Product Code Database
Bernard Howell Leach (5 January 1887 – 6 May 1979) was a British studio potter and art teacher.Cortazzi, Hugh. "Review of Emmanuel Cooper's Bernard Leach Life & Work , japansociety.org.uk; accessed 16 June 2015. He is regarded as the "Father of British studio pottery".
Leach attended the Slade School of Fine Art and the London School of Art, where he studied etching under Frank Brangwyn. Reading books by Lafcadio Hearn, he became interested in Japan. In 1909 he returned to Japan with his young wife Muriel (née Hoyle) intending to teach etching. Satomi Ton, Kojima Kikuo, and later Ryūsei Kishida were his pupils.
In Tokyo, he gave talks and attended meetings along with Mushanokōji Saneatsu, Shiga Naoya, Yanagi Sōetsu and others from the "Shirakaba-Group",Shirakaba ="The Birch" (白樺) was an influential cultural magazine at that time. who were trying to introduce western art to Japan after 250 years of seclusion. About 1911 he attended a Raku ware pottery party which was his first introduction to ceramics, and through introduction by Ishii Hakutei, he began to study under Urano Shigekichi 浦野繁吉 (1851–1923), who stood as Kenzan 6th in the tradition of potter Ogata Kenzan (1663–1743). Assisting as interpreter for technical terms was the potter Tomimoto Kenkichi, whom he had met already earlier. From this time Leach wrote articles for the Shirakaba.
In 1913 he also drafted covers for Shirakaba and Fyūzan.A cultural magazine. Fyūzan = French fusain, charcoal pencil. Attracted by the Prussian philosopher and art scholar Alfred Westharp, who at the time was living in Beijing, Leach moved to Peking in 1915. There he took on the Name 李奇聞 (for "Leach"), but returned the following year to Japan. It was the year 1919, when young Hamada Shōji visited Leach for the first time. Leach received a kiln from Kenzan and built it up in Yanagi's garden and called it Tōmon-gama. Now established as a potter, he decided to move to England.
In 1920, before leaving, he had an exhibition in Osaka, where he met the potter Kawai Kanjirō. In Tokyo, a farewell exhibition was organized.
In 1934, Leach and Mark Tobey travelled together through France and Italy, then sailed from Naples to Hong Kong and Shanghai, where they parted company, Leach heading on to Japan.
Leach formally joined the Baháʼí Faith in 1940 after being introduced to it by Mark Tobey, who was himself a Baháʼí. A pilgrimage to the Baháʼí shrines in Haifa, Israel, during 1954 intensified his feeling that he should do more to unite the East and West by returning to the Orient "to try more honestly to do my work there as a Baháʼí and as an artist..."Weinberg, Robert (1999). Spinning the Clay into Stars: Bernard Leach and the Baháʼí Faith, pp. 21, 29.
Leach promoted pottery as a combination of Western and Eastern arts and philosophies. His work focused on traditional Korean, Japanese and Chinese pottery, in combination with traditional techniques from England and Germany, such as slipware and salt glaze ware. He saw pottery as a combination of art, philosophy, design and craft – even as a greater lifestyle. A Potter's Book (1940) defined Leach's craft philosophy and techniques; it went through many editions and was his breakthrough to recognition.
Many potters from all over the world were apprenticed at the Leach Pottery, and spread Leach's style and beliefs. His British associates and trainees include Michael Cardew, Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie, David Leach (his son), Janet Leach (whom Leach married in 1956) and William Marshall. Another of his students at St Ives was William Worrall who became chief craftsman at the Chalice Well crafts guild in Glastonbury and Muriel Bell, co-founder of the Lanchester Marionettes. His American apprentices include Warren MacKenzie (who likewise influenced many potters through his teaching at the University of Minnesota), Byron Temple. He was a major influence on New Zealand potter Len Castle who travelled to London to spend time working with him in the mid-1950s. Another apprentice was an Indian potter Nirmala Patwardhan who developed the so-called Nirmala glaze based on an 11th-century Chinese technique. His four Canadian apprentices, John Reeve, Glenn Lewis, Michael Henry and Ian Steele helped to shape the pottery scene in Vancouver and the Canadian west coast during the 1960 and 1970s. The Cypriot potter Valentinos Charalambous trained with Leach in 1950-51.Marion Whybrow, The Leach Legacy: St Ives Pottery and its Influence (1996)
Leach was instrumental, with Muriel Rose, in organising the only International Conference of Potters and Weavers in July 1952 at Dartington Hall, where he had been working and teaching. It included exhibitions of British pottery and textiles since 1920, Mexican folk art, and works by conference participants, among them Shoji Hamada and US-based Bauhaus potter Marguerite Wildenhain. Another important contributor was Japanese aesthetician Soetsu Yanagi, author of The Unknown Craftsman. According to Brent Johnson, "The most important outcome of the conference was that it helped organize the modern studio pottery movement by giving a voice to the people who became its leaders...it gave them Leach, celebrity status...while Marguerite Wildenhain emerged from Dartington Hall as the most important craft potter in America."Johnson, Brent, "A Matter of Tradition" in Marguerite Wildenhain and the Bauhaus: An Eyewitness Anthology, (Dean and Geraldine Schwarz, eds.), p. __. He was an active member of the Red Rose Guild.
Leach was an influential participant in the Pottery seminar at Black Mountain College in 1952, attended by many younger and later prominent potters.
The Victoria and Albert Museum in London held a major exhibition of his art in 1977.
The Leach Pottery remains in operation, accompanied by a museum displaying many pieces by Leach and his students.
De Waal's book, the first critical monograph on Leach, was published in 1998. (1997). 9781854372277, Tate Gallery Publ. ISBN 9781854372277 He described it as "the first 'de-mystifying' study of Leach", writing in the last chapter: "In the West, Leach has been seen as 'a natural child of the East', someone who 'understood' Japan by birthright and in an almost mystical way. In the East, he has been credited with seeing deeper into the culture of Japan than any Westerner since Lafcadio Hearn". (1997). 9781854372277, Tate Gallery Publ. ISBN 9781854372277
Studying the circumstances of his grounding in Japanese culture, he pointed out that Leach could "barely speak" Japanese at the time of his training with Kenzan VI. (1997). 9781854372277, Tate Gallery Publ. ISBN 9781854372277 De Waal also notes that poetry used in the tradition of Kenzan I would not be legible to Leach, who would straightforwardly say that he could not read Japanese texts. (1997). 9781854372277, Tate Gallery Publ. ISBN 9781854372277 Leach did learn to speak the language to a conversational standard, however; recordings of this are held by the Mingei Film Archive and the Crafts Study Centre, Farnham. The book acknowledges Leach's strength as an artist, his sophisticated mark-making and sensitivity to the surface qualities of the clay, while providing an examination of the Orientalism in his thinking and making. (1997). 9781854372277, Tate Gallery Publ. ISBN 9781854372277
|
|
