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

>> ing during that period. In it he argued that, "Pots, like all other forms of art, are human expressions. Pleasure, pain, or indifference before them depends upon their natures, and their natures are inevitably projections of the minds of their creators. It is important to remember that, although pottery is made to be used, this fact in no wise simplifies the problem of artistic expression." The discussions with Leach around the fireplace about ideas like the one just quoted, helped Temple clarify his thoughts about what kind of feeling he wanted from pottery and how to go about achieving it. Life at the pottery, though, was not entirely rosy. Temple found it totally unlike the idyllic life portrayal in the A Potter's Book. There were 12 throwers about half from the continent and the other half local. Temple was the only American. He had learned in the Army how to take care of himself and get along with others but was unprepared for the ego clashes and bickering that took place daily. He once recalled, somewhat humorously, an occasion when Bill Marshall chased him around the pottery with a hammer. St. Ives was the crucible where Temple's ideas and skills were forged.

I don't like pots that are derivative.    —Byron Temple

One of the things that Temple realized halfway through his apprenticeship was that he did not want to make Leach's style of pottery. Most of the apprentices seemed intent on either remaking the Song Dynasty pots of which Leach was so fond, or copying Hamada's work. Temple did not want to rehash Leach's interpretation of Song vases or imitate Hamada's work, not because he did not find any it beautiful, but because it represented to him nostalgia for the past and a vision that was not his. He wanted to make work that was distinctly his own and that spoke of his values and concerns. When much later in his career, he was asked how he knew his pottery was "his own"; he replied that throughout his travels in Europe and the Orient, he had not seen any work that looked like his in any of the museums he had visited. This is an important insight into Temple's creative genius. It requires little skill or imagination to copy an Iga vase from the Momoyama period, a Hamada pot, or a Song dynasty vase and pass it off as "new" to a culture that has never seen that kind of work before. Temple, however, did not merely design and create pottery that "looked" new; he constantly tested his ideas and forms against the entire history of pottery.

These ideas were still in gestation when he left the Leach pottery in 1962. His apprenticeship concluded Temple moved to London where he came across some pots that intrigued him. They were made by Colin Pearson, who lived, about 30 minutes outside London in Aylesford. Temple went to visit and convinced Pearson to take him on. Pearson was an intellectual and a respectful renegade who was extraordinarily curious. He also was unwilling to be bound by the Leach approach to pottery making. Philip Barlow, an apprentice of Pearson's in 1977 and later a friend of Temple, believes that both potters shared a joy and excitement at the possibilities that clay presented. Even though they understood the Leach tradition, which embraced the rigor of repetition as a way of intimately understanding a given shape, they chose, for the most part, to go off on a tangent to it. Barlow also says that Pearson understood better than anyone at the time how the viewer's eye moved and how important it was to have places for the eye to rest as well as places of activity. There was never an unintended consequence, nothing left to chance, everything done to a pot was considered. Barlow sees that same approach in
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