Provenance:
Bonham’s, Contemporary Ceramics, 23 September 2003, lot 63
Private Collection
It would have been very easy for Janet, having moved to St.Ives and married Bernard Leach, to have followed the solidly established traditions that the pottery had established over the previous decades, but she instead followed a very different path. Her works always manage to bring something interesting to the table, and her vocabulary of forms and decorations is extremely wide.
This vase, a simple rolled slab of clay formed into an oval tube, is a perfect demonstration of the vigour with which she has enlivened the surface of her pots. She has given it life by smacking it with a paddle and then using those indentations to catch the runs of lichen-green glaze that pour downwards like rain on a window, arrested in their progress but never looking static.
