Leach Pottery Restoration Project - Spring 2006

Recently acquired funding has
saved Bernard Leach’s famous
pottery in St. Ives. Penwith
District Council, the Bernard
Leach (St. Ives) Trust and St. Ives
Town Council are very pleased to
announce that the Leach Pottery
Restoration Project in St. Ives has
been awarded £450,767 (about
$900,000 CAD) by the
European Regional Development
Fund and £100,000 (about
$100,00 to $200,000 CAD)
from the Rural Cornwall & Isles
of Scilly Partnership.

With these two substantial
awards, added to awards from
the Heritage Lottery Fund
(£610,000) the Arts Council of
England South West (£98,685),
Cornwall Council Council
(£75,000) and from Penwith
District Council’s own capital
programme budget (£75,000),
the Council and Trust are now
able to ‘go live’ with the project.
The project still needs to raise
between £50,000 and £100,000
from supporters throughout the
UK and overseas and so we are

today also launching a Public
Appeal. For information on how
to support the project, email:
donations@leachproject.co.uk

In order to save the Leach
Pottery site and revive its reputa-
tion as a centre for training and
inspiration, the council has
acquired the pottery.

The project aims to restore and
preserve the Leach Pottery for
future generations, unlock its
potential for generating signifi-
cant levels of long-term sustain-
able employment and creative
activity, as well as foster emerg-
ing talent, open up the site and
its history to visitors and create a
showcase gallery for contempo-
rary studio pottery. There will be
opportunities throughout the
year for people to find out more.

The Leach Pottery was the home
and workplace of Bernard Leach,
and for fifty years the epicentre
of the craft pottery movement.
After 85 years, the pottery and
cottage was put up for sale and
in danger of being lost, both as a

place were pots are made and
where people can experience
something of the spirit of the
Leach Pottery in its heyday.

The Leach Pottery site was put
on the open market at the begin-
ning of 2003, presenting the
community with potentially a
unique opportunity to bring this
historic site into the public
domain and to enhance its regen-
erative potential for St. Ives and
Cornwall. The project has the
potential to become an inspira-
tional focus for the revival of stu-
dio pottery within the creative
industries in Cornwall.

The project will:

i) restore the existing Grade
I] listed buildings,
including the original
kiln which is the first

example of this type of
Oriental climbing kiln in

the West;

ii) create a new museum
exhibition space for the
interpretation of the site,
the life and legacy of
Bernard Leach and the
story of studio pottery
up to the present day,
through a programme of
changing exhibitions,
including use of film,
oral history and archival
material;

iil) create a showcase con-
temporary studio pottery
gallery to support and
reinvigorate Cornwall’s
strong pottery cluster,

The Bernard Leach house and studio in
October 2005.
Photo courtesy Gillian McMillan

Potters Guild of British Columbia Newsletter

April 2006