School of Art

Contact Details

School of Art
Aberystwyth University
Buarth Mawr
Aberystwyth
Ceredigion
SY23 1NG

Tel: +44 (0)1970 622460

Fax: +44 (0)1970 622461

Email: artschool@aber.ac.uk


Display artist/maker:

Bernard Howell Leach

Born: 1887, Hong Kong   Died: 1979

Ceramicist. After spending his early life in Hong Kong, Singapore and Japan, he moved to England in 1897. He studied drawing at the Slade School of Fine Art, 1903-04, and etching under Frank Brangwyn at the London School of Art, 1908-09. In 1909 he returned to Japan, where he was influenced by the potters Kenzan and Hamada. He returned with Hamada to England in 1920 and set up the St Ives Pottery in Cornwall. During the 1930s he taught at Dartington Hall where he wrote 'A Potters' Handbook' published in 1940. After the war he travelled widely including visits to America, Columbia, Scandinavia, Korea and numerous visits to Japan. He produced slipware, raku, stoneware and porcelain employing sgraffito, incised and painted decoration. He is regarded as one of the most influential studio potters working in Britain. For Leach pots were like human beings. 'Nobility, austerity, strength, breadth, subtlety, warmth', he said were, 'qualities which apply equally to our judgments of human and ceramic values'. Such ideas became hugely influential on British studio potters after the 1950s and lie at the heart of what has come to be known as 'The Leach Tradition'. His son David Leach (b.1911) ran the St Ives Pottery between 1946 and 1956

Objects in the collections associated with this artist/maker

[Ashtray] C197 Ceramics

[Ashtray] C198 Ceramics

[Bowl] C179 Ceramics

[Bowl] C188 Ceramics

[Bowl] C189 Ceramics

[Bowl] C190 Ceramics

[Bowl] C192 Ceramics

[Bowl] C194 Ceramics

[Bowl] C196 Ceramics

[Jug] C187 Ceramics

[Jug] C202 Ceramics

Pilgrim Plate C893 Ceramics

[Pot] C195 Ceramics

[Raku plate] C181 Ceramics

[Small Raku jar] C185 Ceramics

[Small Raku pot] C184 Ceramics

[Small Raku vase] C180 Ceramics

[Small Raku vase] C182 Ceramics

[Small Raku vase] C183 Ceramics

[Small vase] C186 Ceramics

[Vase] C191 Ceramics

[Vase] C193 Ceramics

[Vase] C199 Ceramics

[Vase] C200 Ceramics

[Vase] C201 Ceramics




 
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