Podcast appearances and mentions of bernard leach

Refiring is firing pottery again after it has already been glaze-fired once. But why on earth would a Potter want to do that?! In this episode we discuss what refiring is, and some reasons why a Potter may want to fire their work again. Potters may re-fire their work for example if their pot has been underfired in the first firing, which can sometimes happen if the kiln switches off accidentally during the firing cycle or if the kiln hasn't reached a hot enough temperature. Another reason to refire pottery is if you don't like how the glaze looks after the first glaze firing. In this episode, I tell you about two top tips for re-firing pottery from a potters book by Bernard Leach as well as my two failed attempts at refiring pottery!The book featured in this episode is A Potters Book by Bernard Leach the 1976 edition published by Faber and Faber. -------------------------------*New book: Eco-conscious Pottery Colour is available on the Oxford Clay website here.*A paper copy of Eco-conscious Pottery Colour is available from Amazon here.-------------------------------Resources for Potters:Oxford Clay website resources for PottersPottery eBooksDownload the Free How to Make a Pottery Glaze Workbook (suitable for beginners):Download the Free How to programme an Electric Kiln for bisque and stoneware glaze firings (includes full kiln firing schedule)Pottery Paperback Books available from AmazonVideo mini-courses for PottersOxford Clay blog------------------------------------Get your pottery question answered on the podcast!Submit your pottery question to the Oxford Clay podcast by emailing your question to: info@oxfordclay.co.uk with the subject line ‘Podcast Question'.

Disappointment in pottery can happen when the pot in your mind's eye isn't the same as the one that comes out of the kiln! That sinking feeling of disappointment can really hold us back as potters and can affect even the most experienced of Potters. In this episode, I talk about three mindset shifts that I use to deal with my own feelings of disappointment in pottery; 1. That disappointment is a natural part of the creative process. 2. That disappointment is a natural part of pottery-making so much out of our control as potters (especially what happens inside a kiln firing!). 3. That experiencing failure and disappointment in pottery means that you are at the growth edge of your skills and experience.I hope this episode inspires you not to be discouraged if feelings of disappointment ever come up in your pottery-making. The book featured in this episode is ‘A Potters Book' by Bernard Leach, 1976 edition published by Faber and Faber.-------------------------------*New book: Eco-conscious Pottery Colour is available on the Oxford Clay website here.*A paper copy of Eco-conscious Pottery Colour is available from Amazon here.-------------------------------Resources for Potters:Oxford Clay website resources for PottersPottery eBooksDownload the Free How to Make a Pottery Glaze Workbook (suitable for beginners):Download the Free How to programme an Electric Kiln for bisque and stoneware glaze firings (includes full kiln firing schedule)Pottery Paperback Books available from AmazonVideo mini-courses for PottersOxford Clay blog------------------------------------Get your pottery question answered on the podcast!Submit your pottery question to the Oxford Clay podcast by emailing your question to: info@oxfordclay.co.uk with the subject line ‘Podcast Question'.

Born and raised in Pennsylvania, the 97-year-old Pittsburgh-based artist and sculptor Thaddeus Mosley has a deep and enduring obsession with wood. In his late 20s, he began to use the material for art, carving sculptures in his basement studio, and with his sculpture-making now spanning 70 years, his enduring dedication to his craft is practically unparalleled. Represented by Karma gallery since 2019, Mosley has only now, in the past decade or so, begun to receive the international recognition and attention he has long deserved. In his hands, wood sings; he shapes and carves trees into striking abstract forms that often appear as if they're levitating while honoring and preserving their organic, natural character. As with the work of his two main influences, Constantin Brâncuși and Isamu Noguchi, Mosley, too, strives to make sculptures that, in his words, beyond today, “will be interesting in a hundred tomorrows.”On the episode, he talks about the language that poetry, music, and sculpture all share; his early years as a sports writer for a local newspaper; and his life-transforming relationship with the Carnegie Museum of Art in Pittsburgh.Special thanks to our Season 9 presenting sponsor, L'École, School of Jewelry Arts.Show notes:Thaddeus Mosley[4:13] Sam Gilliam[17:24] Carnegie Museum[21:08] Carnegie International[21:08] Leon Arkus[21:08] “Thaddeus Mosley: Forest”[21:08] “Inheritance”[24:20] Isamu Noguchi[27:53] Constantin Brâncuși[28:28] University of Pittsburgh[28:28] Martha Graham[46:15] Floyd Bennett Field[46:23] Ebony magazine[46:23] Sepia magazine[46:23] Jet magazine[46:23] Pittsburgh Courier[54:34] John Coltrane[51:37] Li Bo[51:37] Dylan Thomas[56:21] Bernard Leach[57:45] Langston Hughes[57:45] Countee Cullen[57:45] Harriet Tubman[57:45] Fannie Lou Hamer[57:45] “The Long-Legged Bait”[57:45] “Air Step - for Fayard and Harold Nicholas”[57:45] The Nicholas Brothers

I realise now that episode 1 of season 1 also started with the institution of ‘school' in some ways , but oh well, at least I'm consistent!  Ep 1 is talking about craft schools, mainly, but also what it means to have a craft education. What's it for? What has it missed out? What does it promise? In the US, many of craft schools were made possible through the GI Bill, a state fund from the mid 40s that supported initiatives and education for returning veterans. Seems kind of unlikely in our current climate, but much of this government money was funnelled into craft and art education. A well known beneficiary might be Black Mountain College. Other schools like Penland School of Craft, and Worcester Craft Center began life as schools for European colonial-settler women to learn and perpetuate handcrafts to make a living. Both of these origins struck me as interesting, as, whilst we're obviously acknowledging the whiteness and colonialism that is inherent to this narrative, the schools were arguably set up with a social directive. The looming beast of capitalism means that the utopian promise of craft suggested by the likes of William Morris, Bernard Leach, or – in this episode –  MC Richards, doesn't really operate that way, but I loved this idea. That if we look at the underpinnings of what craft education can offer us, and how it's operated in society, it offers us a way of being in the world that centres: people, environment, community, and not: profit, extraction and indoctrination into a failed state. Anyone interested….?Contributors:Michelle Millar Fisher https://michellemillarfisher.com/Tom O'Malley, director Worcester Craft Centre https://worcestercraftcenter.org/Sara Clugage https://dilettantearmy.com/Fabio Fernandez, director Greenwich House Pottery https://www.greenwichhouse.org/pottery/Clay Commons was written and produced by Eva Masterman, editing supported by Travis Roush. This podcast was supported by Newcastle University, and the Northern Bridge AHRC Consortium. Artwork created by Kelly Jade Audio credits:-       "Ambience, Children Playing, Distant, A.wav" by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk) of Freesound.org-       "Ambience, Seaside Waves, Close, A.wav" by InspectorJ (www.jshaw.co.uk) of Freesound.org

Have you been affected by the cost of living crisis? How has everyday life changed for you? As part of our What the F (Finance) series, our reporters Christine Duffin, Paul Sherlock and Bernard Leach discuss how they've been coping with the cold weather and rising bills, sharing their tips and tricks on saving money and energy - and contemplating the future of the UK. Tune in!

The works of Adrian Holmes play between the traditional and the contemporary. His mokuhanga explores colour, and form in new and interesting ways.  On this episode of The Unfinished Print I speak to woodblock printmaker Adrian Holmes about  his work, his process, how teaching affects how he sees mokuhanga, how he balances between his “shin-hanga” and “sōsaku hanga” prints, and we discuss the collaboration system of Japanese woodblock prints and whether there is still merit in the process within the contemporary world.  Please follow The Unfinished Print and my own print work on Instagram @popular_wheatprints, Twitter @unfinishedprint, or email me at theunfinishedprint@gmail.com Notes: may contain a hyperlink. Simply click on the highlighted word or phrase. Adrian Holmes - website, Instagram Tochigi, Prefecture, Japan - Is a prefecture in Japan and is considered the “gateway to the North” of Japan. The capital is Tochigi City. Famous for it's Tokugawa mausoleum in the mountain city of Nikkō, and the beauty of the region in all seasons. tourism website  dentōteki 伝統的- is the process of traditional Japanese woodblock printmaking produced by the collaboration system of publisher, designer, carver, and printer. sōsaku hanga - the creative print, is a style of mokuhanga which is where the artist produces, designs, carves, and prints the prints themselves. It is also a period of woodblock printing in Japan attributed to the early 20th Century.  Kiyoshi Saitō (1907-1997) - a creative printmaker (sōsaku hanga) for over sixty years. Saitō's work's covered theatre, museum studies, cats, and women. A fantastic book came out in 2021 called, Graphic Awakening published by The John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, and can be found, here. It was based on the show held from Mar 14, 2021 – Aug 15, 2021 Ōta Memorial Museum of Art - located in the Ōmotesando area of Tōkyō, near Harajuku. It is a woodblock print museum which has rotating shows throughout the year. They also offer a grant for the research of ukiyo-e. website, is in English and Japanese. Wood Like Matsumura - is an online and brick and mortar store, for woodblock printmaking, located in Nerima City, Tōkyō. website. Asaka Motoharu - is a woodblock printmaker located in Tōkyō. He takes apprentices, such as Taran Casey (Gingko Hanga) from the UK and teaches at home and around the world. website, Instagram. Cornwall, England - located in the most Southern part of England. Famous for its beaches and natural beauty. Tourist website, here.  Yoshida Family of Artists - The Yoshida's are one of the most famous family of artists from Japan. Begun with painter Yoshida Kasaburō (1861-1894), made famous by Yoshida Hiroshi (1876-1950) and his work with woodblock printing. The Yoshida family has helped shape many artists around the world. More info from the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, here. Kawase Hasui - (1883 - 1957) was a woodblock print designer who worked within the burgeoning shin-hanga movement in early 20th Century Japan. Hasui designed landscapes, and women, and was very involved in how his designs were printed. More info, here.  David Bull - is a Canadian woodblock printmaker, and educator who lives and works in Japan. His love of mokuhanga has almost singlehandedly promoted the art form around the world. His company, Mokuhankan, has a brick and mortar store in Asakusa, Tōkyō, and online, here.  mashiko pottery: is a red-brown clay style of pottery which was revived by Shōji Hamada (1894-1978) in the 1920's. More info, here.  Bernard Leach - (1887-1979) was a British potter who, with Shōji Hamada, founded Leach pottery in St. Ives, UK. Born in Hong Kong, Leach lived in Japan as a child and then in the early 20th Century.  It was in Japan where Leach studied pottery with Urano Shigekichi (1881-1923). More info, here.  St Ives School of Painting, Cornwall - is a school located in St. Ives Cornwall, England. Adrian Holmes teaches woodblock printmaking at this school. More info, here.  nori  - is a paste, traditionally made of rice starch, or tapioca starch, or corn starch  and water., It acts as a binder between the pigment and the paper by giving body to the colour. ōbokashi - or, “wide gradation” is a large bokashi, where the pigment and the water intertwine ,creating a soft blending of the water and colour. Famously made in sky gradations by prints designed by Hiroshige (1797-1858) Holbein - is a Japanese/Canadian/American company which focuses on artist pigments. website  nezumi ban - or, “grey block” is used to give depth to the colour used over the grey block. More info from Yoshida's book, here. colour theory - encompasses the colour wheel, harmony, and what is useful. It is a way of seeing colour and how it transfers to your work. More info, here. print sizes - there are various sizes when making woodblock prints. In Japanese woodblock printing the most standard of sizes are as follows: aiban - 9x13”  22.5x34.5cm chūban - 7.5x10”  19x25.5cm dai ōban - 13.75x18.25”  34.5x45.5cm more info can be found, here. surimono - is a privately commissioned print where, because money tended to be no object, many high end techniques and pigments were used. Their size tended to be 20.5x18.5cm. Paul Binnie - is a Scottish born artist who works in oils and woodblock. Studying in the Yoshida atelier in the 1990's, Paul continues to make work from his home studio in San Diego, California. catalogue of prints natsukashii - is a Japanese word, generally meaning “nostalgia." An interesting BBC article about the word can be found, here.  Masami Teraoka - is a Japanese born artist who has worked in various media, including screen printing, woodblock printmaking, water colour, and oils. His work has incorporated ukiyo-e  themes and tropes, lampooning society. More info, here. He currently lives in the United States. website butsudan - is a Buddhist shrine usually found in Japanese homes and temples. They tend to be large and extravagant, paying respect to the dead, more info, here.  kotatsu - is a low table, electrically heated by an internal heater underneath the table itself, more info, here.  opening and closing credit music - Holy Mountain by SLEEP (1993) © Popular Wheat Productions logo designed and produced by Douglas Batchelor and André Zadorozny  Disclaimer: Please do not reproduce or use anything from this podcast without shooting me an email and getting my express written or verbal consent. I'm friendly :) Слава Україну If you find any issue with something in the show notes please let me know. ***The opinions expressed by guests in The Unfinished Print podcast are not necessarily those of André Zadorozny and of Popular Wheat Productions.***                  

Alison Britton is a ceramicist, writer and educator, who emerged as part of a revolutionary group of artists from the Royal College of Art in the 1970s, which was determined to provided an alternative to the then-dominate school of pottery, led by Bernard Leach. Instead, their work was angular, abstract, urban, a little bit feisty and, hey, Post-Modern, provoking one critic to write in Crafts magazine that these were pieces which rejoiced ‘in a hideousness that does not even have the excuse of eloquence'. Her pots, which famously test the outer limits of function, have evolved over the years and are generally slab built with abstract surface finishes and an architectural quality. Meanwhile, her prose has long been a vital part of her practice and a collection of her writing, entitled Seeing Things, was published in 2013. In 2016, she had a major retrospect of her work at the V&A in London, while she received an OBE for her services to art in 1990.During this episode we talk about: picking up clay at nine years old; growing up with her teacher parents and becoming part of her father's research; why she became fascinated by the material; the importance of language; studying under Hans Coper at the Royal College of Art; her happy revolution in the 1970s; the importance of ‘containment' in her practice; and her changing attitude to the work of Bernard Leach. Huge thanks must go to the brilliant specialist auction house and art consultancy dedicated to studio ceramics, Maak Contemporary Ceramics, for sponsoring this episode. www.maaklondon.com.Support the show (https://www.patreon.com/materialmatters?fan_landing=true)

“Les Flammes“ L'Âge de la céramiqueau Musée d'Art moderne de Parisdu 15 octobre 2021 au 6 février 2022Interview de Anne Dressen, commissaire de l'exposition,par Anne-Frédérique Fer, à Paris, le 14 octobre 2021, durée 21'49.© FranceFineArt.Communiqué de presseCommissaire : Anne Dressen assistée de Margot NguyenL'exposition Les Flammes. L'Âge de la céramique propose une immersion dans le médium de la céramique et associe plus de 350 pièces allant du néolithique jusqu'à nos jours, créant un dialogue inédit et fécond entre des typologies d'objets issus d'époques et de contextes variés, cherchant à déceler les influences autant que les coïncidences.Source constante d'inspiration et d'expression pour artisans, artistes ou designers, la céramique – de keramos signifiant « argile » en grec – est l'une des plus anciennes manifestations culturelles de l'humanité, utilisée dès la préhistoire pour la confection d'idoles, d'architecture, et de contenants culinaires.L'exposition Les Flammes présente ainsi des céramiques réalisées par des artistes ou des céramistes modernes et contemporains (de Jean Carriès, Georg Ohr, Paul Gauguin, Shoji Hamada, Bernard Leach, Marcel Duchamp, Meret Oppenheim, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali, Raoul Dufy, Lucio Fontana, BeatriceWood, Ken Price, Ron Nagle, Cindy Sherman, Judy Chicago, Miquel Barceló , JeanGirel, Simone Leigh, Daniel Dewar & Grégory Gicquel, Theaster Gates, Mai ThuPerret, Clare Twomey, Takuro Kuwata, Natsuko Uchino…), des productions historiques signées (de Bernard Palissy, Marie Talbot, Dave the Potter, ou des Manufactures nationales), ou anonymes (vénus préhistoriques, vases grecs antiques, poterie vernaculaire), ou encore non européennes (poterie Nok, jarres Mochica, figures Tang, réticulés iraniens, rakus japonais).Trans-historique, cette exposition porte sur la céramique dans ses rapports intrinsèques à l'art et plus largement à l'humain. Longtemps minoré dans l'échelle des arts, ce médium peut être à la fois fonctionnel et sculptural et oblige à repenser les catégories existantes et les hiérarchies traditionnelles. Entre l'art, le design et l'artisanat, l'exposition explore ses rapports au décoratif, au culinaire, à la performance, mais aussi la multitude de ses applications dans les champs du médical, de l'aéronautique ou de l'écologie.Les Flammes aborde ainsi la céramique selon trois thématiques : les techniques(terres et cuissons, formes, décors), les usages (utilitaires, artistiques, rituels) et les messages (trompe-l'oeil, anticlassiques, politiques). Elle révèle également des pièces qui dérogent aux règles, réinventent les codes et bousculent les approches et ce, même si les recettes, proches de l'alchimie, n'ont quasiment pas évolué au cours de l'histoire.Telle le Phénix qui renait constamment de ses cendres, la céramique exerce une fascination, croissante bien que cyclique, liée à l'imprédictibilité technique de la cuisson et du four qui ne se laisse jamais complètement apprivoiser. Sa tactilité, mais aussi sa rudesse, ont toujours inspiré des artisans, et ne cessent d'attirer les artistes depuis la fin du XIXe, ainsi qu'un large public d'amateurs en général.Le feu, qui a inspiré le titre de l'exposition, est à la fois une donnée technique, d'où découlent des propriétés et des fonctions bien précises mais aussi des contre-esthétiques spécifiques, ainsi qu'un imaginaire riche pouvant toucher à l'utopie radicale.[...] Voir Acast.com/privacy pour les informations sur la vie privée et l'opt-out.

"The late Kim Schuefftan] was a true original, a character for whom the term 'character' was made. Born and raised in California, he was the son of a musician (father) and a ceramic artist (mother). He attended Reed College and graduated from Berkeley. In his youth he traveled to the Japanese countryside with Mingei Movement founders Bernard Leach and Hamada Shoji. As senior editor at Kodansha International he championed, edited, and sometimes functioned as ghostwriter for numerous illustrated books on Japanese crafts. After leaving Kodansha International he became the editor of the Ikebana International Magazine, the author of numerous articles on Japanese and other folk crafts, and a freelance editor obsessed with improving his authors' writing. He had an eye for detail and a knack for noticing things that others had missed. He was, said several of those who spoke about him, someone great to argue with, a master of the art of disagreeing on matters of taste without being disagreeable." -- By John McCreary For more info on Kim, visit https://leachpotteryblog.com/2021/06/02/kim-schuefftan-former-arts-editor-at-kodansha-international-publishers-has-died/

Today on the Tales of a Red Clay Rambler Podcast I have an interview with Marty Gross about the Mingei Film Archive. We talk about how a gift from Bernard Leach started him on a decades long project to collect and restore videos surrounding the Mingei movement. In our interview we also talk about his methods for digitizing reel to reel films, understanding the impact of D.T. Suzuki on Soetsu Yanagi, and how these videos reshape the way we think about Shoji Hamada and other Mingei leaders. To see examples of the films, visit www.mingeifilm.martygrossfilms.com.   Hey Red Clay Rambler fans, it’s been a wild year, and I want to thank you for spending your time with me, listening to world-class artists speak about their lives and creativity. It’s an honor to do this work, and I appreciate you choosing to listen week in and week out. As we wrap up 2020, I need your help funding future episodes. I’m not on a major network like NPR or Gimlet. I am a one-man operation, and I depend on the support of my listeners to keep the show going. I know this year has been tough for many folks, so for our Fall Fund Drive I’m keeping my request simple. I ask that if you are able, you commit four dollars a month to the show. That’s only a dollar an episode to keep you inspired and connected to the greater ceramic community. I’ve got big plans for 2021 and your support now can help make those plans a reality.   There are two easy ways to donate, one through the Pay Pal portal at www.talesofaredclayrambler.com/donate or by making a monthly pledge at patreon.com/redclayrambler. If you join Patreon today you can access perks like t-shirts, water bottles, and other podcast swag, as well as having access to the Patreon exclusive Tales from the Vault podcast, which features remastered episodes that are no longer available on major podcast apps. Thanks for listening and stay safe out there.  

Xiaolu Guo was named as one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists 2013. She talks about her latest book A Lover’s Discourse, which is a story of love and language – and the meaning of home set at the time of the European referendum. With a nod to Roland Barthes’ book of the same name, Guo’s novel is told through conversations between a Chinese woman newly arrived in the UK and her Anglo-German boyfriend. It is 100 years since Bernard Leach, with his Japanese colleague Hamada Shojie, established his pottery in St Ives. Since then his influence as a studio potter, making vessels that are both beautiful and functional, by hand, has spread around the globe. Roelof Uys, the lead potter at the studio today, discusses Leach's ideas and work, and the projects marking the centenary. Last night three members of the Belarus Free Theatre - Nadia Brodskaya, Sveta Sugako and Dasha Andreyanova - were arrested in Minsk, during protests against the results - widely believed to be fabricated - of the election there. Their colleagues in the company do not know where they are being held. We hear from Natalia Kaliada, one of the founding directors of the Belarus Free Theatre, the only theatre company in Europe banned by its government on political grounds. London's Donmar Warehouse is re-opening temporarily from 3 to 22 August with a socially-distanced sound installation, Blindness, which is based on the dystopian novel by Nobel prize-winning José Saramago, adapted by Simon Stephens and starring the voice of Juliet Stevenson. Susannah Clapp reviews. Main image above: Xiaolu Guo Image credit: Stephen Barker Presenter Tom Sutcliffe Producer Jerome Weatherald

Librarian Margy Burn shares experiences acquiring rare and unique collections during her career at the National Library and other great Australian research collections. Margy Burn recently retired as the National Library’s Assistant Director-General, Australian Collections & Reader Services. Before joining the National Library, she held senior positions working with Australiana collections at the State Libraries of New South Wales and South Australia. Margy began working with archives and special collections at the University of Adelaide Library. Her first ‘field work’ was a series of visits to Mary Clark, the daughter of Federation advocate Sir Josiah Symon, to sort Mary’s large collection of papers documenting work in England and Australia with touring ballet and theatre companies. The octogenarian Mary told stories of nursery life in an Adelaide hills mansion; served a homemade lunch she had cooked on a wood stove, presented on ceramics made by her friend, the influential British potter Bernard Leach, while her cat Fleance prowled hopefully under the table. Margy was hooked. Since those early days, Margy is proud to have played some role in the acquisition of papers of women including P.L Travers, Eva Cox, Dale Spender, Helen Caldicott, Kay Cottee, Meryl Tankard, Dymphna Clark, Drusilla Modjeska and Anne Summers, to name a few. Margy has been involved with the Australian Women’s Archives Project since its inception nearly 20 years ago. In retirement she is enjoying having time to read many more books. In association with the Australian Women's Archives Project. Image: Margy Burn, image supplied.

In this episode of Material Matters with Grant Gibson, the prolific potter and writer Edmund de Waal discusses his relationship with porcelain and how it has shaped his life and career. His also finds time to talk about his writing – including his controversial reassessment of Bernard Leach – and a childhood he that has described, rather succinctly, as ‘odd’.

This week's episode is about the different 'Learning Styles' concentrating on Kinaesthetic  Here's my blog post on Kinaesthetic Learners http://homeopathicpacifist.blogspot.com/2013/09/dont-shout-your-child-might-be.html Here are the charts I mentioned  My younger sister Emily  Here's the video of her talking. Listen to her talking about 'getting a sense of' ....at 3.39 mins https://vimeo.com/255988168   The famous potter Bernard Leach   Here's a video of him talking so you can hear him using Kinaesthetic words. Watch the way he touches the clay....  https://youtu.be/IxpcUnquXJI   At 1.01 he says ...feel good pot..... At 1.44 ... touch

Clary Illian is a true treasure for the clay community around the world. Her book, A Potter's Workbook, has been played an important role in the development of potters' skill and understanding of clay and making. An award winning documentay, A Year in the Life, focused on her work and principles. PBS also featured her work in Craft in America. Having studied as an apprentice in Bernard Leach's St. Ives Studio, Clary eventually made her way back to the United States and set up a studio in Ely, Iowa. For over half a century Clay has worked in earthenware, stoneware, and porcelain with the idea of making pottery for ordinary people at affordable prices.

Andrew Stephenson was born in Birmingham, England in 1972 and moved to the states with his family in 1979.  He received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree from East Carolina University in 1996. Shortly after graduation he moved to Asheville, NC to take a position as a resident potter at the Odyssey Center for the ceramic Arts. Andrew has always loved the folk pottery of England and especially the wood fired salt-glazed pottery of North Carolina, so when he was offered a two year apprenticeship with Matt Jones, a former apprentice of Todd Piker and Mark Hewitt, he jumped at the chance. During the apprenticeship he learned the forms and turning techniques that have been passed down from potter to potter since the days of Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew. Andrew also helped Matt fire his 300 cubic foot wood fired kiln and his smaller 100 cubic foot kiln fueling his love for wood firing.  When Andrew was finished with his apprenticeship he bought a house in rural Rutherford county, received a grant, and built his own 300 cubic foot wood kiln and holds several kiln openings a year. Andrew continues the long tradition of wood firing in North Carolina and sells his work in galleries throughout the southeast.

A talk by Edmund de Waal on his installation 'A Local History' for the Alison Richard Building. A Local History A local history is an installation of three vitrines filled with porcelain, sunk below the paving outside the Alison Richard Building on the Sidgwick Site of Cambridge University. These vitrines are meant to be discovered, to be happened upon as you come and go across the site. They are there to make you pause momentarily. They are not sculpture as a Grand Statement. If you find them and look down through the gridded glass you will see piles of porcelain dishes, cylinders arranged in rows, and aluminium boxes filled with shards. The dishes are taken from moulds that I made from a Chinese Ming Dynasty dish, a plate from the French Sèvres porcelain factory, and a Staffordshire serving dish. These three dishes are iconic in form: they exemplify porcelain from three of the greatest places where it has been manufactured over the last thousand years. You will see that these pieces are glazed in whites, creams and celadons, and that there are also glimpses of gilding. Gold was used to highlight the value of porcelain, a material so prized that it was often called white gold. It was also used in Chinese and Japanese art when a vessel had been broken: to mend the porcelain with a seam of golden lacquer emphasized that it had been used and appreciated. I hope the flashes of gold, the fragments of broken vessels and the memories of ancient dishes act as a kind of palimpsest: a writing, erasing, and rewriting using objects. If you look up inside the atrium of the building you will see another vitrine, this time full of shelves holding celadon vessels. This vitrine, atlas, is my record of lost pots. It holds 120 lids from lidded jars that I have made over the last twenty years and broken because they were not quite right, because the glaze ran, because of a crack along a rim. If the structure of the vitrine looks familiar, it is because it is a gentle echo of a manuscript page with texts, footnotes and commentaries in intimate conjunction. All these vitrines are a kind of archive. They record my thinking about the history of porcelain, my travels, my love of fragments, my obsession with shadows, my reading. They are for this particular place – a threshold into a building, and a threshold into a site full of libraries and archives, and the people who care about libraries and archives. About Edmund de Waal Edmund de Waal is one of the world’s leading artists working in ceramics today. He is best known for his large-scale installations of porcelain vessels, with interventions at Waddesdon Manor, the Victoria & Albert Museum, Tate Britain and MIMA. Much of his recent work has been concerned with ideas of collecting and collections: how objects are kept together, lost, stolen, or dispersed. Increasingly, Edmund’s work has come from a dialogue between minimalism, sound and space, seen in his two permanent installations: Signs & Wonders at the V&A and a sounding line at Chatsworth House. In September 2012, Edmund will take his work beyond the museum space in his first piece of public sculpture, a local history, to be installed at the new Alison Richard’s Building at the University of Cambridge. Other future projects include working with the Chinese porcelain collections at the Fitzwilliam Museum, for an exhibition opening in February 2013, and a collaborative project with the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. Edmund is also widely known as a writer. In 2010, Chatto & Windus published his family memoir, The Hare with Amber Eyes, which has become an international bestseller. It has won many literary prizes, including the Costa Biography Award, the Galaxy New Writer of the Year Book Award and the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize. By 2013, it will be published in over twenty-three languages. In 2011 Edmund was commissioned by Phaidon to write The Pot Book, a colour-illustrated anthology of 300 ceramic vessels. His other publications include a monograph on Bernard Leach (1997) and a survey of 20th Century Ceramics (2003). Edmund was appointed a Trustee of the V&A and awarded an OBE for his services to art in 2011. In June 2012, he was made a Senior Fellow at the Royal College of Art. Edmund was born in Nottingham in 1964. During his school years in Canterbury, he was apprenticed to the potter Geoffrey Whiting. After reading English at Cambridge, Edmund spent a further year studying at the Mejiro Ceramics Studio in Tokyo. He lives and works in London.