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COLUMBIA
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Book Launch: Thrown By Melany Hallam

Thrown: British Columbia's Apprentices of
Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries

With texts by Glenn Allison, Gwyn Hanssen
Pigott, Michael Henry, Tam Irving, Charmian
Johnson, Glenn Lewis, Lee Plested, Herbert
Read, John Reeve, Naomi Sawada, Doris
Shadbolt, lan Steele, Nora Vaillant, Scott
Watson, and Soetsu Yanagi.

Published 2011, by Morris and Helen
Belkin Art Gallery

304 pages, colour, hard-cover
CDN $60
ISBN: 978-0-88865-803-6

John Reeve at Longlands, Hennock, Devon,
mid-1960s. Photo: unknown.

Collection of the Morris and Helen Belkin
Art Gallery Archives.

Thrown: British Columbia's Apprentices of
Bernard Leach and their Contemporaries is a
new book which offers insight into the
influences of the Leach pottery tradition
on B.C. potters. The book is based on the
historical exhibition, Thrown: Influences
and intensions of West Coast Ceramics that
was presented at the Morris and Helen Belkin
Art Gallery in early 2004. This exhibition
presented more than 600 ceramics produced
since the 1960s that were influenced by the
studio pottery movement of Bernard Leach
and Shoji Hamada.

Between 1920 and 1996, the Leach
Pottery at St. Ives in Cornwall, England was
a destination for some 100 apprentices and
students from around the world who sought
to integrate philosophic, aesthetic and moral
ideals into the production of pottery. It has
been one of the most significant influences in
Western Europe and North American practice
in the twentieth century.

Thrown (the exhibition) examined the
context in which the interest and development
of studio pottery arose in the west coast area of
British Columbia, and its relationship to post-
war modernism and counter-culture. Featured
was a selection of “Standard Ware,” from the
Leach Pottery and the work of four potters
from British Columbia who apprenticed
there: John Reeve (1958-61, 1966), Glenn
Lewis (1961-63), Michael Henry (1963-
65), and Ian Steele (1963-65, 1967-69). The

exhibition also featured the work of west coast
potters Tam Irving, Charmian Johnson, and
Wayne Ngan who were contemporaries of the
four and who shared similar notions about
production and a holistic, aesthetic ideal
about living promoted by the studio pottery
movement. The exhibition was co-curated by
Lee Plested and Scott Watson with Charmian
Johnson.

The book offers long overdue accounts of
these potters and is important to a larger
history of Vancouver West Coast pottery and
art. The 304-page, hard cover book is lavishly
illustrated with colour and black and white
photographs from the personal collections
of the potters, images from the exhibition,
correspondence, texts and contributions by
Glenn Allison, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Michael
Henry, Tam Irving, Charmian Johnson,
Glenn Lewis, Lee Plested, Herbert Read,
John Reeve, Naomi Sawada, Doris Shadbolt,
Jan Steele, Nora Vaillant, Scott Watson, and
Soetsu Yanagi.

Thrown is a genuine contribution to
scholarship to ceramics in this region.

The book launch will take place in late
May (date and time, TBA) at the Gallery of
BC Ceramics on Granville Island. Copies of
Thrown will be available for purchase at the
launch as well as from the Belkin Art Gallery:
www. belkin.ubc.ca/publications/thrown

Courtesy of Glenn Lewis. Photo: unknown.

Potters Guild of BC Newsletter - May 2011