Moving Forward the Crafts Study Centre at 50
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moving forward the crafts study centre at 50 The Crafts Study Centre was founded The collections of the Crafts Study as a charity on 1 April 1970 as a Centre were relocated to Farnham in research and study collection of the year 2000, enabling them to be modern British craft. Robin Tanner seen and studied in the context of a wrote that it emerged ‘painfully, slowly specialist arts university. The Crafts and with characteristically English Study Centre today plays a unique role altruism and amateurishness… as a as the university museum of modern collection of the best work of the 20th craft in the UK. century artist-craftsman… not just a museum collection, but one that, In order to celebrate 50 years as a augmented by craftsmen’s records, charitable organisation, the current writings and papers, could be handled Trustees and members of the Centre’s and seriously studied and enjoyed’. Acquisition Committee have each That has been the credo of the Crafts selected a group of objects that are Study Centre throughout its history. of particular interest to them and their fields of study in modern craft. The collection was located at first in The exhibition is therefore a personal The Holburne of Menstrie Museum, testimony as well as a sweep over the Bath (now The Holburne Museum of collections. It is a way of looking at the Art). The collections were overseen collections from the perspectives of the by a board of Trustees comprising makers, curators and educationalists distinguished makers, educators who have assembled the archives and and curators. The founder Chair was objects for research and posterity. the teacher Ewart Uncles, and the Objects and archives from across founding Trustees included the potter the range of the museum indicate its Henry Hammond (who taught at the strengths and depths, and tell a history West Surrey College of Art & Design, of the museum through its materials the precursor institution to today’s and the personal records of makers. University for the Creative Arts) and the textile designer Marianne Straub. The As Alison Britton, the Chair of the Centre’s founder Curator was Barley Crafts Study Centre observes, the Roscoe MBE (herself a graduate of the exhibition shows ‘how craft moves WSCAD), setting up the CSC within the forward through its uses of history, Holburne during her Directorship there looking and comparing, in pursuit of (1986 – 1999). a skilful contemporary relevance’. glenn felicity adamson: alyieff: Trustee: 2008 – 2013 Acquisitions Committee: Chair: 2010 – 2013 2008 – present The Crafts Study Centre is a memory The criteria for my selection of ceramic bank – a place that preserves British objects for this exhibition was very crafts of the past, so that they may live straightforward. The pieces had to on into the future. resonate with me personally, either through the story they told or the Dr Glenn Adamson is a curator and language used in their ‘making’. I did writer at the intersection of craft, not expect that I would be waylaid by design history and contemporary art, some of the works that unexpectedly and is Senior Scholar at the Yale Center made the final cut, but that is the for British Art, New Haven, USA. joy of spending time looking and interrogating objects and finding out about their history and often their Japanese stoneware bowl with red hidden pasts. It was interesting to and green enamel on white slip, from have my occasional preconceptions Bernard Leach’s source collection, confronted and my eyes opened by 18th century. new discoveries! Unknown P.79.56 Looking at my selection I see that they are linked through their individual ease of expression either in the handling of the clay as in Yasuda’s thrown bowl, sensual in form with its seductive rich celadon glaze, or in the contemporary handling of traditional decorative techniques, close to my own research inquiry, and particularly pertinent to the recent acquisitions of pieces by Simon Carroll, Philip Eglin and Dylan Bowen. In the vase by Bowen the vertical looped slip design is like thick black treacle. Trailed onto a white ground, it makes a strong graphic statement going from top to bottom. A similar looped image appears effortlessly trailed horizontally across Eglin’s press-moulded jug. Continuing the monochromatic theme, Carroll has used slip applied with a coarse brush and, doing away with the conventions of traditional ceramic decorative composition, China, originally made as ‘packaging’ his bold, fluid marks create abstract for selling salted vegetables. The imagery on the surface of his thrown, jar formed part of Leach’s personal altered and slabbed form. Pre-dating collection and was used for his own all of the above in her unorthodox research. Such ash glazed jars were preoccupation with sculptural form, made from low firing stoneware clay, and with a determination to do away coated with white slip and carved with with the notion of pottery as craft, is a confident, fluid line that can only Gillian Lowndes. In my early career as come through repetition of process a maker in the 1980s I saw her piece and familiarity with the subject. I was Hook, and thought it refreshingly new excited by this example as I also have and inspirational and it continues to a number of my own, scavenged from delight me. markets in China, that sit as inspiration in my studio in Jingdezhen. I can Emmanuel Cooper has not only been understand how Leach must have extremely important to my ‘thinking’ enjoyed the immediacy of the drawn and career but was a significant line and the simple effective process figure in the ceramic community and of carving to create an image, such academia. The inclusion of his buckets eloquence I can only strive for in my is an acknowledgment of this. Similarly, own work. Lucy Rie has had a momentous impact on the history of the discipline. Her Felicity Aylieff is a ceramicist and very desirable and sublime black cup Professor of Ceramics & Glass at the and saucer has an ease and grace in its Royal College of Art. design and making. Perhaps personally less desirable, but totally intriguing are the cups and saucers made as Porcelain bowl with a celadon glaze, prototypes for the Leach production, c.1950. of which I was previously unaware. Bernard Leach Made robustly in red clay their appeal P.74.6 and selection is more to do with their ‘homely’ practical quality rather than Earthenware coffee cup and saucer, their aesthetic. But this is not the case 1936. with the Bernard Leach bowl with its Bernard Leach leaping hare deftly carved in its centre. P.74.101.a.i-ii Made after his study of Song dynasty Chinese bowls, he captures the life and Earthenware coffee cup and saucer spirit of the hare in motion with superb with slip decoration, 1933. fluency and elegance. Bernard Leach P.75.45.d and P.75.45.m Hidden from sight on the bottom shelf of the ceramic store I was astonished to find a jar from Hubei in nick barberton: Earthenware peasant jar, from Acquisitions Committee: Bernard Leach’s source collection, 2004 – present c.1900. Bernard Leach David Pye wrote books about P.79.8 workmanship. Workmanship of risk and the workmanship of certainty. In Porcelain platter with a celadon this double bowl from English walnut glaze, c.2005. I see Pye using his carving machine Takeshi Yasuda to define perfection in the risk of 2005.1 certainty. Yes, one turns it over and see the workmanship of risk, but it does Stoneware cup and saucer with black not disappoint. The wood is sound and iron-bearing stoneware glaze. predictable, the tools are sharp, as is Lucie Rie the intent. A work of art, made from 2005.8 and 2005.28 the eye, the hand and the heart. Stoneware bowl with a black and Nick Barberton is a woodworker. white pitted volcanic glaze, 2005. Emmanuel Cooper 2005.24 Oval English walnut double-dish with incised decoration, 1978. Thrown and altered stoneware vessel David Pye with slipware decoration, c.2013. F.78.5 Dylan Bowen 2013.10 Single Hook Figure, sliced loofah dipped in grey slip, 1991. Gillian Lowndes 2013.14 Square Vessel Rounded Feet, hand- built ceramic vessel, 2005. Simon Carroll 2015.8 Ceramic jug, Swirl, with trailed slip decoration, 2015. Philip Eglin 2018.1 alison britton: Trustee: 2006 – present with birds heads and winking eyes, Chair: 2015 – present but it is an intense and compact vessel Acquisitions Committee: with scratched decoration in the white 2010 – present body, salt glaze bringing out tinges of red at the rim and green in the body, The most recent CSC acquisition in beautiful to hold in the hand. my selected group, the Angus Suttie piece, is huge by the usual standards Clive Bowen’s lidded jar is massive of our ceramics collection. Titled simply by contrast, and was one of the first Sculpture, it was made in 1991 and is acquisitions I was directly involved with 1.13 cm in height. Suttie was at the purchasing – choosing it on a trip with centre of what became known as the Simon Olding from an array of work in ‘The New Ceramics’, a postmodern Bowen’s Devon studio. Its specialness flourish in the ceramic world discussed for me is the custard colour of the in Peter Dormer’s book of that title white slip under the earthenware glaze. published in 1986. Suttie was an The strokes that interrupt the wet slip exuberant, prolific, experimental artist surface, in loose but certain decoration, who died in his forties in 1992. His mark the character of his pots.