Shaun Hall's Raku Ceramics Blogspot

A recent holiday trip  to   St Ives  - meant I could at last visit the Leach Pottery. This was  25 years after I had first tried visiting as a student when it was closed. I think it was just after Leach's wife, Janet, had died, so I remember feeling really disappointed.  To finally get there after so long, since my halycon  student days, was somewhat of an emotional experience. Leach is not someone who has particularly influenced my style of work, I guess I pitch somewhere within  mid century- modernism, (I was always a Rie- Coper   fan back at Uni)- but you cannot deny he is a giant of pottery- with a tremendous legacy. A few years back I developed some problems with high blood pressure and it caused me to pause and reflect and  re evaluate my own work. You tend to work within a specific narrow field, to shut out "other" stuff- perhaps I was a bit arrogant, stubborn even - but I was prone to dismiss the grand- father of British Studio Pottery as just "old brown p