Janet Leach: Retrospective

A survey exhibition focussing on the career and work of Janet Darnell Leach (1918-1997), a potter who lived and worked in St Ives from 1956 until her death in 1997. Leach is acknowledged as one of the leading potters of the second half of the 20th century. Accompanied by an important new publication with a text by the curator Emmanuel Cooper, the exhibition traces the development of her ideas from the early, more formal pots to the later, freely thrown bottles bearing the marks and scarring of the wood fire.

Born in Texas, Leach trained in sculpture and ceramics in the USA and later worked as a potter in the 1950s in Japan under her principal mentor, Shoji Hamada. She settled in Britain in 1956 after her marriage to Bernard Leach and together they ran the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall. Although working within the Leach tradition, her pots forged a unique style combining thrown, coiled or slab built techniques with minimal decoration and glaze. They were primarily influenced by Japanese and Korean practice moving towards sculptural form. When Bernard Leach died in 1979, Janet continued potting, throwing individual pieces in a variety of clays and using different firing techniques.

This exhibition will tour to two venues in 2007 (details to be confirmed)