Byron Temple: The Gift To Be Simple   1      2      3      4      -      PRINTER VERSION

>> across the country could order work. The problem was to develop a group of forms he felt strongly enough about to commit himself to for an extended period. These objects would synthesize his concerns about utility, aesthetics and economical production by hand. They would be the modern counterparts to the crocks he had been fascinated with as a child and would, he hoped, move people in the same way those crocks had moved him. He focused primarily on seven forms: a kitchen storage jar, gratin dishes, an unglazed clay baker, a coffee server, cup and saucer, tea jars and a square kitchen pan. All of these were designed to be repeated and were glazed with a standard tenmoku or satin matte that sometimes covered only half the form, leaving the bare clay exposed on the other half.

To Temple, the repetitive nature of producing pottery on the wheel was more than an economic necessity; it was his way of avoiding self-conscious affectation. He was looking for what Mark Rothko called the "essence of the essential", and his rationale for repeating forms was not much different, as unusual as that might sound, from that of Rothko, who had said, "If a thing is worth doing once, it is worth doing over and over again—exploring it, probing it, demanding by this repetition that the public look at it."1 The economy of expression in Temple's work and the desire to keep it free from displays of egotism by relying on predetermined forms has much in common with American minimalism. The critic Robert Hughes in a recent essay makes the connection between Amish quilts and minimalism with a quote from Ad Reinhardt that could equally apply to Temple's work: "The creative process is always an academic routine and sacred procedure. Everything is prescribed and proscribed. Only in this way is there no grasping or clinging to anything. Only a standard form can be imageless, only a stereotyped image can be formless, only a formulaized [sic] art can be formulaless."2

The cup and saucer are objects Temple has always been intrigued with, embodying, if any one set of forms can, his philosophical bent. (Temple says, in fact, that many of his other works were spin-offs of whatever cup and saucer he was working on at the moment. The cylindrical shape and the handles of the casseroles, for example, were derived from his cup form.) The crux of his interest lies in the relationship between the two parts, what each allows the other to do, the manner in which each comments on the other and how all of this affects the user. In a recent series the cups no longer have an angled base with the foot cut up into it like the one he designed for production at St. Ives. They now have a much broader base with a notched foot derived from "bonsai" containers. The result is a sense of stability without the heavy, weighted feeling of most broadbottomed pots.

He still employs the same glazes—a tenmoku and an off-white satin matte— and the same reddish-orange mottled clay body he has used for years. These at first seem common, even boring. Gradually, though, the logic of his choices becomes clear. The glazes reassure you that the cup and saucer are in fact meant to be used, while at the same time allowing the evolution of Temple's ideas about form, balance and proportion to become the focus of the piece. Once you start using them, another thing happens. Temple's very specific ideas lead back to the materials and process. You remember why this particular glaze, for example, was originally so likable and you start to notice the physical nuances of each piece—the tool marks and traces of the maker's hand—a reminder of the act of creation with its own psychological appeal.
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