Worth a Read

So, Bernard Leach wrote a book once he was back in the UK and had been doing pottery in the UK for quite a while. It was an attempt to document his thoughts and hopes for a move the craft of pottery had started to take.  He wrote "A Potter's Book" which is equal parts tech manual, history book and art philosophy.

I recently saw a mention of it in a book where the author, wrongly stated, it had never been out of print. Well it HAD gone out of print. But in the UK Farber's Finds, a publish specializing in out of print books that they felt had too much value to go by the wayside, reprinted the book in 2011.

Leach wrote at a time when pottery was just starting to become the "Studio Pottery" model we are more familiar with. The old potteries that were working in small communities were dying out in the extreme and factory style pots were being made.  Now at this point, those factories have almost died out. There are few "throwing" based pottery factories, the process has become even more mechanized.

But... Leach might be surprised as the UK and USA especially, but elsewhere as well, had a mixed feeling about technology. And the slow food movement, increase in stay at home dads and similar "quality of life" movements make functional pottery more valued that it has in a generation.  From the looks of things, such a move will only grow.