“I thought I was going to be able to use my painting ideas as decoration on pottery, but my painting did not translate into decoration on pottery. I thought it was going to, and in fact I made, while still in school, a plate with one of my paintings on it, and that's exactly what it was, it was a plate with a painting on it. It was not a decorated plate; it was just a painting superimposed over a three-dimensional ceramic form.” MadeStillsIdeasFactsUseAbleSchoolFormThreePaintingPlatesTranslateDecorationPotteryCeramics Author:Warren MacKenzie
“[I made in army] all sorts of dumb things, but it did teach me a lot about the silk-screen process.” MadeProcessTeachArmyScreensDumbSilkDumb Things Author:Warren MacKenzie
“We were more fortunate than most, because [Bernard] Leach had been in America on a lecture tour in 1950, and we made arrangements to travel from America back to England with him on the same boat. It was a very slow boat. I think it took us about seven days to cross the Atlantic.” ThinkingMadeAmericaCrossesEnglandSevenBoatFortunateArrangementsLecturesSeven Days Author:Warren MacKenzie
“When Bernard [Leach] wrote his book, he wrote about the fact that even when pots are made in a series, there is a personality to each pot and that the person who made it reflects their personality into the clay.” PersonsMadeBookFactsPersonalitySeriesMade ItPotClay Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Looking back on it now, I understand why that was not possible [to express ourselves], because the pottery employed a dozen people, not all of whom are making pots. And these people had families, children, and they had to have a wage that would allow them to raise their family and they had to get a paycheck every Friday afternoon. So if we had not made pots that would sell it, would not have been possible for these people to be employed.” PeopleIfsChildrenHas BeensMadeRaisesSellsPotAfternoonDozenLooking BackEmployedFridayPaychecksPotteryFriday Afternoon 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
“I think back to some of the pots we made when we first started our pottery, and they were pretty awful pots. We thought at the time they were good; they were the best we could make, but our thinking was so elemental that the pots had that quality also, and so they don't have a richness about them which I look for in my work today. Whether I achieve it all the time, that's another question, because I don't think a person can produce at top level 100 percent of the time.” ThinkingFirstsLooksPersonsMadeTodayLevelsQualityAchieveProducePercentAwfulPotRichnessElementalsPottery Author:Warren MacKenzie
“Friends of Bernard's [Leach] came to visit, and when we went to London, we were given introductions to people like Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Richard Batram. All these people were, let's say, made available to us by a friendship with Leach. In addition there was a potter's group - what was it called? I think it was called the Cornish Potters Society, but I'm not sure of that. Anyway, they had meetings and we would go with Leach to these meetings and meet other potters, and they would have programs where they would discuss pottery and people would interchange ideas.” PeopleThinkingMadeIdeasGivenGroupsProgramMeetingsAvailableLondonNot SureIntroductionPottersPotteryInterchange 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