James Tait Black Memorial Prizes
The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew: Modern Pots, Colonialism, and the Counterculture
Tanya Harrod studies the life of ceramic artist Michael Cardew, a modernist who distrusted modernity, and follows the contradictions of his craft, colonial service, and later reputation. The book doubles as a biography and a history of studio pottery.
Work Information
A life of craft, contradiction, and the making of modern pottery.
Harrod presents Cardew as a paradoxical figure: a modernist who resisted modernity, a colonial servant who despised empire, and a maker committed to the handmade. The biography also works as a broader account of twentieth-century craft culture and its ideals.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Paul Mellon Centre
- Published
- 2013-01-08
- Pages
- 472 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 19.69 x 3.81 x 26.04 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780300100167
- ISBN-10
- 0300100167
- Category
- 洋書/Arts & Photography/History & Criticism/History
The British studio potter Michael Cardew (1901-1983) was a man of paradox, a modernist who disliked modernity, a colonial servant who despised Empire, a husband and father who was also homosexual, and an intellectual who worked with his hands. Graduating from Oxford in 1923, training with the legendary Bernard Leach, he went on to lead a life of pastoral poverty in Gloucestershire, making majestic slipware and participating in the polarised design and political debates of the 1930s. A wartime project in Ghana turned him into a fierce critic of British overseas policies; he remained in West Africa intermittently until 1965, founding a local tradition of stoneware inspired by the ambient material culture, independent of European imports, made by Africans for Africans. He ended his days a ceramic magus, his pottery at Wenford Bridge, Cornwall, an outpost of the counterculture and a haven for disaffected youth. In North America, the Antipodes and sub-Saharan Africa he offered the egalitarianism of craft as an antidote to racism and inequality. As the novelist Angela Carter observed in 1977, he came to seem 'the Last Sane Man in a crazy world.' Along with historians of Empire and civil rights, and art and design historians, readers with a general interest in British cultural history will want to read this book. Published for the Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art
Tanya Harrod is an independent design historian, the author of the prize-winning The Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century and the co-editor of the Journal of Modern Craft .
Reviews
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très bien
livre en anglais qui retrace bien le parcours mouvementé et complexe de la vie du Potier Michael Cardew Témoignage intéressant du déroulement d'une vie "hors norme". Complète très utilement une collection autour de la thématique Poterie/Céramique.
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An epic account, politically agile and wonderful storytelling
Michael Cardew, (1901-1983), was, and still is, one of the most highly regarded potters of the 20th century. Tanya Harrod's detailed journey through his life and work is an epic sweep across the social, political, and art history of the 20th century. Cardew is particularly well know for his work in West Africa, in Ghana and Nigeria, both British colonies at that time. He set up three pottery workshops, over a period of twenty years and produced some of his most memorable work there. Harrod navigates this vast and complicated historical terrain with formidable political agility. She applies forensic critical scrutiny to the colonial context of working, personal and romantic relationships as well as to the wider social contexts. We get to know Cardew as a scholar, a potter, a husband, a father, a lover, a friend, and as a teacher and mentor. We learn of his character through his own writings and those of many others, including interviews with people in West Africa who remember him. Harrod brings an admirably cool head combined with considerable compassion to the complicated tangle of both homosexual and heterosexual relationships, enabling a fully rounded picture of all concerned to emerge. Cardew eschewed industrial processes, insisting on developing a pottery `from the ground up,' starting with making and firing the kiln bricks, digging up local clay and grinding rocks for glaze materials. Undaunted, Harrod deftly picks her way through the details of craft pottery - the firing temperatures, the nature and feel of the clay, the machinery and general grub and grit as well as the science and aesthetics of the business. This is painstaking historical research combined with fluent, inspired storytelling. It's a glorious book, one that will live near you and will be read and reread, argued over and discussed. Buy it new - second hand copies will be rarer than hen's teeth!
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master potter
Michael Cardew led a remarkable life in a time long gone, He explored a new paradigm in his art and life
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...for what it is.
Who was it that said you can list a mile of facts about a person and still miss the essential? There is a qualitative difference between what was written by Michael Cardew and what was written about him...like the difference between a wolf and a dog, or between a Spanish mustang and a cowpony. Same species, different spirit. The questions that Michael asked were different...dream-driven. What price do we pay, in the end, if we keep looking for quicker and easier ways to do things? What shape do you want to give your life, using your free will together with the inevitable limits & losses that come? Do you treat your clay with the respect a good friend deserves and listen to what it has to say? Or, to put it another way, your life is your clay...how do you treat it and what are you making out of it? It's interesting that the final paragraph in the book is a challenge...who now will ask these questions? So, for what it is: Aside from it's wonderful title, this biography is a rich and intricate tapestry, a valuable, accurate account of a remarkable person: pioneer, philosopher, musician, writer, artist and teacher. A combination of opposites: quintessential Englishman and global person, broadly knowledgeable and keenly focused, a worker and a thinker, logical and intuitive, tortured and confident, austere and exuberant. The impossible situation at Achimota College during World War II is described in excruciating detail, and it's instructive to see how Michael eventually became an expert on the chemistry of clay and glazes to overcome similar difficulties in the future. The subtext here involves a beautiful and humane vision, sacrifice and the currents of destiny.
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Well researched
This is a very well researched book but I am not sure that I quite understood some of conclusions that Harrod came to. Wonderful pictures.