Writing for the UCA’s blog, CSC Director Simon Olding talks about his enduring fascination with British studio pottery and his career spent exploring the story of studio ceramics.

There is something about clay that is deeply familiar,” says Professor Simon Olding, reflecting on his longstanding love affair with pottery.

“It forms part of our daily round, as it has done for millennia. There is something about its permanence, its adaptability, its approachability and its ability to be used both functionally and metaphorically.”

Over the past 19 years, as Director of the Crafts Study Centre at UCA Farnham, Olding’s interest in British studio pottery, in particular, has been brought into sharp focus.

But the origins of his passion can be traced back to his youth in Exeter. It was there, in the 1960s, that he first became acquainted with the work of English potter Bernard Leach, a man regarded as the Father of British studio pottery.

“Quite often I would find myself going to the exhibitions of the craftsmen at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in Bovey Tracey,” recalls Olding, who has since served as a Trustee and then Chair of The Leach Pottery. “I was in the terrain of the Leaches through my proximity to Dartington [where Leach made pottery between 1932 and 1940] — David Leach’s [Bernard’s eldest son, also a potter] Lowerdown studio was just up the road, and The Leach Pottery in St Ives was not that far away.”

You can read the full blog post over on the UCA’s website.