Studio pottery: Shoji Hamada and the Leach Pottery

Hamada's connection with English studio pottery is through Bernard Leach who established a studio in St Ives, Cornwall in the early 1920s. Leach had been born in Hong Kong and was brought up partly in Japan before going to England to be educated. After studying art at the Slade School in London he returned to Japan in 1909 to make his life as an artist. He learnt Japanese techniques especially the art of 'raku' and the use of subdued tonality. When he returned to England to set up his studio he was fortunate in having as a technical assistant Shoji Hamada. Hamada spent three years with Leach before leaving for the pottery village of Mashiko which remained his home until his death in 1973. 
Whilst at St Ives, Hamada used the techniques of sgraffito, slip trailing and inlaid slips. His eastern heritage informed his used of simple and pure forms. 

Sgrafitto is a form of decoration made by scratching through a surface to reveal a lower layer of a contrasting colour

Stoneware glazed and sgraffito decorated vase, circa 1920-1923

 

 

Slip trailing is the application to a clay surface of lines of slip using a fine-pointed dispenser.

St Ives, 1920-23

 

Inlay is to force different colored clays or slips into clay of another color. Clay can be pressed in and slips added to fill up spaces.

Teabowl, stoneware, ash glaze with inlaid and iron painted decoration. Autumn, 1944

 

Hamada also worked at the Leach Pottery between 1929 and 1930 but, it should be noted, he rarely marked his work so opportunities exist for discoveries. On the occasions when his work was marked the backstamp included the Leach Pottery mark with his Japanese signature. Known Hamada pots from this era rarely come up for sale and will fetch in the thousands rather than the hundreds. He is considered by some to be the finest potter of the twentieth century.

Hamada signature and Leach Pottery backstamp

Bauhaus: architecture and design in Germany

This piece has been inspired by a book I currently have on loan from the library: 'Bauhaus masterworks: new world view' by Michael Robinson. Bauhaus was the name given to a School of Arhitecture and Design esablished in Germany in 1919 by Walter Gropius. It can be compared to the English Design School of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement at the end of the nineteenth century which sought to use the skills of artisans to create household goods based on a new design aestheic. The work of Morris's contemporary, Christopher Dresser, also sought to incorporate new design approaches into the production of household objects.
Bauhaus was begun when Walter Gropius wrote the 'Bauhaus Manifesto' in 1919 that 'the ultimate aim of all visual arts is the complete building' and took the view that the division between artists and craftsmen was artificial.

The artists and designers associated with Gropius and the Bauhaus include; Wassily Kandinsky; Paul Klee; Laszlo Moholy-Nagy;Marcel Breuer and Mies van der Rohe. The book concentrates mainly on the visual arts of the period but there are some depictions of household items and furniture. Gropius was given permission after the First World War to launch his idea in Wemar where it was based until 1925 after which it was transferred to Wessau but closed in 1933 after pressure from the Nazis.

The modernist style of the simple household object, the teapot, as shown right, was by Christopher Dresser in around 1879. The Bauhaus version which was designed by Christian Dell in 1922 in hammered silver with a ebony handle and knob shows remarkable similarities in the style of its conception (see below), Dresser was influenced by Japanese style in his ideas but the two have a similar low centre of gravity and ovoid form whilst emphasising artisan skills.

The metal workshops of the Bauhus were transformed by the new Master of Form, Moholy-Nagy, who worked with Christian Dell, a master silversmith, between 1922 and 1926. Many of those working with silver and precious metals had an aversion to ferrous metals  but the pair made a great contribution towards designing for industry espousing the Bauhaus belief of clean lines and aesthetic forms applied to industrially designed objects.

The School was also involved in furniture design and one of its most famous exponents was Ludwig Mies van der Rohe who arrived at the Bauhaus in 1930 already well known as one of Europe's top avant garde architects alongside Corbusier. His MR 10 Stuhl armchair from 1927 is pictured opposite. Van der Rohe collaborated on the the furniture design with his assistant, Lily Reich who was also asked to teach at the schoolin 1932 but it closed soon after.

The chair above was designed by Marcel Breuer in 1925 and was known as the Wassily Chair, inhomage to the artist Wassily Kandinsky, after the production of it was taken over by Knoll during the1960s. Originally its prototype name was 'B3' but after improvements of the seating by Bauhausstudent, Greta Reichardt, using leather or metal 'yarn', the chair went into production and has continued thus since the 1920s. Marcel Breuer was a student of the Bauhaus but was                

spotted by Gropius as a new talent. He also designed the stacking stools or tables, to the right, in 1926 which were known as Stowaway Tables. A contract was acquired with the Thonet furniture company who had been in business since 1857 making bentwood chairs. Breuer was inspired to utilise steel tubing in his designs by the lightness and strength of the frame on his bicycle.

However, the book mainly concerns itself with the visual artists of the period such as Wassily Kandinsky, one of its main proponents. He was a well known as an avant-garde artist in Germany before he arrived at the Bauhaus in 1922 as a teacher and writer. The picture to the left is called 'In Blue' and was produced in1925. His book 'Concerning the Spiritual in Art' published in 1911, was the inspiration for much of his teaching.

 The School was also concerned with the graphic arts and theatre. These interests are combined in this poster by Oskar Schlemmer titled 'Figures for the Triadic Ballet' from 1922. The Expressionist playright, Lothar Schreyer, was the Theatre Workshop Director until 1923 when he was replced by Schlemmer who was already working at the Bauhaus as Master of Form. The Triadic Ballet was performed in 1923 to great aclaim. By 1931 the Nazis had gained control of the city of Dessau, where the Bauhaus was located, and byApril 1933 they forced it to close when they gained control of the Reichstag. The work was labelled 'Degenerate Art'  and many of the artists were persecuted, some seeking refuge abroad in England and the United States.

Gustavsberg Pottery, Sweden

Friberg miniature pieces

Friberg vases

One of the main articles in my new copy of VintageExplorer magazine is about the Swedish ceramic factory of Gustavsberg and three of their main designers: Berndt Friberg, Stig Lindberg and Lisa Larson. The factory itself was established in 1827 but the aforementioned designers were proponents of the mid century style though Friberg (1899-1981) made his name in the 1930s working as a thrower for Wilhelm Kage. In 1944 he opened his own studio within the Gustavsberg brand called  G-studio where he perfected his well known haresfur glaze. Amongst his other famous work are the Oxblood and Aniara glazes. His signature, by which to recognise his pieces, is 'BF' or 'Friberg'. 

 Stig Lindberg began work at the factory in the late 1930s and early 1940s and was particularly well known for his colourful Faience series of vase and pots. He developed the series with Wilhelm Kage using a red clay earthenware base covered with a milky white glaze. which would then be hand painted. The floral designs of the 1940s were followed by more abstract depictions of the 1950s and 1960s. His inventiveness knew no bounds, however, and his creativity branched out into the industrial design of TV sets and washbasins and, the more usual, home decor, textiles, children's books and art glass.






The third notable designer at the Stockholm pottery was Lisa Larson who was hired by Stig Lindberg in 1954. Her pieces are usually depiting animals or people with a humorous twist. Her first collection was the Lilla Zoo in 1955. The chubby pigeon was only designed between 1955 and 1956 and is quite a rare piece.











In the late 1960s and early 1970s she produced the Zoo Animals series of which one figure was the lion in various poses and sizes. Lions were also produced into the 1990s.

 She has also produced domestic animals such as dogs and cats all with their distinctively humorous expressions.

Interested collectors can find pieces on Etsy in various stores and also in the online shop Mother Sweden