Mid Century Bernard Leach Stoneware Bowl, Leach Pottery, St Ives, England 1954

Bernard Leach CH CBE (1887–1979)

To hold a bowl made by Bernard Leach is to hold the origin point of British studio pottery. Regarded internationally as the defining figure of the craft tradition, Leach established the St Ives Pottery in 1920 and spent six decades articulating a vision of the pot as a meeting of East and West, function and beauty, hand and material.

This bowl, with a dateable provenance to 1954, the height of Leach's mature period, exemplifies the standard ware at which he excelled: wheel-thrown from a sandy grey stoneware body, the exterior left unglazed to expose the texture and iron fleck of the fired clay, the interior clothed in a luminous celadon glaze that pools and shifts through the throwing rings. This treatment, unglazed exterior, celadon interior, is a recurring and characteristic form in Leach's tableware output of the 1940s and 1950s, one that consciously references both Song Dynasty Chinese ceramics and the domestic utility of the medieval English potting tradition. The impressed seal mark to the base is consistent with Leach Pottery production.

Bernard Leach (1887 – 1979) was born in Hong Kong, and later studied at the London School of Art in Kensington, where he was taught by Sir Frank Brangwyn. In 1911, Leach attended a raku party in Japan with his friend, the artist Tomimoto Kenkichi. The British artist was captivated by ceramics, and in 1920, he and his friend and colleague, the ceramicist Hamada Shoji, returned to England to start a pottery studio and workshop in St. Ives, which was frequented by Michael Cardew, Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie, Lucie Rie, and other influential ceramicists.

In 1961, The Arts Council of Britain honored Leach in a retrospective exhibition titled, 'Fifty Years a Potter'. Following a major retrospective exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the publication of his illustrated memoirs, entitled, 'Beyond East and West', Leach passed away in 1979 at 72 years of age, leaving an indelible imprint on the world of ceramics.

Maker: Bernard Leach CH CBE (1887–1979), Leach Pottery, St Ives, Cornwall
Date: 1954
Medium: Stoneware; celadon-glazed interior, unglazed exterior
Dimensions: H 11 cm × D 24.5–25 cm
Mark: Impressed seal to base, consistent with Leach Pottery
Condition: Very good; no chips or cracks visible. Fine crazing to the celadon glaze consistent with age, glaze stable and in tact throughout.

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