
At a time of such international uncertainty and political change, not least in Europe, how timely to reflect again on the cross-cultural influences, the cross-fertilisation of ideas which have constantly reinvigorated the ceramics scene in Britain. Before World War II the fledgling studio movement was just that, comparatively insular, led largely by the Anglo-Oriental ideas and practice of potters such as Bernard Leach and his students, as well as William Staite Murray, Charles and Nell Vyse and Reginald Wells. There was a clear emphasis on Oriental exemplars, and in Michael Cardew’s case, English slipware. Shoji Hamada (1894-1978) was an early and important Japanese visitor, joining Leach in St Ives for three years in 1920. He was an energising spirit, interested in Britain’s medieval pottery and slipware and consolidating Leach’s powerful advocacy of an East-West dialogue. A more recent settler, the Japanese-born potter Yo Thom, calls Leach’s and Hamada’s tradition “rather, a philosophical and ideological understanding of the Orient”, whereas for her and another émigré, Takeshi Yasuda, it is fundamentally based on useful tableware and the ceremony of food.