[Rarebooks] (no subject)

[Joslin Hall Rare Books]

TITLE: “A Potter in Japan, 1952-1954”

By Bernard Leach.
Published in London by Faber and Faber in 1960.

DISCUSSION: Leach writes in the Foreword: Before I started out on this
long journey back to the East at the close of 1952, I made up my mind to
keep a diary I could share with some thirty or forty of my friends in
England and America. Someone must have told the Japanese Mainichi Press
about this diary, at any rate I received a proposal for its publication,
and agreed, hoping that some of my comments, and even frank criticisms,
about the land which has become my second home might find an echo in the
hearts of my friends. The book was published in Japanese in 1955, and is
now in a second edition. The writing and the drawings were done in all
sorts of odd moments and mostly on travel. I can only hope that what has
been lost of form and sequence thereby may have been counterbalanced by
some gain in closeness of observation. Since my return at the end of 1954
my English publishers decided that there was a public in the West which
would be interested in an intimate picture of post-war Japan and of the
Japanese Craft Movement. The philosophy and aesthetics of this movement,
the new based upon the old, were given by Dr Soetsu Yanagi, its leader,
during August 1952 at Dartington Hall, Devon. Shoji Hamada, the potter,
was also there to represent the craftsmen of the Far East. Throughout this
first International Conference of potters and weavers and during our
subsequent journey across America, Hamada himself modestly but firmly
refused to lecture, leaving that task to Dr Yanagi; so much so that I have
been told since that there were some who did not realize that he could
speak English quite freely.

Bernard Leach [1887-1979] was a British studio potter and art teacher, the
"Father of British studio pottery", and a great student and proponent of
Asian ceramics. Born in Hong Kong, grandson of missionaries in Japan, he
lived in Japan as a young man and studied with the great potter Kenzan. It
was there that he also became friends with another young potter who would
acquire great fame, Shoji Hamada. With Hamada, he set up the Leach Pottery
at St. Ives, Cornwall in 1920, which included a traditional Japanese wood
burning kiln. His important text, “A Potter's Book”, was published in
1940. Leach advocated simple and utilitarian forms, and his style
influenced modern design in America in the 1950s and 1960s.

DESCRIPTION: Hardcover. 6.5”x8.5”, 246 pages, black & white illustrations,
dust jacket.

CONDITION NOTES: Minor wear, but otherwise clean and nice, with a tight
binding.

PRICE: $125.00

SOME PICTURES =>

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JOSLIN HALL RARE BOOKS, ABAA
Fine books of the 16th-20th centuries
on the decorative and fine arts & design

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