Derek Emms - Obituary

[Roy]

Derek Emms
Potter and lecturer who established good training in functional pottery and later produced fine, widely exhibited ceramics
DEREK EMMS was an excellent potter who produced finely crafted studio ceramics very much in the tradition of Bernard Leach. He also established an influential ceramics course in Staffordshire.

He was born in 1929, in Accrington, Lancashire. It was a large family and he was the only one of eight children to receive higher education. Emms attended local primary and grammar schools and then applied for a scholarship to Accrington Art School. The teaching there was fairly basic and primarily concentrated on textile design — this area was near the centre of the cotton industry.

Emms had by now become inspired by Bernard Leach’s A Potter’s Book, yet the Accrington course, while giving him a basis in both craft and brushwork, could offer him little in the way of training in ceramics. He and a fellow student, Frank Hamer, transferred to Burnley School of Art which offered a pottery course leading to a National Diploma in Design. Emms went on to Leeds University where he qualified for teacher training.

In 1954, after completing his National Service in the Royal Air Force, Emms spent a year at the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall. Bernard Leach was travelling extensively in America and his eldest son, David, was also away a great deal leaving his younger son, Michael, in charge of the pottery for much of the time.

Here, Emms got his real ceramic education. Under Bill Marshall, the foreman, he polished all the skills necessary for making the Leach standard ware. He returned to the Leach Pottery every summer through to 1962 and married a local woman, Celia Tregorran.

Emms took the post of full-time lecturer in pottery at Longton School of Art (later to become 3D design as part of North Staffs Polytechnic). The course he took over was only barely operative and he had to overhaul it — installing a gas-fired kiln and powered wheels. He set up the training very much based on Leach ideas; it wasexpected that students make thrown, reduction-fired, individual functional pots. To set up such a course in the heartland of manufactured industrial ceramics was very bold and radical. Major potters who went through his course included Paul Astbury, David Frith and Geoffrey Swindell. Emms met his second wife, Irene Herbert, who was working there as a secretary. They married in 1976.

Emms made some pots while at Longton, but his full-time teaching commitments meant that he was not prolific. Most of his early pots are thrown and reduction fired and many were decorated with lively but, occasionally over-elaborate brushwork. After retiring from his teaching post in 1985, Emms moved to nearby Stone where he established a pottery and began making ceramics full time. Much of the new work was porcelain, though he also continued to use a light-coloured stoneware. The pots, all functional forms, were beautifully made and followed the characteristic Leach model of studio pottery based on Chinese Sung pottery. Emms was particularly good at giving life to very restrained pots. He is best known for his incised designs under a celadon glaze but, was also fond of tenmoku, chun and copper red glazes.

Derek Emms was a member of the Craftsmen Potters Association, the Red Rose Guild and of North Staffordshire’s Guild of Craftsmen. He was widely exhibited and greatly respected — especially by other functional potters. He was a quiet man with no great ambition to promote his own work. While there was almost no innovation in his pots and little to impress art critics, he was a fine craftsman who in almost any other Western country might well have been one of the leading domestic potters. In England, where there are dozens of exceptional post-Leach potters, he did not get the attention his pots merited.

Derek Emms, potter, was born on October 30, 1929. He died on October 17, 2004, aged 74.

Source: The Times Online - http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...376394,00.html

[mez]

another accringtonion with the skill to please, gone un noticed , thanks roy

[WillowTheWhisp]

I'm rather impressed by the fact that he taught David Frith (Brookhouse Pottery) whose creations alway seems to find favour with TV bargain hunters etc. (useful and decorative at the same time)

Thank you for bringing this to our attention Roy. As Mez says, yet another unsung hero.