The Leach Pottery. St Ives

The auctioneers were based in Ely.The provenance story being that it had been given to a relative directly by Bernard Leach. More likely to be true than not one suspects, because if it was for sale at one of the high end London auctioneers like Sothebys it might well have got a higher price.

Celadon glazed jam pot with sgraffito leaf motif

N is this a newish piece? Base looks clean? Can you tell from the mark?

Its the style. The celadon and Oak Leaf decoration is classic Leach standard ware style a few years either side of 1950. They are very well made, and a lot were just never used.

The glaze on the lid is a bit lumpy

Just picked up two pieces of standardware and trying to tie them down to a rough date range. The question I have is when was the impressed ENGLAND added to the mark?

After 1956 when Janet Leach joined. Safest assumption is late 50's and the 60's.

Thanks for that philpot. These are the two pieces. Haven't been able find the jug in the catalogues yet.

The large one looks pretty much standard coffee pot type. Back in thise days of course 'Coffee' was a jug of Instant Nescafe!
There are several jugs and a full scale coffee set coming at W.H.Lane in St Ives on 28 June. The estimates look at tad optimistic!

lindylou08 wrote:Thanks for that philpot. These are the two pieces. Haven't been able find the jug in the catalogues yet.

The jug is a little taller than usual and the handle slightly adapted and it is likely to be more of a trial that might not have become part of the Standard Ware range. It looks mid to late 1960s and, if we assume that there are people that collected examples of Leach Pottery domestic ware to show the range, then it would make this a little more collectable/valuable than more standard versions. Not valuable enough to retire on though.

Didn't think for one moment that I could studio!! Don't think that is ever likely to happen and anyway I'm retired already Thanks for your help.

Janet Leach in black mood.

Hi everyone, don't we all love a bargain. I spied this little beauty on the counter of a shop in Cornwall literally 30 miles from St Ives - I wont say how much I paid for it but you could buy a few penny chews for the same price!

Nice bit of Leach St Ives standardware. St Ives stamp and England.
I’m afraid that without a potter’s individual stamp it’s not possible to say who made it. I doubt it’s by Janet because she used a ‘Repeat’ stamp on her standardware

This type of dish produced by the Leach pottery is straight standard ware, with some slightly better decoration. No way is it by Janet herself. The small dishes she actually did were nearly always square, and the decoration was a lot more powerful than on this one. The complete giveaway of course is -as Naomi says- the Impressed ENGLAND mark, which was used on Standard ware alone, and never on individual pieces by the Leach big name potters.

This type of small standard ware dish is fairly common, and not collected as much as it used to be. I just hope you did not pay a substantial sum for it!

That's a shame, still as I only paid £1 for it I cant complain really!

Leach Pottery Yunomi

I spent a few days in St. Ives this week and was more impressed with the Leach Pottery than I imagined. It's my first visit since the days of Trevor Corser.

In town there is a ladies clothes shop called, Seasalt Cornwall. Not only do they sell functional ware from the pottery and display it, as shown below, but they have also sponsored some of the apprentices too.

In my opinion, the motif of this 12.2 cm DIA bowl has a distinctive style of the Japanese school of ceramics. A glazed Leach Pottery mark is impressed close to a foot rim (please see the attached pictures).

I could not find either a similar shape or decoration among pieces mentioned in the 'Leach Pottery - St. Ives' discussion on the Forum. Any suggestions relating to the attribution and date of creation of this bowl will be very much appreciated.

It would defintely have a Japanese influence. The whole ethos of the Bernard Leach was a British interpretation of Japanese ceramics. Bernard Leach spent his formative years as a potter in Japan. In 1920 he came back to England with a young Japanese potter- Shoji Hamada- who worked with Bernard Leach at St Ives for several years. Bernard Leach made many trips to Japan throughout his life, and there always was an immense cross-fertilisation between his pottery and Japan.
          Unfortunately as it just has the St Ives mark alone, it is very difficult to attribute it to any specific potter at the Leach pottery. During the later years the apprentices were sometimes allowed to do their own work, and there quite a few of them.
              There were Japanese potters who had periods at St Ives. Atsuya Hamada (Shoji's 3rd son) in 1957- 58, Shinsaku Hmada (Shoji's 2nd  son) in 1963, Tomoo Hmada (Shoji's grandson) in 1995. They did not use a mark.
                Equally of course, it could come from the modern 21st century incarnation of the St Ives pottery, who have done all sorts of things. They do have a Facebook site, you might get some ideas by posting it on there.

A pot with just the St Ives mark cannot be attributed to any one potter with any degree of accuracy unless you have a personal communication from one of them to say it’s their work. Although there are always chancers on the various auction sites who will claim the celadon pots with the oak leaf design or the Z bowls  are the work of Bernard Leach. But always take such claims with a pinch of salt and don’t be tempted to pay a premium.
The Leach Pottery page on FB is useful for their latest work but it’s not run by collectors and they don’t seem to have an inventory of marks, so sites like ours have far more experience of handling a wide range of vintage pieces than they do.

But it is a very nice St Ives piece whoever made it....Good pictires BTW.

It looks to me to be late 1960s and the decoration in my opinion looks weak design wise, despite the competent brushwork. Therefore I cannot believe it was done by anyone of note. My view is that it was done by an apprentice practising what he/she had seen Bernard do.

On the positive side. It is a relatively unusual piece of 60's/70's St Ives pottery that makes it more desirable than the normal more common standard ware.
There are a number of Bernard Leach short films on YouTube. Included is the one in this link, which gives a flavour of how the potter worked. Notice the amount of standard ware in the background!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m-zNlehH5kg&list=PLYz8ma8lCmXhs-w2y6-f93bpnjyWC-u5q&index=2

Just to show what an odd world it is. Did you know that there is a Bar deigned by Bernard Leach in a hotel in Osaka?
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2016/06/03/food/leach-bar-inherits-spirit-japanese-folk-art/#.XOzk5XdFxjo