Michael Cardew: Flagon

About the artist:

Michael Cardew (1901 – 1983)
Michael Cardew, Oxford University graduate, founder of Winchcombe Pottery, and Wenford Bridge, founder teacher at Abuja Pottery in Nigeria, was a significant link in the chain that re-connected and re-animated different ceramic traditions through time seeing them as deeply significant to the shape of twentieth century culture. 

His stated intention was, from his first steps at Winchcombe ’to make warm, direct pots, as if occurring naturally, by a common consent between the potters and environment in which they lived.’ In her 2013 Guardian review of Tanya Harrod’s 2012 biography of Michael Cardew 'The Last Sane Man:
Michael Cardew: Modern Pots, Colonialism, and the Counterculture’ the writer A S Byatt concludes:

“I return again and again to the colour plates of the pots themselves, the lovely range of browns and golds and greenish greys – colours you couldn't quite imagine, yet all looking natural and right. They have the warmth, the rims and lips, that Cardew found "warm and kind and generous" in the Devon Country pottery as a boy.”

Fen Ditton Gallery are delighted to be able to show these early Winchcombe pots in ‘Going Yellow’ courtesy of Oxford Ceramics Gallery.