An Art of the People: Collecting Studio Pottery

 Mike Yates, a passionate collector himself has recently written a beautiful booklet, about his own collecting journey, which not only goes into the history of studio pottery, but talks about some other avid collectors as well. It's an absolute must for anyone interested in ceramics.

Many of you will be familiar with Mike Yates from the talks he has given to the Friends, going back as far as 2012 when he gave a talk entitled 'Smashing Pots'  and more recently a talk on 'The Role of Ceramics' to accompany a ceramics exhibition of pots belonging to Mike and loaned for the exhibition. Here he is seen with an Ian Auld pot while talking to a packed gallery of members of the Friends..

Anyone who is a collector will recognise the collecting journey Mike takes us on, remembering the circumstances when each item in the collection was acquired. The main thing is that although there is a financial cost to collecting, it's always worth it if you love what you are collecting.
Mike mentions a bowl in the booklet made by Ursula Mommens , who has a fine heritage which he outlines. The bowl is just gorgeous, he bought it ten years ago from a gallery in London. The point is he still admires it and is still wondering if the fish look like flying fish; they do seem to be moving as seen below:

Another Mommens bowl, similar to this one, recently came up for auction it was part of a collection of some 1.200 pieces owned by Michael Evans, also known as Dayabandhu. His collection was featured in an article about his collection in a Design magazine produced by the Guardian recently:

 It's well worth clicking on the link to see the article and much better photos of Dayabandhu's collection.
One of the pieces Mike included in his booklet is this small pressed dish made by Shoji Hamada:

As well as considering the anatomy of collecting, Mike also gives helpful hints on where to find studio pottery including visiting Ceramics Fairs and where to find out about them.
This is a delightful book, if you are intrigued and would like to buy a copy please email admin@friendsofsmag.org
Mike has kindly offered to donate copies to us, so all profits from sales will go to the Friends. I'm selling them at £5 each including postage and packing. So please don't hesitate to buy one!!

Top 5 Posts of All Time

Having listed the top 10 posts of 2019, I thought I'd list the top 5 posts in the history of the blog.

Coming in at number 1 is the post about Jon Ratcliffe's talk 'Unseen Swindon' at 538 page views, published on May 7 2018, it can be read in full here.

 

 I've included one of Jon's photos of the David Murray John Tower.

At the second spot is a post entitled 'Collective Artists with their Work' and is a series of photos of artists who took part in the first Open Exhibition at the museum. It's dated December 30 2018 and shows lots of photographs of artists who took part, and has 500 page views. It's hard to pick just one photo of an artist from this post. Do have a look here at all the photos.

 
 This is Mia Willis with her painting, she coincidentally walked in to the gallery when I was there, it wasn't taken on the opening night as most of them were.

In the third place is  a post called 'Smashing Pots a talk by Mike Yates' with 441 page views, it was posted on October 18 in 2012 and is of course worth reading, it can be found here.
I'll use 'The Pear' by Mo Jupp as the photo from the talk:


And in fourth place, there's a post copied from the flyer of Talks and Trips for 2019 with 426 page views. I've taken the piece about the talk by Michael Gray to represent that post.
 
 And finally in fifth place, a post entitled 'Archaeological Reconstruction Drawings' a write up of a talk by Jennie Anderson with 366 page views, this post was published on April 30 2017. Jennie debunked the idea that Vikings wore 2 pronged helmets  One important thing is people's preconception, Jennie said, for instance many people imagine Vikings had 2 pronged helmets as seen on the person below. The audience were asked to draw a Viking and many people drew the helmet with 2 prongs, Jennie was able to trace this back to a drawing made of Vikings made over a hundred years ago which has influenced our idea of what Vikings looked like.
 
 I can't get the photo into the centre of the page, but I think you can see the familiar idea we have of a viking helmet.
For anyone wondering where the Talks and Trips programme for 2020 has gone, it's due out very soon.