Out of Round
Out of Round Index (2024)
3 mm Steel Wire
67 x 39 x 3 in.
The forms represented by Out of Round Index (above) are adapted from the works of British Studio Potters, and from their external influences and outliers.
Top left to bottom right:
1. Song Dynasty
3. Bernard Leach
5. Norah Braden
6. C. & N. Vyse
4. Hans Coper
2. Michael Cardew
9. Magdalene Odundo
7. Lucie Rie
11. Ursula Mommens
8. Phil Rogers
10. Shoji Hamada
12. Edwin Beer Fishley
A Brief Outline of the British Studio Pottery Movement
The Studio Pottery Movement constitutes the emergence of fine art ambitions within the craft discipline of ceramics. In other words, it represents the potter’s struggle between artistic liberty and conformity to tradition. Out of Round, my MFA research project at the Royal College of Art, offers both an appraisal and revision of this movement and that of its legacy.
This movement is best characterized in the diverging practices of William Staite Murray and Bernard Leach, both living and working around the turn of the 20th century in modernized England. Murray pioneered a fine art approach for his ceramics practice, selling his expressive pots to collectors within London’s commercial gallery setting. Leach, on the other hand, sustained the classical craft model, training apprentices to produce standard wares at his studio in St. Ives. His noble craft was made accessible to all people for everyday use.
Today, Bernard Leach is recognized as the Father of the British Studio Movement. Murray’s efforts to raise pottery’s prestige produced a lineage of more experimental though less accessible offshoots—both in financial and aesthetic terms. By contrast, Leach’s traditional forms were widely admired, even perhaps bolstered by Murray’s fine art advocacy. With fame, however, Leach’s utilitarian pots have become too precious for use. The works of many Studio Potters have likewise become flattened by the collector market.
This series, Out of Round, constitutes a reversal of Murray’s efforts: applying a craft ethos to art rather than an art ethos to craft. The project distills the essence of Leach’s studio ceramics model within a fine art idiom. Abstraction and homage became the key methods of research. The series is composed of foreshortened wire-frame models. These studies are based on renowned studio potter’s works, building upon the silhouette. Although the results differ quite widely from their source material, the two are unified by a their deference to craftsmanship. This craft ethos is recognized through a concern for volume, pacing, detail, consistency, emphasis on technique, adherence to the forms, and a sensitivity to material.
Out of Round offers an outline of the Studio Pottery Movement and the subsequent flattening of its forms into icons of regional identity, anti-industrial labour, and domesticity.
Out of Round Index — Installation
Royal College of Art, London (2024)
1” Rusted Steel Pipe — 111 x 69 x 16 in.
Select Models and Contour Vessel Drawings
* Out of Round Index was shortlisted for the Trinity Buoy Wharf Drawing Prize, which opened in October of 2024. It was awarded 1st place in the exhibition by Mary Evans of The Slade School of Fine Art, Jennifer Scott of the Dulwich Picture Gallery, and Gary Sangster of Drawing Projects UK. The exhibition continues to tour the United Kingdom until October of 2025.
Studio Pottery in North Carolina
North Carolina Potters (2024)
3 mm Steel Wire
31 x 36 x 3 in.
British expat, Mark Hewitt, has carried the Studio Movement with him to American soil. His branch of the Studio Pottery Movement is informed by his training with Michael Cardew—Bernard Leach’s first apprentice. Since that time, Hewitt has overseen the training of numerous apprentices, and well over 100 seasonal kiln openings at his studio, located in Pittsboro, North Carolina.
Hewitt’s students have likewise established studios of their own, sustaining the long-standing apprenticeship model. This brief index, North Carolina Potters, traces a specific lineage of American potters emerging from the Pittsboro studio. It includes works adapted by Mark Hewitt, Matt Jones, and Daniel Johnston, as well as East Fork potters Alex Matisse, John Vigeland, and Cade Hollomon-Cook.
I trained under the East Fork potters’ guidance near Asheville, North Carolina, beginning in 2016. This series is an homage to regional history and folk tradition. It provided the opportunity for reflection upon my craft inheritance and space to admire the work of my friends and creative role models.
Top left to bottom right:
1. Alex Matisse
3. John Vigeland
5. Cade Hollomon-Cook
2. Mark Hewitt
4. Matt Jones
6. Daniel Johnston
Photos by Allison Gretchko, Yoichi Ishida, and Milena Orlandi