Edmund de Waal and Julian Stair 1 2 3 4 5 - PRINTER VERSION
>> point in your development did you feel the need to write. On a gut level, for example, what was it that caused you to abandon, for the moment, making pots and compelled you to sit down and write?
EdW: For me it was very much bound up in my apprenticeship with Geoffrey Whiting who was a great Leach generation figure. I was trained in an Orientalist tradition. In fact, I went to Japan when I was seventeen and did the whole tea ceremony business at Urasenke. While I was there, I was amazed to discover that the vast majority of Japanese pots weren't at all like the kinds of Japanese pots I had been learning about from reading Leach and being trained by Geoffrey Whiting. I got very confused by this and realized that throughout my reading of early Orientalist writings that there was this great disjunction between what people had projected onto Japan and what was really going on in Japan. So I realized that to make sense of this contradiction—my love for Oriental pots, and my confusion over Leach's writings about Japan—I had to write my own story. I am working on this all the time when I make pots; I have a close conversation with Oriental precursors, but I felt like I needed to do the same thing on an intellectual, literary level, such as researching the book on Leach, writing about Geoffrey Whiting and about Orientalism. It is all part of the journey for me as both a maker and a writer; it is absolutely integral to what I am about.
JS: Philip Rawson was extremely important to me. He taught at the Royal College of Art while I was there. It was a very critical time for me in terms of having contact with individuals who were clued into some of the ideas that I was struggling with. I had just started changing the way I was working to readdress what really interested me about ceramics, which was the making of pots. I had done sculpture before and felt that I was going down a kind of cul de sac. I was disappointed at the RCA until I met Philip. He was a wonderful man because he showed me that pottery could really have significant meaning. He could give fantastically interesting lectures on any culture or division of the arts throughout history. So when Philip talked about ceramics he talked about it with the same kind of enthusiasm and interest that he displayed when he talked about Taoist religion or Buddhist art. So Philip was an important catalyst because he made me realize that the issues I was dealing with in my art could be talked about on an intellectual level.
RB: Neither of you fit the stereotype of what Americans, at least, think of when they picture the typical English potter. How would you define the differences between yourselves and rural English potters? Why do you choose, for example, to live in London and what does that mean for your work?
EDW: Well I guess the big difference is that the ruralist, the Leach tradition is very much about a meditational play on the complexion of the English countryside, and the value of raw materials, on local clay and local wood. It is about making pots for solace, to reassure; to in some sense to encapsulate a kind of retrogressive view of ceramics being a very particular kind of activity. It just isn't something I am interested in. I can respect it for other potters, but my England is not that kind of settled and grounded place. My dad, for example, is a refugee from Europe so cities are places to me which are full of interesting cycles and nervous energy that I find is absolutely essential to the way I work.
>>
© 1980 - 2025 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign
>> point in your development did you feel the need to write. On a gut level, for example, what was it that caused you to abandon, for the moment, making pots and compelled you to sit down and write?
EdW: For me it was very much bound up in my apprenticeship with Geoffrey Whiting who was a great Leach generation figure. I was trained in an Orientalist tradition. In fact, I went to Japan when I was seventeen and did the whole tea ceremony business at Urasenke. While I was there, I was amazed to discover that the vast majority of Japanese pots weren't at all like the kinds of Japanese pots I had been learning about from reading Leach and being trained by Geoffrey Whiting. I got very confused by this and realized that throughout my reading of early Orientalist writings that there was this great disjunction between what people had projected onto Japan and what was really going on in Japan. So I realized that to make sense of this contradiction—my love for Oriental pots, and my confusion over Leach's writings about Japan—I had to write my own story. I am working on this all the time when I make pots; I have a close conversation with Oriental precursors, but I felt like I needed to do the same thing on an intellectual, literary level, such as researching the book on Leach, writing about Geoffrey Whiting and about Orientalism. It is all part of the journey for me as both a maker and a writer; it is absolutely integral to what I am about.
JS: Philip Rawson was extremely important to me. He taught at the Royal College of Art while I was there. It was a very critical time for me in terms of having contact with individuals who were clued into some of the ideas that I was struggling with. I had just started changing the way I was working to readdress what really interested me about ceramics, which was the making of pots. I had done sculpture before and felt that I was going down a kind of cul de sac. I was disappointed at the RCA until I met Philip. He was a wonderful man because he showed me that pottery could really have significant meaning. He could give fantastically interesting lectures on any culture or division of the arts throughout history. So when Philip talked about ceramics he talked about it with the same kind of enthusiasm and interest that he displayed when he talked about Taoist religion or Buddhist art. So Philip was an important catalyst because he made me realize that the issues I was dealing with in my art could be talked about on an intellectual level.
RB: Neither of you fit the stereotype of what Americans, at least, think of when they picture the typical English potter. How would you define the differences between yourselves and rural English potters? Why do you choose, for example, to live in London and what does that mean for your work?
EDW: Well I guess the big difference is that the ruralist, the Leach tradition is very much about a meditational play on the complexion of the English countryside, and the value of raw materials, on local clay and local wood. It is about making pots for solace, to reassure; to in some sense to encapsulate a kind of retrogressive view of ceramics being a very particular kind of activity. It just isn't something I am interested in. I can respect it for other potters, but my England is not that kind of settled and grounded place. My dad, for example, is a refugee from Europe so cities are places to me which are full of interesting cycles and nervous energy that I find is absolutely essential to the way I work.
>>
© 1980 - 2025 Rob Barnard . All Rights Reserved. Site design: eismontdesign