Leach Sessions: Mark Hewitt Evening Talk
The Leach Sessions invite renowned international makers to share their approach with the wider Leach Pottery community. Each session offers a chance to learn directly from makers with a strong connection to material, process and tradition, while engaging with contemporary ways of making. The sessions create space for shared learning, conversation and hands-on making within the Leach Pottery’s working environment.
Join Mark for a free evening talk exploring his practice.
When & Where: Monday 15 June 6:30 - 8pm at The Core Building, St Ives Community Orchard.
Price: Free
Capacity: 40 (Entry on a first come first serve basis)
Mark’s reflections:
Time has flown since 1976 when I first read “A Potter’s Book” while at university in Bristol, and soon thereafter began my journey to become a studio potter. I saw Leach, and Lucy Rie, at the opening of his retrospective at the V&A in 1977, and met him in St. Ives during my subsequent apprenticeship with Cardew, who’d been Leach’s first apprentice in the early 1920’s.
Having been brought up in Stoke-on-Trent, “The Potteries,” where my grandfather and father had been Directors of Spode, this trajectory was unexpected, and it’s taken me decades to reconcile the apparent contradiction between the industrial and artisanal, now thinking of them as complimentary rather than exclusionary.
For the last 43 years I’ve lived in North Carolina, which has its own world-class folk pottery traditions, and so my work inevitably mingles elements of Spode, Leach, Cardew, and North Carolina.
I’m delighted to finally be coming back to lead a workshop at the Leach Pottery, after all, the last time I was in St. Ives was in 1979, for Leach’s funeral!
Links to Mark’s website and social media:
https://www.instagram.com/markhewittpottery/
https://www.facebook.com/mark.hewitt.9469
Any questions? Please visit out FAQ — The Leach Pottery
Please be aware, only assistance dogs are allowed in the Learning spaces.
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