John Leach
Over the past 40 years John has established an international reputation for his hand-thrown kitchen pots based on the strength of English stoneware country pottery. He and the pottery team now make more than ninety designs of everyday tableware from jugs and bowls to casseroles and plates. The pots are glazed on the inside and their natural unglazed exteriors glow warmly with the distinctive flame markings of the wood-fired kiln.
John did not have formal art school training; his skills developed through a strong workshop tradition, disciplined in the production of functional pottery.
“It is a great privilege in this over-standardised, plastic, push-button age, to work with something as therapeutic as clay, the humble origins of which cut across race, religion, colour and class. As potters we are fortunate to be able to take a raw material from the ground and fashion it into something beautiful and functional. The challenge, of course, is to hold on to one’s integrity.”
Born 1939 in St Ives, Cornwall
Education
1984 Study tour in Nigeria
1957-63 Apprentice to grandfather, Bernard, and father, David Leach. Also trained with Colin Pearson and Ray Finch
Professional Experience
2003 Built new John Leach Gallery at Muchelney Pottery
1981 Began making individual, signed work
1964-65 Established Muchelney Pottery in Somerset
1963 Taught in USA and set up pottery with Harold Guilland in Mendocino, California
Exhibitions
2008 The Leach Pottery, St Ives
2002 Torquil Gallery, Henley in Arden
2000 Leach Pottery, St Ives
1999 Tate Gallery, St Ives
1997 Potters’ Guild Gallery, Vancouver BC
1997 Prime Gallery, Toronto