Michael Leach & Yelland Pottery

Excellent! Well spotted hercules brabazon, much appreciated.

Brush decorated stoneware vase.


Reverse and seal marks - click on to enlarge.

Michael Leach was the interesting one you never hear much. He was obviously highly intelligent going to Cambridge University to study Biology, and then some years teaching. He returned to the St Ives pottery in 1939, and after that spent the rest of his life making pottery.
His work always seems good to Very good indeed. But It never ever seemed to reach the GOSH WOW! heights that best of Bernard and David's work could do. The quiet one that always seems to get ignored in the Leach pottery history.

He did teach at St. Ives School of Art during the early 1950s and one of his pupils was Robin Welch. It was through Michael that Robin worked at the Leach Pottery during his summer holidays and after graduating. Robin was specialising in sculpture until meeting Michael and spoke highly of Michael, as a teacher.

From what I am told he didn't have any great desire to make exhibition pots but just wanted to make functional wares for people to use. That is why he moved to Yelland, which is near Fremington, in 1955 when Janet arrived in St. Ives.

A shallow stoneware jug.

Beaker

Hi,
Is it Michael Leach pottery cup??
Thanks

It is definitely the Yelland mark of Michael Leach's Pottery. However, it does not necessarily mean that it is by Michael Leach himself, as he had a number of apprentices He used an ML mark on his personal pieces, and those are fairly uncommon. Bit like the Bernard Leach Pottery itself where the St Ives mark is common.

philpot is correct but when Michael left the Leach Pottery around the same time as his brother, David, upon the arrival of an "American female" in St. Ives, he just wanted to make functional ware rather than exhibition pots.

Therefore almost all of the production at Yelland was small functional items. All you can say about any of these, is that it was made at Michael Leach's Yelland Pottery.