Trust your Taste (because you are different to anyone else on the planet)

I think there are a few things that stop many people from having beautiful things in their lives.

Firstly it’s easy to have a sense that we don’t deserve to have beautiful things. It’s also possible for beautiful things to appear superficial and unnecessary and I have noticed that some people think that it is a vanity to choose beautiful objects.

I completely disagree with all of these. I think living in the midst of beauty is as important as the air we breathe. I think beauty can be like heaven. We think it’s something that happens at another time – rather than ‘We are living in heaven now, enjoy’.

My rallying cry has always been ‘To bring beauty into your life, that’s my job’ and I think I got it by direct injection from my parents. As a child the chair I sat in (and covered in porridge), was handmade from driftwood in the long winter nights by a farmer in Kerry. The spoons, plates, glasses, mugs that I used were all carefully chosen by my mother, early on for their strength and durability when they bounced off the tiled floor, and later for the beauty of simplicity.

There is nothing elitist or snobbish to my attitude to good design. I would have been very happy to have had the same career as Mr. Ikea. If you are making a mug it is as easy to make a beautiful mug as an ugly mug and needn’t cost any more. I think when choosing or making something the real trick is not to worry what friends, neighbours and relations think of your choice. Being true to your own heart is a very good standard to work by. What I do may be hideous to you, so that means you’ve got to do your own thing.

As near as I can get to good design is to keep things as simple as possible. So maybe there is no such thing as good or bad design. Maybe there’s just personal taste, and for me this is cool as long as you’re following your own heart – and not what friends, magazines and shopkeepers tell you you need.

All my life my work has been design, and it may encourage you to hear that when I was kitting out my own house I had serious doubts about light fittings, curtains, and cutlery. I really had to dig deep to say ‘I like this, and I want it’. There were even a few instances where I chose things and within a year realised they were completely unsuited to my style of living.

But at least I learned what I didn’t like.

Your house is your house. And it’s fine if it’s the same as a thousand other houses on the outside. It’s inside your nest that really counts.

 

Stephen

 

Recent posts:

WHY EARTHENWARE? (AUGUST 12 2014)

“Yes, but why do you like it?”

 

“It would be easy to say ‘Because my daddy made it’ but that’s only part of the story.”, he said…

 

 

WHY EARTHENWARE?

Today as Stephen was floating through the office, as he sometimes does (not often as he hates computers), I asked him a question which I have sometimes wondered about.

“Why Earthenware? Why did you choose, and continue to make earthenware?”

Without hesitation he replied, “Because I like it.”

“Yes, but why do you like it?”

“It would be easy to say ‘Because my daddy made it’ but that’s only part of the story.”, he said.

“The real reason I like earthenware is because of its softness. It lends itself very well to the sorts of gentle shapes that I like to do. What I enjoy most about being a potter is shape, and subtlety.

“The truth is that earthenware is the tradition of most of the world, from Greece to Mexico, and apart from China, Japan, Korea where stoneware and porcelain were made for many thousands of years, and in Europe a few German beer steins, earthenware was the staple pottery. Before technology, the only way to tell the temperature inside a kiln was to look through a little peep-hole to check the colour of the flames (which I learned to do in Japan – it’s surprising how quickly one can become accurate at this). These early kilns were very crude clay boxes. Often in the East the potter would make a large wickerwork archway and weave a basket, over which he would pat clay. Then when it was dry he would light a fire inside, burning away the basket and hey presto! A simple kiln.

“The Africans on the other hand often piled the pots in a circular dome, threw leaves and sticks on top and just lit the fire. All of this was possible because the temperature at which we fire earthenware is very low and so it lent itself to simple, primitive methods. I don’t know but I suppose the reason that the Chinese were able to get into stoneware and porcelain which goes up to more than 1300C/2300F (as opposed to early earthenware at 900C/1600F) is because they were way ahead of us in getting their heads around things like gunpowder, writing their names and all sorts of other things.

“Back in the 1960s in England most potters turned from earthenware to stoneware because it was meant to be stronger – and in a sense this may be true, however we are lucky to have our own field of local earthenware clay which just happens to be as chip-resistant as earthenware can get. And so, I have been lucky enough to do what I really love doing without getting into trouble.”

That’s what the maker has to say, now over to you… We are equally interested to know why you all like earthenware.

Terracotta Warrior: How I started my Classic range…

As every man who has a father knows working together in your late teens brings out a certain rivalry and resentment. So having been to Japan to finish my pottery studies and then having spent a year in the rock and roll business in London in the 60s, when I returned to work at Shanagarry Pottery with my father I began to feel trapped and frustrated. It had nothing to do with my father but I was at that stage of development when a young man needs to get out and plough his furrow. At first I was considering creating a completely different sort of pottery with different clay and different colour glazes. However I realised that I was very much in love with our earthenware clay having gone to the field with my father as a young boy to dig it on the banks of the River Blackwater. There was the memory of the camaraderie of digging with picks and shovels, the preparing of the clay by hand at home, the unique smell and sloppy texture – and finally the satisfaction of making pottery with it. So I decided that I would stick with the earthenware clay from Youghal.

Early days, early pots. The shapes have evolved ever so slightly over the years – sometimes for simplicity, sometimes as I learnt what customers really want and sometimes to keep up with the modern world: dishwashers for example.

Then the next two choices. Firstly while in Japan making pots that were not glazed on the exterior I became very fond of holding pottery that was slightly rough on the outside. In addition, as a young designer with simplicity as my number one priority it seemed obvious to me that I needed to continue using my father’s white glaze on the inside of my work. So put all of that together and you have the essence of my Classic range. What I find most extraordinary is that a few simple changes like I made really change the feel of my father’s and my pottery completely. And yet they are of the same family.

Recently I have been noticing in life that small adjustments can have a major impact. Like getting up half an hour earlier in the morning, being slightly more attentive to your partner or simply not putting sugar in your coffee. Anyway, that was the beginning of the Terracotta and White range of pottery which I started in 1972.

Still going strong: Our bestsellers from the Classic Range in 2013

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Previously:
Read about how Stephen’s father Philip started the Shanagarry Range

Why Stephen called his book “Warrior Spirit”

The story of Shanagarry Pottery and Stephen’s own adventure, Stephen Pearce: Warrior Spirit, is now available with free shipping to Ireland, the UK and the US.

272 pages, over 200 colour photographs by the renowned photographer Kevin Dunne, 24x30cm (coffee table format) and almost 2kg!
Order your copy here for Christmas.

How Shanagarry Pottery began… and how it went black

My Dad had a dream. And so did my mother. The same dream, the same night around Easter 1952. They dreamt that if my father Philip drove to a pub in Youghal that he would find an aging potter. Which he did, and he did. Willie Greene came and taught Philip the rudiments of pottery in a greenhouse with grapes trailing from the ceiling. Willie’s family had been potters for about 200 years; this is one reason for the traditional strength of many of my father’s and my pots. Philip was an extremely gentle man, into meditation and classical music and not that interested in wealth or fame. Having learnt his trade he quietly went on to spend the second half of his life developing our little cottage industry. (Then came Stephen and Simon – but that’s a whole other story.)

In the beginning the cards were stacked against my father and his new pottery. The fashion at the time was for delicate china, with fine rims, gold and painted decorations. Along came Philip with his taste for simple, earthenware designs that he felt were much more immediate to the beauty of everyday life. It took a while for Irish people to tune into his vision of beautiful everyday pottery, and he was often advised that he could make more money by shelving his principles and filling his kilns with leprechauns and ‘more fashionable’ designs. Philip wasn’t that sort of person though – he was quietly set on his idea of what he wanted to do and he stuck to it.

Although it has evolved slightly over the years, the elegant lines of our 2 Pint Jug are rooted in a traditional pitcher shape made in the area for hundreds of years. Philip at the wheel, inset.

At first he experimented with all sorts of different colours to glaze his earthenware – purple, yellow, green – before settling on his (now iconic) black and white which meet in the middle and do something different everytime. It seemed to suit what he was trying to say, and perhaps his background as a typographer had something to do with it in the end. He wanted his pottery to be a backdrop to the food. Never out of place, never stepping forward with unnecessary flourishes or features. Everything as it should be and no more. Let me tell you that this is a deceptively difficult skill to master in design. The temptation is always to be clever, to add something new or memorable. I have spent many days, weeks and months refining a design down to what is its most useful form and my mother was a very strong influence on all of us in this regard.

Since his death in 1993 I continue to produce and develop my father’s Shanagarry range and I must say I still find it very beautiful. It has so much in common with my own range – they mix rather well on the table – but they are also very very different characters. I have often thought, looking at our pots together with Simon’s glass on my table, that they are like children of the same family.

Read more about how Philip became a Potter in Stephen’s recently launched coffee table book and history of Shanagarry Pottery: Warrior Spirit

NEXT: Read about how Stephen began his Classic Range in 1972.

Oran’s breakfast

Sitting on a hill in Italy 7.30am. Sun rising across the hills. Mist rising from the valley. I feel a burst of happy energy. I light a log fire and do yoga for the first time in six months. I meditate (I must be the world’s worst meditator) and eat the remains of my son’s breakfast. He has just gone to the airport with his mother, Lauren, and I nearly cry. When he’s here we hardly see him and now he’s gone back to school in America until Christmas.

I sit and ponder ideas for Musgrave’s next promotion. Some new shapes for my pottery for January and details for a spa in Athlone. They are all threads of the same stream of consciousness. When I design I try to be part of where the universe is at the moment and to express it. So all of my work today has a unity, a common theme. I don’t think ideas come from me – it’s like I am a conduit and dip into the universal consciousness as best I can. Maybe every action in the universe affects this and it’s just a question of how open we are to the process.

Love Stephen