St Ives Pottery Earthenware Bowl 1920s

This anonymous small pot could have been made by Bernard Leach, Shoji Hamada, Michael Cardew or Katherine Pleydell Bouverie. Although it is clearly marked with a crisp SI mark in a circle ( in use from 1921) it is unsigned. Dipped in a brown glaze, except for the foot where it would have been held by the finger tips while being dipped, it is simply decorated with brushed wavy lines. It was fired with a small chip to the rim - this flaw and the imperfections of the glaze were apparently of no concern to the potter.

It must have appeared very dull, crude and alien to the British taste of the time. The pottery had just been established, they built there own kilns and used local clay, often of poor quality, and fired their kilns with local wood including Rhododendrons - only a small percentage of the pots made survived the firing. There was a completely different mind set at work here and it took a long time to be appreciated fully.

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