All fired-up in St Ives

'It has been a sign-writing workshop, a knitting factory, all sorts of things. And now it’s going to be a working pottery once more.” Jack Doherty leans over the wet, mushroom-pale pot he has been working on, holding a razor blade in one clay-covered hand, and with a deft movement makes an incision, like the barb on a strand of wire. The mild-mannered pot suddenly looks disquietingly edgy.
Doherty is the lead potter at the newly-restored Leach Pottery in St Ives, set on a sliver of land between the rushing Stennack River and the road down into town. It was set up in 1920 by Bernard Leach, one of the great potters of the 20th century, with the Japanese potter Shoji Hamada (who stayed for three years). Their ideas came as a shock to a Britain used to porcelain from Stoke-on-Trent: Leach pottery was sturdy and sensuous, using powerful, sombre glazes. The new museum shows a dark dish with a mysterious figure walking towards peaks of dripping glaze; a blue-and-grey quartered bottle decorated with red characters; a simple bowl with a single line around the inner rim... more>