02,520 --> 00:28:05,800
Leach's production of standard ware
had a huge influence

394
00:28:05,800 --> 00:28:09,160
in the post-war period with a public

395
00:28:09,160 --> 00:28:12,480
that had an interest again
in peasant cooking,

396
00:28:12,480 --> 00:28:15,680
in the recipes of Elizabeth David,

397
00:28:15,680 --> 00:28:19,640
and further on
into the 1960s and '70s,

398
00:28:19,640 --> 00:28:22,320
in the whole countercultural
movement that celebrated

399
00:28:22,320 --> 00:28:24,680
the environment and vegetarianism.

400
00:28:24,680 --> 00:28:28,840
And restaurants such as Cranks would
use these kind of plates,

401
00:28:28,840 --> 00:28:33,000
these robust stoneware plates,
for their hearty vegetarian food.

402
00:28:34,560 --> 00:28:37,560
Bernard Leach himself had become
the standard.

403
00:28:37,560 --> 00:28:40,120
The question,
"To Leach or not to Leach?,"

404
00:28:40,120 --> 00:28:42,760
had been resolved, it seemed.

405
00:28:48,360 --> 00:28:52,120
But the pendulum in British pottery
was swinging once more,

406
00:28:52,120 --> 00:28:56,400
this time away from the traditional
and towards trying something new.

407
00:28:56,400 --> 00:29:00,840
And a young Viennese woman and
her devoted apprentice would bring

408
00:29:00,840 --> 00:29:02,480
some welcome fresh air into

409
00:29:02,480 --> 00:29:05,040
the brown world of
British studio pottery.

410
00:29:07,680 --> 00:29:10,240
I got married in the beginning
of the '50s.

411
00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:12,600
And when you're newly married,

412
00:29:12,600 --> 00:29:14,840
you're going to start off
on something new,

413
00:29:14,840 --> 00:29:17,480
and you buy all your crockery
and so on.

414
00:29:17,480 --> 00:29:22,360
And I saw some extraordinary cups

415
00:29:22,360 --> 00:29:26,360
and mugs in a shop in London,

416
00:29:26,360 --> 00:29:29,160
which were unlike anything
I'd ever seen before.

417
00:29:30,920 --> 00:29:32,960
The elegant tableware of Lucie Rie

418
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:36,120
was much sought after
by young homemakers.

419
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,240
But when she'd first arrived
in London in 1938,

420
00:29:42,240 --> 00:29:44,520
it had been a very different story.

421
00:29:45,720 --> 00:29:51,640
So Lucie Rie, who comes with gold
medals in European exhibitions

422
00:29:51,640 --> 00:29:58,160
for her work, she arrives in England,
and shows her work to Leach,

423
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:02,600
who says, "This is terrible, they're
too thin, they're not proper."

424
00:30:05,640 --> 00:30:08,120
And people don't get
what she wants to do.

425
00:30:08,120 --> 00:30:11,000
It doesn't fit
the form of proper pottery.

426
00:30:16,920 --> 00:30:20,120
Leach didn't say this,
but what he meant was,

427
00:30:20,120 --> 00:30:22,360
you've got to make pots like me.

428
00:30:23,720 --> 00:30:28,480
So despite her renown in Europe,
Rie tried to adapt her refined style

429
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:31,840
to the prevailing
Leachian philosophy.

430
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:36,720
Bernard Leach became a great friend,
but he didn't like my pots.

431
00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:40,400
Only later, after my first
exhibition, he liked them.

432
00:30:40,400 --> 00:30:46,360
The first ones, I tried
to follow Bernard Leach's rules,

433
00:30:46,360 --> 00:30:48,240
make heavier pots.

434
00:30:48,240 --> 00:30:52,720
Heavier shapes. Make earthenware
that was uninteresting anyway.

435
00:30:54,800 --> 00:30:57,800
Rie reverted back
to the style she knew best.

436
00:30:57,800 --> 00:31:02,720
And soon, there was no shortage
of admirers for her refined pots.

437
00:31:04,560 --> 00:31:06,400
Very simple.

438
00:31:06,400 --> 00:31:09,160
But the delicacy
with which the rim...

439
00:31:09,160 --> 00:31:12,240
There's this lovely, lovely white.

440
00:31:12,240 --> 00:31:16,320
The feel of the weight of the pot,
and so on. And that shape.

441
00:31:16,320 --> 00:31:17,240
That's a very...

442
00:31:19,160 --> 00:31:21,680
You wouldn't find Bernard Leach
producing a shape like that.

443
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:27,920
Um...and it has
this, um, elemental beauty.

444
00:31:31,560 --> 00:31:35,200
As David Attenborough's
passion for her pots grew,

445
00:31:35,200 --> 00:31:37,240
he found Rie herself
just as captivating.

446
00:31:40,840 --> 00:31:43,880
I have to say, I was always
on my best behaviour

447
00:31:43,880 --> 00:31:45,400
when Lucie was around.

448
00:31:47,000 --> 00:31:51,680
She was utterly charming,
and extraordinarily sweet,

449
00:31:51,680 --> 00:31:56,560
but a marvellous, strong character
who knew what her standards were,

450
00:31:56,560 --> 00:32:00,000
and you wouldn't budge her
from those by a millimetre.

451
00:32:00,000 --> 00:32:02,840
Is that pink just the colour
you expected?

452
00:32:02,840 --> 00:32:06,720
Not precisely, but nearly precisely!

453
00:32:06,720 --> 00:32:10,760
Her determination was legendary,
as Attenborough was to discover

454
00:32:10,760 --> 00:32:13,360
when he filmed with her in 1982.

455
00:32:13,360 --> 00:32:19,920
There is a moment in her studio
when she has been unloading a kiln,

456
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:22,760
and showing me what had come out,

457
00:32:22,760 --> 00:32:24,440
and then she got right
to the bottom,

458
00:32:24,440 --> 00:32:26,880
which was quite a deep
electric kiln,

459
00:32:26,880 --> 00:32:30,680
and reaching for one
of the pots, she got stuck.

460
00:32:30,680 --> 00:32:34,920
We were filming away, and this was
a long time she was down there

461
00:32:34,920 --> 00:32:36,760
at the bottom with her feet
on the top,

462
00:32:36,760 --> 00:32:39,000
and eventually, this ghostly voice

463
00:32:39,000 --> 00:32:44,320
from the bottom of the kiln said, "I
think I am stuck, can you help me?"

464
00:32:44,320 --> 00:32:47,600
Or something like that.
Thank you. I got stuck.

465
00:32:49,240 --> 00:32:53,000
And so I had to pull her out
by the feet.

466
00:32:53,000 --> 00:32:56,440
Afterwards, she said,
"You won't show that, will you?"

467
00:32:59,360 --> 00:33:03,600
Rie's work opened up new
possibilities for British ceramics.

468
00:33:03,600 --> 00:33:06,400
Pots could be cosmopolitan
and modern.

469
00:33:11,120 --> 00:33:13,480
But there was another man
in Lucie Rie's life,

470
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:16,760
one who had turned up
on her doorstep after the war,

471
00:33:16,760 --> 00:33:18,000
looking for work.

472
00:33:19,640 --> 00:33:21,640
He would, more than anyone,

473
00:33:21,640 --> 00:33:25,600
take British pottery to another
level, instilling it with

474
00:33:25,600 --> 00:33:29,920
the confidence to be an expressive
art, a sculpture in ceramic form.

475
00:33:32,840 --> 00:33:34,520
His name was Hans Coper.

476
00:33:42,800 --> 00:33:45,840
When Hans Coper
came to her door in 1946,

477
00:33:45,840 --> 00:33:52,120
it rapidly became clear that
he was intelligent and ambitious,

478
00:33:52,120 --> 00:33:55,800
and he said to her,
"I want to become a potter."

479
00:33:55,800 --> 00:34:00,440
He became a potter, and they then
started to make pots together.

480
00:34:02,400 --> 00:34:06,680
Coper was 26,
Rie a 44-year-old divorcee,

481
00:34:06,680 --> 00:34:09,000
yet they had much in common.

482
00:34:09,000 --> 00:34:13,040
Both were Jewish, both forced
from their homeland by Hitler,

483
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:15,600
and both had found
a new life in London.

484
00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:18,960
They understood each other,

485
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:23,040
and the bond between them would
last for the rest of Coper's life.

486
00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:25,520
And Rie remained his most
passionate advocate.

487
00:34:28,880 --> 00:34:35,280
Hans was really the superior
guideline in more or less everything.

488
00:34:35,280 --> 00:34:39,040
You mean, he looked at your pots
and advised you? Yes.

489
00:34:39,040 --> 00:34:43,520
Because he criticised.
He was very correct and sharp

490
00:34:43,520 --> 00:34:44,760
and to the point.

491
00:34:44,760 --> 00:34:50,240
Did you criticise him? In the
beginning, yes. But then, never. Why?

492
00:34:50,240 --> 00:34:52,240
There was nothing to criticise.

493
00:34:54,480 --> 00:34:58,320
Lucie revered Hans as an artist
to an extraordinary degree,

494
00:34:58,320 --> 00:35:01,600
and diminished herself
whenever she spoke about him.

495
00:35:01,600 --> 00:35:05,840
"Oh, I am nothing, Hans was the
talent". That is not actually true.

496
00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:08,080
I mean, Lucie was a huge talent.

497
00:35:08,080 --> 00:35:13,160
So was Hans, but they
rubbed off onto one another.

498
00:35:18,800 --> 00:35:25,080
Did she fall in love with him?
Yes, she did. But it wasn't sexual.

499
00:35:25,080 --> 00:35:29,040
But she fell in love with him,
which was respectful,

500
00:35:29,040 --> 00:35:34,080
and he respected and loved her
in the same sort of way.

501
00:35:37,600 --> 00:35:41,000
While Lucie Rie's work remained
domestic and functional,

502
00:35:41,000 --> 00:35:42,720
as Hans Coper's confidence grew,

503
00:35:42,720 --> 00:35:45,880
he became increasingly
sculptural in his ambition.

504
00:35:47,680 --> 00:35:49,560
This piece, nominally a vase,

505
00:35:49,560 --> 00:35:53,200
was made by throwing separate
stoneware pieces on a wheel,

506
00:35:53,200 --> 00:35:56,080
then altering
and assembling them by hand.

507
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:05,280
Glazed in white, a black underlayer
shows through in places.

508
00:36:05,280 --> 00:36:07,200
It's a handsome vessel,

509
00:36:07,200 --> 00:36:10,880
in a European tradition of sculpture
as much as ceramics.

510
00:36:19,880 --> 00:36:23,760
The only person brave enough
to put flowers in a Coper vase

511
00:36:23,760 --> 00:36:24,640
was Lucie Rie.

512
00:36:25,880 --> 00:36:30,360
Hans Coper actually understands,
right from the very beginning,

513
00:36:30,360 --> 00:36:33,840
that ceramics don't
belong in one place,

514
00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:37,720
but can belong in a much,
much wider scale.

515
00:36:37,720 --> 00:36:40,600
In a different kind of environment.

516
00:36:40,600 --> 00:36:44,560
And right from the beginning,
he's interested in...

517
00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:46,840
the architectural possibilities

518
00:36:46,840 --> 00:36:50,680
of what he's doing,
and this leads him to make

519
00:36:50,680 --> 00:36:54,720
the most extraordinary architectural
ceramics of the twentieth century.

520
00:37:03,680 --> 00:37:08,040
The city of Coventry was devastated
by heavy German bombing

521
00:37:08,040 --> 00:37:09,560
in November, 1940.

522
00:37:09,560 --> 00:37:12,080
Among the architectural casualties

523
00:37:12,080 --> 00:37:15,240
was the 15th century
St Michael's Cathedral,

524
00:37:15,240 --> 00:37:17,280
reduced to a smoking ruin.

525
00:37:25,360 --> 00:37:27,440
But Coventry would rise again.

526
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:35,160
In the years following the war,
a new cathedral would take shape,

527
00:37:35,160 --> 00:37:38,000
under architect Sir Basil Spence.

528
00:37:39,720 --> 00:37:43,480
And for the altar candlesticks,
he turned to Hans Coper.

529
00:37:45,320 --> 00:37:49,200
So you have to imagine, 1962,
Basil Spence's cathedral opens up.

530
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:51,160
There's the windows,

531
00:37:51,160 --> 00:37:53,640
there's this great
Sutherland tapestry behind us,

532
00:37:53,640 --> 00:37:57,720
and there is Coper
enshrined on the high altar.

533
00:38:00,640 --> 00:38:03,800
And they're pots. That's
the extraordinary thing about them.

534
00:38:03,800 --> 00:38:06,240
This is a vessel,
you can see it's a thrown vessel

535
00:38:06,240 --> 00:38:07,440
on top of another one,

536
00:38:07,440 --> 00:38:11,400
down to here, and then another one
down to there, and so on.

537
00:38:11,400 --> 00:38:16,040
All the way down,
threaded together on steel poles.

538
00:38:16,040 --> 00:38:19,840
Somehow, he managed to keep that
vigour going, even though

539
00:38:19,840 --> 00:38:21,520
these are engineered pots.

540
00:38:23,520 --> 00:38:26,480
You have to look, and there's
the surface, it's abraded,

541
00:38:26,480 --> 00:38:30,600
he's managed to put
great surface into this.

542
00:38:30,600 --> 00:38:35,080
There are marks of the wheel, there's
marks here where he's turned it

543
00:38:35,080 --> 00:38:37,760
very loosely,
and then he's rubbed in oxides

544
00:38:37,760 --> 00:38:39,960
and here's a bronzy glaze applied.

545
00:38:42,880 --> 00:38:45,760
So they are absolutely pots.

546
00:38:47,480 --> 00:38:51,440
This is ceramic sculpture
that looks to other sculpture.

547
00:38:51,440 --> 00:38:55,600
This is like Giacometti,
this is like Brancusi,

548
00:38:55,600 --> 00:38:59,080
this where ceramics belong,
says Hans Coper,

549
00:38:59,080 --> 00:39:01,680
and they are absolutely wonderful,
wonderful things.

550
00:39:14,120 --> 00:39:18,880
Down in St Ives, Bernard Leach,
who had done so much to liberate

551
00:39:18,880 --> 00:39:22,800
English pottery from the production
line, was now an old man.

552
00:39:25,640 --> 00:39:27,680
Yet in his final years,

553
00:39:27,680 --> 00:39:30,080
it was his pots
rather than his words

554
00:39:30,080 --> 00:39:32,160
that once again caught the eye.

555
00:39:37,400 --> 00:39:40,680
There's a wonderful freedom
at the end of his life.

556
00:39:40,680 --> 00:39:48,840
There are pots that he makes where he
really is quite old and quite shaky,

557
00:39:48,840 --> 00:39:53,760
and they don't obey the prescriptions
that he has built up,

558
00:39:53,760 --> 00:39:57,080
and they don't seem to channel
any of the stories

559
00:39:57,080 --> 00:39:59,560
and the dogmas that he has developed.

560
00:40:01,080 --> 00:40:04,640
But they are very,
very beautiful objects,

561
00:40:04,640 --> 00:40:07,360
and there is the sense
of someone who has spent

562
00:40:07,360 --> 00:40:10,720
a whole lifetime making pots.

563
00:40:10,720 --> 00:40:11,640
Just making.

564
00:40:15,840 --> 00:40:19,720
And I think that they are
the best pots he ever made.

565
00:40:27,000 --> 00:40:31,480
I see things in dreams sometimes,
and when I wake, I think,

566
00:40:31,480 --> 00:40:34,720
"Oh, that's only dreamland.

567
00:40:34,720 --> 00:40:37,280
"Would that I could go to my wheel

568
00:40:37,280 --> 00:40:41,360
"and try that dozen pots
that came into my mind's eye."

569
00:40:43,640 --> 00:40:47,920
How do you react when people
talk of you as being great?

570
00:40:47,920 --> 00:40:51,360
There is an assurance that life

571
00:40:51,360 --> 00:40:54,560
has had some meaning for you,

572
00:40:54,560 --> 00:40:59,000
that you have made some kind
of contribution to it.

573
00:40:59,000 --> 00:41:00,960
What more joyful thing
can you think of?

574
00:41:06,040 --> 00:41:09,080
When Bernard Leach died in 1979,

575
00:41:09,080 --> 00:41:12,200
something of 20th century
British ceramics also died.

576
00:41:14,520 --> 00:41:18,440
He had towered over it
for over half a century.

577
00:41:18,440 --> 00:41:22,280
And in doing so,
he had succeeded in transforming

578
00:41:22,280 --> 00:41:25,680
the making of handmade pottery
into a worldwide movement.

579
00:41:36,280 --> 00:41:38,440
At the end of the '60s,

580
00:41:38,440 --> 00:41:41,680
a mood of radicalism swept through
Britain's cities.

581
00:41:43,960 --> 00:41:48,840
The Summer of Love was over,
and what many wanted was change.

582
00:41:48,840 --> 00:41:52,320
What was good enough
for your parents' generation

583
00:41:52,320 --> 00:41:55,160
was now the very thing
to be snarled at.

584
00:41:56,920 --> 00:41:59,840
And a new wave of potters
rebelled with clay.

585
00:42:05,160 --> 00:42:07,960
Alison Britton
studied under Hans Coper

586
00:42:07,960 --> 00:42:10,800
at the Royal College of Art
in London.

587
00:42:10,800 --> 00:42:14,600
She and others, such as
Jacqui Poncelet and Carol McNicoll,

588
00:42:14,600 --> 00:42:18,720
railed against Leach's
narrow definition of a good pot.

589
00:42:18,720 --> 00:42:24,400
In response, they would stretch
ideas of ceramic form into new,

590
00:42:24,400 --> 00:42:25,400
irregular shapes.

591
00:42:28,040 --> 00:42:31,720
Their expressive pots came to be
known as the New Ceramics.

592
00:42:38,240 --> 00:42:41,880
There were quite a few pots
like funguses in the '60s,

593
00:42:41,880 --> 00:42:45,920
or rock formations,
and we were very against them.

594
00:42:45,920 --> 00:42:48,360
That just seemed like a cul de sac.

595
00:42:51,240 --> 00:42:57,320
We wanted much more allusion to
European architecture, modernism,

596
00:42:57,320 --> 00:43:03,160
saucepans, air vents, anything that
was an exciting form was stimulus.

597
00:43:04,840 --> 00:43:08,560
So Leach was probably horrified
by what was happening in the '70s.

598
00:43:11,080 --> 00:43:14,360
Alison Britton and her fellow
firebrands wanted to shake

599
00:43:14,360 --> 00:43:17,880
British studio pottery out of what
they saw as its creative torpor.

600
00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:23,920
We began looking much more at
colourful things that weren't green

601
00:43:23,920 --> 00:43:28,040
and brown and things that weren't
thrown, it just got much livelier.

602
00:43:28,040 --> 00:43:29,840
That's my perspective on it.

603
00:43:29,840 --> 00:43:31,480
Some people thought, "Oh, my God,

604
00:43:31,480 --> 00:43:32,960
"they're losing all the...

605
00:43:32,960 --> 00:43:35,480
"All the things that matter
are being thrown away."

606
00:43:35,480 --> 00:43:38,240
But I felt that great things
were found.

607
00:43:40,680 --> 00:43:44,400
The potter's wheel was the first
casualty of this new approach.

608
00:43:45,960 --> 00:43:49,120
One of the things that
is very common in her work

609
00:43:49,120 --> 00:43:51,360
is the use of slab
building technique,

610
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:54,400
taking a big flat, piece of clay,
maybe cutting it into a form,

611
00:43:54,400 --> 00:43:57,880
and then building it, almost like
someone modelling something

612
00:43:57,880 --> 00:44:05,120
in cardboard. That gives the pots a
kind of swerve, and a kind of lean,

613
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:09,720
and a dynamism that, of course,
a thrown pot is not going to have,

614
00:44:09,720 --> 00:44:13,440
because it is of course symmetrical
and it can capture a lot of motion,

615
00:44:13,440 --> 00:44:17,160
but it's this motion, you know,
whereas an Alison Britton pot

616
00:44:17,160 --> 00:44:21,000
has this kind of motion, it goes
where you don't expect it to,

617
00:44:21,000 --> 00:44:25,880
it's like ten Leaning Towers
of Pisa colliding in one object.

618
00:44:34,640 --> 00:44:38,040
The other thing that the work of
these potters called into question

619
00:44:38,040 --> 00:44:40,680
was the function of function itself.

620
00:44:42,120 --> 00:44:45,960
They were subverting not just
the pot, the functional pot,

621
00:44:45,960 --> 00:44:50,160
but the whole idea
of the woman as the homemaker,

622
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:54,120
as the person who's
making and pouring the tea.

623
00:44:54,120 --> 00:44:57,160
And it links in to me
very interestingly

624
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:02,040
with what was happening
in literature at that time,

625
00:45:02,040 --> 00:45:07,520
with the whole feminist outpouring
of slightly crazy books.

626
00:45:07,520 --> 00:45:11,200
I mean, these were
wayward girls, weren't they,

627
00:45:11,200 --> 00:45:17,280
like an Angela Carter heroine doing
this completely subversive pots.

628
00:45:21,720 --> 00:45:24,560
Function was a kind of
challenge word, in a way.

629
00:45:24,560 --> 00:45:27,400
We thought, well, there are
lots of kinds of function.

630
00:45:27,400 --> 00:45:29,440
It's not simply about
domestic function.

631
00:45:29,440 --> 00:45:33,120
There's the function
of visual delight,

632
00:45:33,120 --> 00:45:36,320
there's the function
of aesthetic pleasure, and so on,

633
00:45:36,320 --> 00:45:40,800
and the function of objects
that sort of represent something,

634
00:45:40,800 --> 00:45:43,840
that are communicating.

635
00:45:43,840 --> 00:45:47,520
There's something really cagey
about Alison Britton's pots.

636
00:45:47,520 --> 00:45:51,080
They are a little bit
bigger than you'd expect.

637
00:45:51,080 --> 00:45:54,440
So you couldn't really lift them
and use them very easily.

638
00:45:54,440 --> 00:45:58,680
And they usually refer to some kind
of form or some kind of function,

639
00:45:58,680 --> 00:46:02,560
so maybe pouring, or
containment of some kind,

640
00:46:02,560 --> 00:46:07,400
but they are never things that
you would really want to use.

641
00:46:07,400 --> 00:46:11,680
They are things that I suppose
make your wheels spin.

642
00:46:11,680 --> 00:46:14,560
And they are always a bit
surprising, you know,

643
00:46:14,560 --> 00:46:18,160
they are in some ways meta pots.
They're pots about pots.

644
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:32,240
By the end of the 20th century,
British art was in rude health.

645
00:46:32,240 --> 00:46:36,280
More assured, more
provocative than ever before.

646
00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:41,200
And studio pottery in Britain, more
than in any other Western country,

647
00:46:41,200 --> 00:46:44,000
was primed and ready
to share the limelight.

648
00:46:51,000 --> 00:46:54,160
Grayson Perry won
the Turner Prize in 2003.

649
00:46:56,600 --> 00:47:00,240
Well, it's about time a transvestite
potter won the Turner Prize.

650
00:47:03,480 --> 00:47:08,160
He is an artist from Essex who
rides motorbikes, wears dresses,

651
00:47:08,160 --> 00:47:10,040
and makes pots.

652
00:47:12,240 --> 00:47:16,120
I learnt pottery at evening classes.

653
00:47:16,120 --> 00:47:19,480
I was living in a squat,
I didn't have a studio,

654
00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:22,120
so it was somewhere
to keep my hand in.

655
00:47:24,600 --> 00:47:28,920
I think I sold my first piece of
pottery for, like, 35 quid,

656
00:47:28,920 --> 00:47:32,320
which was more than
a week's dole money.

657
00:47:32,320 --> 00:47:36,120
So I thought, you know,
I thought the market

658
00:47:36,120 --> 00:47:39,880
at that price range was more
likely to buy a piece of ceramics

659
00:47:39,880 --> 00:47:44,880
than a bit of art. So it was purely
pragmatic at that point, I think.

660
00:47:44,880 --> 00:47:49,480
But then I very quickly learned
that pottery was discomforting

661
00:47:49,480 --> 00:47:53,880
to my fellow artists,
which was most appealing.

662
00:47:59,360 --> 00:48:02,680
Edmund de Waal is
a writer and potter.

663
00:48:02,680 --> 00:48:05,240
His work is much sought
after by collectors

664
00:48:05,240 --> 00:48:07,880
and galleries around the world.

665
00:48:09,520 --> 00:48:12,560
I started making pots
when I was five.

666
00:48:12,560 --> 00:48:16,720
For some reason I got it into my head
that this is what I wanted to do.

667
00:48:16,720 --> 00:48:20,720
There was an evening class
and I persuaded my dear dad

668
00:48:20,720 --> 00:48:22,920
to take me to this evening class.

669
00:48:22,920 --> 00:48:27,160
I remember throwing a pot
on the wheel, this shape,

670
00:48:27,160 --> 00:48:31,640
it was a kind of...it was a bowl,

671
00:48:31,640 --> 00:48:35,320
and then I remember
it being finished,

672
00:48:35,320 --> 00:48:38,760
and everyone saying, "And now
you're going to decorate it."

673
00:48:38,760 --> 00:48:42,000
And I went, "No, it's going
to be white, I want it white!"

674
00:48:42,000 --> 00:48:44,440
So I remember my first pot
was this white bowl.

675
00:48:50,320 --> 00:48:54,360
I coil my pots, in the ancient way
of making sausages

676
00:48:54,360 --> 00:48:56,840
and going round and
building it up slowly,

677
00:48:56,840 --> 00:48:59,880
partly because I just never want
to sit at a potter's wheel.

678
00:48:59,880 --> 00:49:03,720
It ranks up there with finding
myself holding a golf club.

679
00:49:14,880 --> 00:49:18,600
What I feel when I'm making
pots is just pure, pure pleasure

680
00:49:18,600 --> 00:49:23,600
to be at my wheel. I mean,
it is absolutely the best bit.

681
00:49:33,840 --> 00:49:38,960
Most of the kind of colour
in my work is in the slip.

682
00:49:38,960 --> 00:49:42,600
And I build up layers and
stencils and carve the slip,

683
00:49:42,600 --> 00:49:46,440
and so a lot of the imagery is fixed
before it's even been fired once,

684
00:49:46,440 --> 00:49:50,280
and I have one bucket of glaze.
I'm not a fancy glaze person.

685
00:49:50,280 --> 00:49:53,720
I have one bucket of glaze that
I use as high temperature varnish,

686
00:49:53,720 --> 00:49:56,560
really, because, again,
I'm working with an archetype.

687
00:49:56,560 --> 00:50:00,200
I want people to look at my pots and
go, "Oh, that's an interesting pot."

688
00:50:00,200 --> 00:50:05,720
Not an unusual pot, an interesting
pot. I'm not pushing the envelope

689
00:50:05,720 --> 00:50:09,040
of what ceramics can be,
that's what ceramicists do.

690
00:50:11,160 --> 00:50:16,040
Edmund de Waal trained as a potter
in the Bernard Leach tradition.

691
00:50:16,040 --> 00:50:19,760
I set up my first authentic
pottery in the Welsh borders,

692
00:50:19,760 --> 00:50:24,720
and made Leach-y pots,
very badly, I have to say.

693
00:50:24,720 --> 00:50:28,040
No-one liked them, and
they are pretty ghastly.

694
00:50:30,920 --> 00:50:35,000
And I was in Japan, and that's
when I started using porcelain.

695
00:50:35,000 --> 00:50:39,160
I started to realise that
porcelain did something
completely different for me.

696
00:50:39,160 --> 00:50:44,920
It had a kind of purity,
a sort of exposed quality,

697
00:50:44,920 --> 00:50:48,560
which I hadn't found in the
rough clays I'd used before.

698
00:50:50,360 --> 00:50:52,600
Grayson Perry is finishing a pot

699
00:50:52,600 --> 00:50:57,120
for his forthcoming exhibition
at the British Museum.

700
00:50:57,120 --> 00:51:01,800
This is a picture of
inside my head, in a way.

701
00:51:01,800 --> 00:51:05,000
Well, I've never been to Africa.
My idea of Africa,

702
00:51:05,000 --> 00:51:08,040
this entire continent and
all these billions of people,

703
00:51:08,040 --> 00:51:11,440
is just through the media.
Which is, you know...

704
00:51:11,440 --> 00:51:14,760
So I have this probably completely
false idea of Africa in my head.

705
00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:19,160
The two emotions I have
when I think of Africa are guilt,

706
00:51:19,160 --> 00:51:22,440
as a kind of white
European, and fear,

707
00:51:22,440 --> 00:51:25,760
because of all the horrible, scary
things that seem to happen there.

708
00:51:25,760 --> 00:51:27,960
so I'm sure that's
completely distorted,

709
00:51:27,960 --> 00:51:31,920
but I thought it would be
interesting to make a pot about it.

710
00:51:41,080 --> 00:51:44,840
The idea of function in the
work of both Grayson Perry

711
00:51:44,840 --> 00:51:48,880
and Edmund de Waal has moved on
radically from the simple usefulness

712
00:51:48,880 --> 00:51:51,160
advocated by the
likes of Bernard Leach.

713
00:51:52,960 --> 00:51:56,120
The function of my pots
is different. They function,

714
00:51:56,120 --> 00:51:59,240
in the sense that
they're still vessels.

715
00:51:59,240 --> 00:52:02,080
You could pour liquid
into every single one of them,

716
00:52:02,080 --> 00:52:04,120
and it wouldn't leak.

717
00:52:04,120 --> 00:52:07,480
But that's a very kind of thin way
of thinking about function.

718
00:52:10,680 --> 00:52:15,920
There's a piece recently I've done
which is based around a Bach cantata.

719
00:52:15,920 --> 00:52:22,000
It's as functional as a teapot.
It just functions slightly askew.

720
00:52:24,480 --> 00:52:29,520
Grayson Perry's pots are often
not what they first seem.

721
00:52:29,520 --> 00:52:34,160
You always feel lulled into
a sense of decorative security

722
00:52:34,160 --> 00:52:36,600
by looking at Grayson's work.

723
00:52:36,600 --> 00:52:40,680
They're very pretty objects,
but then of course the impact comes

724
00:52:40,680 --> 00:52:45,240
when you look closely, when you
see the decoration in detail.

725
00:52:45,240 --> 00:52:48,880
You see what the narratives are,

726
00:52:48,880 --> 00:52:51,960
and messages that
are quite dangerous.

727
00:52:55,240 --> 00:53:01,280
He is doing something which
takes nerve. And I like it.

728
00:53:09,680 --> 00:53:13,280
So, do your pots have a function?

729
00:53:13,280 --> 00:53:16,120
Do my pots have a function?!

730
00:53:16,120 --> 00:53:17,640
Oh, God...

731
00:53:28,840 --> 00:53:32,120
Keep me in motorbikes and dresses,
that's the function of them.

732
00:53:41,040 --> 00:53:43,640
Edmund de Waal's work
in recent years

733
00:53:43,640 --> 00:53:46,600
has become increasingly site
sensitive, as he puts it.

734
00:53:48,960 --> 00:53:53,600
In 2009, he was commissioned
by the V&A to come up with a work

735
00:53:53,600 --> 00:53:58,240
to mark the opening of
its new Ceramics Galleries.

736
00:53:58,240 --> 00:54:00,760
He called it Signs and Wonders.

737
00:54:00,760 --> 00:54:06,640
425 porcelain vessels coyly
arranged on a red metal shelf

738
00:54:06,640 --> 00:54:09,840
beneath the dome of the
museum's main entrance.

739
00:54:12,920 --> 00:54:17,800
It was really my kind of take
on how you remember objects.

740
00:54:17,800 --> 00:54:19,640
That you look at an object,

741
00:54:19,640 --> 00:54:22,040
then you turn away
and you remake it,

742
00:54:22,040 --> 00:54:25,280
you make it as you remember it.

743
00:54:25,280 --> 00:54:28,520
And it's got that sense
of an afterimage,

744
00:54:28,520 --> 00:54:31,400
of a memory of something
that was there.

745
00:54:31,400 --> 00:54:37,280
So it's my afterimage, my take on
the Chinese pots, and the Meissen,

746
00:54:37,280 --> 00:54:41,240
and the modernist pots
in the collection.

747
00:54:43,560 --> 00:54:46,160
I think what Edmund is
trying to do is use a pot

748
00:54:46,160 --> 00:54:49,880
as something like
a word in a sentence.

749
00:54:49,880 --> 00:54:53,920
You know, on its own, it has
a kind of self-evident quality,

750
00:54:53,920 --> 00:54:57,800
so you look at the one pot,
but when it's put into that context,

751
00:54:57,800 --> 00:55:02,120
it builds into something
that feels like a short story,

752
00:55:02,120 --> 00:55:04,760
or perhaps feels like
a kind of narrative poem.

753
00:55:07,080 --> 00:55:11,600
There's an absolutely wonderful
poem by Wallace Stevens,

754
00:55:11,600 --> 00:55:16,480
'I Placed A Jar in Tennessee',
and the jar stands on the hill

755
00:55:16,480 --> 00:55:19,920
and is different from all
the natural objects round it.

756
00:55:19,920 --> 00:55:23,400
And it changes the whole
of the world it's in.

757
00:55:23,400 --> 00:55:27,040
And this, of course, is also
a favourite poem also of Edmund's,

758
00:55:27,040 --> 00:55:31,080
and I think he has now
reached a time in his work

759
00:55:31,080 --> 00:55:34,400
when he can place
a cylindrical object

760
00:55:34,400 --> 00:55:36,720
and change all the things round it.

761
00:55:38,600 --> 00:55:42,080
His latest commission is
on a more domestic scale

762
00:55:42,080 --> 00:55:43,920
than Signs and Wonders.

763
00:55:43,920 --> 00:55:48,160
That's my coffee.
That's not part of the installation.

764
00:55:48,160 --> 00:55:50,400
A centrepiece for a dinner table.

765
00:55:52,240 --> 00:55:56,480
It's wrong. I mean, the very
first thing is that it's wrong.

766
00:55:56,480 --> 00:56:01,160
It's both too empty and
too congested at the same time.

767
00:56:01,160 --> 00:56:05,840
And that's about scale, and
it's about colour. And tone.

768
00:56:05,840 --> 00:56:08,400
There aren't enough
matt pieces in it,

769
00:56:08,400 --> 00:56:10,720
that actually I'm going
to need to make

770
00:56:10,720 --> 00:56:14,160
a whole series of other pots again,

771
00:56:14,160 --> 00:56:17,160
with one of the more
quieter, softer glazes.

772
00:56:20,440 --> 00:56:24,120
The competing forces in British
studio pottery in the 20th century,

773
00:56:24,120 --> 00:56:26,920
of expression and function,

774
00:56:26,920 --> 00:56:29,800
seem to come together
in Edmund de Waal's work.

775
00:56:31,640 --> 00:56:35,320
If you think of 20th century
ceramics as being built around

776
00:56:35,320 --> 00:56:38,360
an opposition between
something traditionalist,

777
00:56:38,360 --> 00:56:41,480
that's Bernard Leach,
and on the other hand,

778
00:56:41,480 --> 00:56:43,840
people like Lucie Rie
and Hans Coper,

779
00:56:43,840 --> 00:56:47,080
that looks like an insoluble contest

780
00:56:47,080 --> 00:56:49,880
between two completely
different world views.

781
00:56:49,880 --> 00:56:52,160
I think what you have
in Edmund's generation,

782
00:56:52,160 --> 00:56:54,920
not just him, but many
of his colleagues as well,

783
00:56:54,920 --> 00:56:58,920
is a resolution of
that seeming problem.

784
00:56:58,920 --> 00:57:02,320
The understanding, really,
is that the historical qualities

785
00:57:02,320 --> 00:57:05,000
of the Leach tradition,
and the progressive qualities

786
00:57:05,000 --> 00:57:08,160
that we might associate
with someone like Lucie Rie,

787
00:57:08,160 --> 00:57:12,080
can actually be forged into
a unified style,

788
00:57:12,080 --> 00:57:15,320
by creating these
more complex narratives,

789
00:57:15,320 --> 00:57:17,520
around and through ceramics.

790
00:57:22,040 --> 00:57:26,680
The confidence displayed by British
studio potters in the 21st century

791
00:57:26,680 --> 00:57:30,880
is the culmination of more than 100
years of experimenting with clay,

792
00:57:30,880 --> 00:57:34,000
making, by hand, thousands of pots.

793
00:57:36,640 --> 00:57:40,080
Studio pottery has become
Britain's greatest triumph

794
00:57:40,080 --> 00:57:41,920
in the story of modern art.

795
00:57:43,640 --> 00:57:49,640
And today, our potters are amongst
our most celebrated artists,

796
00:57:49,640 --> 00:57:53,680
a unique marriage of art and craft.

797
00:58:12,560 --> 00:58:15,640
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd

798
00:58:15,640 --> 00:58:18,680
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