“We'll be potters, we'll be painters, we'll be textile designers, we'll be jewelers, we'll be a little this, a little of that. We were going to be the renaissance people [when we were young].” PeopleLittlesYoungPainterDesignerPottersRenaissanceTextiles Author:Warren MacKenzie
“We were working from very exact models and dimensions and weights of clay to make these pots which had been designed some 10 or 12 years previous to our arriving [at Bernard's Leach studio]. And we, being, I guess you would say young, arrogant Americans, thought that we ought to be able to somehow express ourselves a little bit more in the daily work of the pottery.” YearsLittlesAbleYoungBitsOughtLittle BitModelsWeightStudiosDimensionsPotArrogantClayArrivingPotteryDaily Work Author:Warren MacKenzie
“[Bernard Leach] was an incredible draftsman, and at the end of breakfast time, for instance, he would push his plate back, and he'd pull an old scrap of paper out of his pocket and a little stub of a pencil, and he'd begin to make small drawings, about an inch and a half, two inches tall, of pots that he wanted to make. And they were beautiful drawings. I really wish I'd stolen some of those scraps of paper, because those drawings were exquisite explorations of his ideas of form and volume in a ceramic piece.” LittlesTwoIdeasEndsWantedBeautifulFormWishHalfPiecesPaperIncrediblesDrawingInstancePocketsExplorationTallBreakfastPotInchesPlatesVolumePencilsStolenExquisiteScrapCeramicsDraftsman Author:Warren MacKenzie
“If [Bernard Leach] didn't like the drawing, he'd X it out and do another one and change the form a little bit. And when he was all done, he would stuff these pieces of paper in his pocket and go off to the pottery, and when he wanted to make pots, he would then take these out and he'd begin to produce the pot that he had designed on paper in front of us.” IfsLittlesDoneWantedFormStuffBitsPiecesFrontsProducePaperLittle BitDrawingPocketsPotPottery Author:Warren MacKenzie
“I used to think [Shoji] Hamada never drew, until there was a book by Bernard [Leach] published about his work [Hamada: Potter, Tokyo; New York: Harper & Row, 1975] and at the rear of the book were a number of wonderful little sketches, but they were not drawings like Bernard made.” ThinkingLittlesMadeBookUsedNumbersWonderfulNew YorkDrawingPottersTokyoHarper Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Bernard's [Leach] drawings delineated every little accent on the pot, every subtle curve and change of angle and proportion and all.” LittlesDrawingProportionSubtlePotAccentsAngleCurves Author:Warren MacKenzie
“[Shoji] Hamada's [drawings] were little one-line notations of something he wanted to remember about a pot or a piece of furniture or a landscape or something like that, and they were just done very quickly and they had, he thought, no artistic quality. They're not great drawings, but they served to remind him of something he had in his mind, so that when he then went to the studio, that would stick in his mind and he could explore the making of the pot with the clay on the wheel.” MindLittlesDoneWantedRememberLinesQualityPiecesSticksStudiosDrawingArtisticLandscapeWheelsPotFurnitureClayOne Line Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Some years ago I was working on some forms which were vase forms with a fairly narrow base, and it was after [Hans] Coper had died that I saw an exhibition of his, a catalogue from an exhibition, and he was showing some forms which were made by cutting and joining a lot of different parts together to create what he called a spade form, which you can imagine looks a little bit like a shovel upside down.” YearsLooksLittlesMadeDifferentTogetherFormBitsSawsCuttingImagineLittle BitYears AgoDiedJoiningUpside DownExhibitionsShovelsSpadesVasesCatalogues Author:Warren MacKenzie
“In the Leach Pottery we did most of our work on the wheel. [Bernard] Leach did a little work in the studio, which was press-molded forms, plastic clay pressed into plaster forms to make small rectangular boxes and some vase forms, which he liked to make. These were molds which had been made to an original that he had modeled in solid clay, and during our work there, sometimes I would be pressing these forms as a means of production.” MeanLittlesMadeSometimesWould BeFormOriginalsPressesProductionsBoxesStudiosWheelsPlasticClayMoldPotteryVasesPlasters Author:Warren MacKenzie