Craftsmen Potters Association William Blake House, Marshall Street, London W1V1 FD Tel: 01 -437 7605 From the Executive Secretary Shop sales are really booming as Christmas approaches, and it is just as well , as we have a queue of boxes of pots lined up outside the back door waiting to be taken into stock; a very prompt and welcome response from members to my earlier cries for Christmas stock .
Mick Casson spent a Saturday morning in November in the shop signing nearly 200 copies of his book "The Craft of the Potter", for people who came to the shop, or ordered the book through the post ; a wrist-breaking experience! At the same time , Mick also managed to answer numerous questions put to him by customers, and talked enthusiastically with others who had seen and enjoyed the BBC series on which the book is based . There may still be a few signed copies left, which are available by post from the shop at £3.15 each.
Full members will be pleased to hear that we have now managed to shorten the period of payment for the sale-orreturn pots from six weeks to four , and although this might slip back a little with logging Christmas sales, we do hope that the delay in payment for December sales will be as short as possible, and that we will revert to a four week period when we have got over this particular patch.
Specially selected books on sale in the shop show that we are achieving our aim of providing the best in the ceramic world ; browsers are welcome. After a period when it was unavailable , we now have the beautiful Kodansha book "The Unknown Craftsman" back in stock. We also have several other Kodansha books we have not stocked before:- "Shoji Hamada , A Potter's Way and Work" by Susan Peterson , with many detailed photographs of Hamada at work and plates of some of his pieces in glorious colour, selling at £1 0.50 ; "The World of Japanese Ceramics" by Herbert Sanders, at £9.95, with many details of glaze recipes and forming techniques ; "Tamba Pottery" by Daniel Rhodes at £8.25 ; and a magnificent volume on Jomon Pottery by J Edward Kidder at £26.50 - all beautifully produced and very well illustrated besides containing a wealth of information . We have several
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excellent titles from Faber which we have not stocked before : "Medieval English Pottery" by Bernard Rackham at £12 ; "Later Islamic Pottery" by Arthur Lane at £10; "Korean Pottery and Porcelain of the Yi Period" by Gompertz at £12.50; "Greek Pottery" by Arthur Lane at £1 0 ; "Islamic Pottery" by Geza Fehervari at £17 and "Japanese Pottery" by Soame Jenyns at £18. Our book section will gradually be enlarged and new titles will be announced in this column as they come in. Stephen Brayne
Denis Moore Potters everywhere will be sad to learn that Denis Moore of Green Dene Pottery died last November. Denis was a member of the working party whose report led to the formation of the Craftsmen Potters Association. An appreciation by Rosemary Wren will be included in the next issue of Ceramic Review.
W.A. Ismay Collecting Pots Friends House , 24th October There are over 1700 pots in Bill Ismay's collection, cloistered behind the walls of a small terraced house in Wakefield which Lowry would have done justice to. And he looks a Lowry type figure, quietly going about that industrial landscape, indulged in his own private commitment- collecting contemporary pots.
He must have a nose like a bloodhound for anything that smells of clay, to have found pots in Yorkshire in the SO's when he began his collection. I was in Yorkshire then and did not see any pots until I came to London in 1964. Wakefield is less philistine than some Northern towns, with a good art gallery containing early Henry Moore and Hepworth sculpture, and early Rie and Coper pots .
I wondered if Bill Ismay had found clay earlier he would have been a potter. His fascination seemed to be predominatly with the earthy qualities of pots and technique, something I would have associated more with the maker than the collector. His interest was first aroused by seeing village potters in India at work, and later by books on ceramics by Wingfield Digby and Muriel Rose. The Berkeley Gallery was a favourite collectors haunt as was the Crafts Centre, then in Hay Hill .
Ismay's collection is traditionally based and important for its early Bernard Leach, Hamada, Cardew, Rie and Coper. There are a lot of bowls and jugs. Flights of fancy in the 70's become less traditional with a few individual pots, some from well known potters,and some from less well known ones. The excitement in collecting is obviously in finding something, or someone, new. I would like to have seen the slides in a more chronological order to get an image of period styles . It was interesting to see how, with the passing of time, events take on an historical importance, as for instance the visit of Ladi Kwali with reminiscences of who was there.
Altogether we saw 380 slides I suspect only a small part of the collection: nevertheless, there was much to amaze, amuse and admire. Val Barry
The Craftsmen Potters Association, William Blake House, Marshall Street, London, WlV lFD Full Membership is by selection (annual subscription£ 12) and is open to practising potters in the U.K. Associate Members (annual subscription £6) is open to everyone interested in pottery. Junior Membership (under 21) £2. All members can subscribe to Ceramic Review at a reduced rate. Application forms and further details from the Hon. Secretary, Craftsmen Potters Association, William Blake House, Marshall Street, London WlV 1FD. Tel: 01•437 7605.
