Byron Temple, Romantic Pragmatist   1      2      3      4      5      6      7      8      -      PRINTER VERSION

Published in The Studio Potter

My pots spring directly from life and they serve life, not occupying a place in a glass case.
   —Byron Temple

Byron Temple was probably the most enigmatic American potter since the end of World War II and both his life and career were full of contradictions. He had, for example, solo exhibitions in London, Madrid, Tokyo, Sydney, Washington and New York as well museum exhibitions at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, the New Jersey State Museum, and the Harrison Museum of Art, yet there has been no major exhibition of his work at either the American Crafts Museum or the Smithsonian's Renwick Gallery. He moved to New York in 1951 at the rise of the New York School of Painting's prominence. He discovered DeKooning and Modrian and was a student member of MOMA, a hangout for he and his friends, yet he never considered the making of pottery as some sort of inferior calling. Most of his career he made tableware, but chose to market his work in upscale design shops in New York rather than typical craft venues like crafts fairs. He was a shy person, almost solitary, but was known for rather forcefully speaking his mind when he felt the subject warranted it. He was never interested in a full time position in academia, but loved teaching. He taught, for example, at numerous universities in the United Stated including Swarthmore, the Pratt Institute, and the Philadelphia College of Art, and traveled throughout the United States, as well England, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Sweden, Holland, Hungry and Spain, giving workshops. He had a keen business sense that was rivaled only by his rather tender, romantic view of life.

As a person, my roots are agrarian and Quaker (Indiana); a product of the depression, a teenager of "The Last Picture Show".
   —Byron Temple

Temple was born In Centerville, Indiana in 1933 to a farming family. If you have ever seen the movie Hoosiers starring Gene Hackman, you can get a feel for the landscape and culture that spawned Temple. It was filmed in Centerville at the high school where he graduated in a class of fewer than thirty people. He was raised, he proudly said when asked, on a pig farm where hard work was a necessity for survival. His farm experience, which taught him that you and your hard work alone were what allowed you to survive in the world was to have a profound effect on his sense of discipline and his work ethic as a potter. It was in high school that he first was able to play with clay. There were no wheels but he tried hand building. He had always been fascinated with the crocks that his family used for storage. His grandfather would show him the throwing rings and describe how the potter had spun clay on a wheel to make them. That was not his only recollection of handmade things, his grandmother made his and his brother's shirts and he remembered their feel compared that of their store bought trousers. After he graduated from high school, Temple decided to attend Ball State where his aunt was dean of women. It was there that he was first introduced to the pottery wheel. His teacher, Marvin Reichle and his wife Elsa were kind and giving people who would often have him over for dinner. They served their meals on handmade plates, which greatly impressed Temple. It was in that year at Ball State that he decided that he wanted to be a potter and make tableware. Reichle, however, out of genuine concern for his welfare,
>>










© 1980 - 2024 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign