Alison Britton on Michael Cardew

AB: This ties in with the English slipware enthusiasm that everybody wanted to try, when everybody wanted to embrace it but it didn't sell apparently. So a lot of people - I mean Leach and Cardew and others -started to make stoneware because it was going to go better, apparently. But there is again a wonderful rich warmth in it. It's a nice weight, nicely made ... probably never used, do you think? [video clip ends] Was it bought ...?

MP: Yes, it was bought in 1938, so it has never been used.

AB: Yes, so it was bought from an exhibition or bought from his studio, maybe.

MP: I think from an exhibition.

AB: Yes, it's a very, very nice, full volume, a classic example of its kind. It doesn't touch me at all. No, I can admire it, but not feel for it.

MP: You wouldn't want it?

AB: I wouldn't want it, no. There are pieces of his that I would. There are some plates; there's a bird plate I'm very fond of. I think when he's using colour more, [when] there are different colours of slip and so on, [then I think] there's an economy and gracefulness in the drawing. No, this talks about a time just a bit before mine. I think this would have had vivid meaning as a contrast to what had come before it, [but] its freshness is not there for me. But I can imagine it being there in the thirties.

MP: Do you ever come across students who are turned on by the sort of things we've been looking at?

AB: Yes. Throwing's definitely on the increase in general and the idea of the studio potter is not dying. At the Royal College we've had to buy three or four new wheels and enlarge the throwing room because it's definitely [and] quite forcibly back on the agenda. [This is] not people trying to re-create Cardew or anything, but they definitely buy some of those values. They want a modern version of that whole ethic of the hand-made in everyday use. You know that still is what they're trying to do.