Simon Olding and Matthew Tyas

Bernard Leach’s archive was distributed after his death both formally and informally. There are many items, such as photographs and personal letters which are still in private hands and these sometimes appear without much warning. That is the case with this wonderful postcard which we have been privileged to see, and publish, along with our colleagues at the Leach Pottery - Simon Olding, May 2021

It is Wednesday November 24th 1920. The Leach family has gathered in front of their house, 6 Draycott Terrace, St Ives overlooking the harbour and Porthminster Beach. They have been in St Ives since late September. They are joined by Shoji Hamada, who tenderly shepherds Eleanor and Michael. Bernard, great-coat-warm, holds Jessamine. Muriel, with a smile of a sanguine peace, keeps baby Betty safely propped. David sits proudly, perhaps a little shyly, between his parents.

With grateful thanks to Fraser Donachie who recently acquired the postcard and has generously allowed the Crafts Study Centre and the Leach Pottery to publish it as a marker of the Leach centenary.

This is almost certainly an unpublished photograph, no doubt taken by a local photography firm. Although it was intended for distribution to friends and family it has remained a private document. It is made up as a postcard. The Leaches and Hamada are in the earliest days of their great, sometimes risk-laden, always arduous work of setting up the Leach Pottery. Mrs Frances Horne, their benefactor, lives a mile away in Carbis Bay. Hamada and Leach search for a site to set up the pottery basing ‘their economics on the studio and not the country work-shop, or, for that matter, the factory’.

The Leach Pottery, this hybrid of individual and collegiate practice, is being planned with some pace as this photograph is taken. The site is a cow pasture, settled by the Stennack River nearly a mile out of town on the main road to Penzance and Land’s End. The domestic photograph symbolises new beginnings, and the smiles are those of family pride; Hamada’s position as an ‘honorary uncle’, and the hopeful expectancy of the ceramic enterprise.

Muriel is the author of the postcard. She has written to Mr and Mrs Egbert Schenck residing at the American Consulate in Hong Kong, where Egbert was briefly American vice consul. Mr Schenk’s business position is Executive Director of F. W. Horne & Co, taking up that post in 1920. The company imports heavy American machinery and supplies to Japan, business as far away from the work of studio ceramics as one could get. Egbert, though a man of commerce and politics, is also keenly interested in the role of art in human life, and he has a strong professional interest in anthropology. Studio ceramics may not be that far off his cultural radar.

Muriel thanks them for ‘your jolly letter’. In the still moment of family poise she remarks on the relentless pace of her life: ‘I have been carried off my feet ever since we arrived and am still being whirled around at a giddy pace’. She remarks that ‘our house I believe is gruesome [but] there is a dingy bedroom which we hope will be made brighter by your occupying it’. Perhaps not the most effusive of invitations. But the adults have their hands full: of children, of the beach-sand; of clay, of business calling incessantly in the moment.

It is a photograph that sings out over a hundred years.

- Simon Olding and Matthew Tyas,

May 2021

THE LEACH POTTERY : 100 YEARS ON FROM ST IVES

An exhibition at the Crafts Study Centre, which we hope to re-open our doors to later this month, draws from the CSC collections as a tribute to the centenary to The Leach Pottery, founded by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada in 1920. The works on display include ceramics acquired since the year 2000, although some early works by Hamada and Leach from the 1920s are also exhibited: these from the great founding gift made by Bernard Leach to the Crafts Study Centre in the 1970s.

In addition the exhibition will present works from the Alan Bell archive, including many drawings, etchings and designs that have not been seen in public before.

A new book on Bernard Leach has been published by the Crafts Study Centre as an additional feature of its commemoration of the centenary of the founding of the leach pottery in St Ives. The book can be ordered from our online bookshop.

LEACH 100: CELEBRATING A CENTENARY OF INSPIRATION AND EXCHANGE

This year the Leach Pottery celebrates 100 years. Established by friends and colleagues Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada in 1920, the Leach Pottery was built with an experimental and progressive spirit and has since forged the shape of studio pottery around the world.

Leach 100 promises to be a year of celebrations, providing new and exciting opportunities to get involved with clay and creativity across the country. From free family activities, internationally-significant exhibitions, to artist residencies, there is something for everyone to get involved in. The Leach Pottery invites you to take part as it celebrates its history and looks forward to the next 100 years.

Leach 100 is funded by Arts Council England, Cornwall Council, GB Sasakawa, Garfield Weston Foundation