WHAT'S IN A NAME?

Award or a name to describe me, to give meaning to
what I doin the world? My word is "potter". The words
for the organization | belong to Is “The Potters’ Guild
of British Columbia", Old fashioned, out-of-date, of
little relevance, perhaps not carrying quite the right
cultural weight? Time for a change?

Want a new image? Just change the name and the
potter's work can be taken seriously? But I believe
words are very powerful. They carry with them
tremendous social, cultural, political and spiritual
meaning. Put another way, the word itself is a
container that holds within it shared history and a
sense of the world.

So before we throw out the word “potter” for a more
fashionable term, I would like to examine this con-
tainer,.

The word pottery, as defined by the Oxford English
Dictionary, means

l. a potter's workshop;

2. the potter's art, ceramics; the manufacture of
earthenware;

3. the products of the potter's art collectively; pottery
ware, earthenware.

This definition doesn't appear to me to be exclusive,
but rather, large enough to include within ft the large
majority of work, -functional or non-functional, pro-
duced by potters.

So what ts tt about the word “potter” that upsets Mr.
Thornsbury? I suspect it is its connection with its
very association with use or function, The stuff can be
usted, holds something for some purpose, or in some
way refers to the idea of use, This connection with use
(function) and its reference to craft, and therefore
exclusion from the object made for the exclusive
reason of “art”, seems to cause some people working
with clay a nagging anxiety, combined with consider-
able formal squirming and drooling. They go through
amazing contortions in arder to distance themselves
from the history of pottery. I think that much of the
clay work referred to as “vessel-oriented", even though
non-functional, is placing itself within the visual
language of the functional form. So I have a lot of
difficulty understanding how you appropriate and use
a language, and yet if fashion or current trends
dictate, you delegate that language to the scrap heap
as old-fashioned or antiquated.

Does the word “pottery” with its fundamental meaning
having to do with function, operate to exclude those
not making functional pottery? The vessel makers
still use the historic meaning of function to offer
reinterpretations, so I find no difficulty in using the
word “pottery” to describe their work, Any individual
feelings of discomfort because thelr work links with
functionalism or craft are the result of intimidation by
phoney values posing under the guise of art, but
having everything to do with fashion. A serious

understanding of the pot’s value throughout history
would make any serious artist move towards a better
understanding of this history rather than denying tt,
Paul Valery once wrote:
Works of the mind exist only in action. Beyond
this action what remains ts only an object that
has no particular relation to the mind. Trarts-
port the statue you admire among people suffi-
ciently different from your own, and it becomes
an insignificant stone. The Parthenon is only a

So before we uproot our language, we would do well to
consider the meaning and wisdom that the word
“pottery” carries with it, and what we will gain (other
than a concession to fashion) by replacing it.

Now the word “guild” is another one of those anti-
quated-sounding terms, but before we dismiss it as a
quaint, old-fashioned word, with little meaning for us
, It's have a look at where it came from. The
guilds were formed in the middle ages as groups of
artisans that included sculptors, builders, and paint-
ers, to preverit exploitation by the wealthy and power-
ful classes, for whom they employed their knowledge
and skill. Guilds were also formed as a way of
imparting the knowledge and skills of experienced
members to the novices, But within the guild there
was not only the transfer of these physical skills, but
also a sharing and protecting of the historical and
spiritual nature of their knowledge. This protection
and transmission of skill and knowledge was not even
peculiar to mediaeval Europe. The guild process
exists in most cultures of the world, and is even used
in a mutated form in our contemporary corporate
culture.
Darcy Margesson (Potter)

And thank you, we have more response!
Dear Editor:

Re: the question of name change. For the most part,
I agree with James Thornsbury's viewpoint. “B.C.” ts
definitely representative. “Guild” could be construed
as representative, if you interpret ft as a group with
kindred pusuits. It also connotes educational and
marketing emphases.

In the strictest sense of the word, “pottery” relates to
the actual state of the material once it has been
changed by the application of heat. But, although
pottery is an accurate description of the material, the
word “pot” means something very different to most
people, Having “pot” in the word pottery” implies to
the general public that “potters” produce “pots” of
“pottery”. In actual fact, of course, pots can be made
of a variety of materials, but they are certainly not
pottery when they are made of paper or wood.

Maybe if we used the term “clay” instead, though it
doesn't represent the finished state accurately in the
technical sense, it would allow for a broader interpre-
tation of what we do, or at least what we work with,
Then we only have to deal with the “art” vs “craft”