Ethics, Education and the Kitchen Table Potter

Abstract

The paper considers the role that manuals targeted at the wide and disparate community of amateur potters have played in disseminating ethical ideals and standards during the post-war period. These manuals were authored, in the main by a vocal and largely art-school based elite whose strongly held attitudes were concretised in their pages.

Taking the period 1945-1970 in the United Kingdom as a case study, a period during which there was a relative explosion of publishing activity that addressed the area, the paper argues that these manuals have been vital but largely unsung points of transmission for ethical approaches to making. In doing so they went beyond simply offering technical guidance, helping instead to cohere a view of the role and value of the hand-maker in modern western society that went far beyond the boundaries of art school culture.

The paper places this activity in the context of a tradition of producing manuals for the amateur worker that dates back to early 19th century Europe. Reviewing a total of 28 manuals published in the quarter of a century following the end of World War Two, it shows that changing attitudes to what it was to be an ‘ethical’ potter can be examined by surveying responses to particular aspects of the making process. Author’s approaches to the role of the workshop environment as an evocation of the maker’s moral position, together with attitudes towards kilns, firing and hand versus wheel forming techniques are surveyed and analysed. Responses to these issues by the authors tried to define the boundaries between what was appropriate for ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ work, but also acted as a starting point for the development of a network of intellectual and philosophical relationships being made between the particular (process of potting) and the general (process of living). The dissemination of these debates to a wider audience, allied to greater access to low cost pottery-making materials and equipment helped to ensure that ceramics as a making activity was not only perceived as a mainstay of the post-war crafts ‘scene’ but also a craft activity that led the way in being thoughtful, open and ethical in its approach.