Ceramics: Art and Perception No. 72 2008 27

MARTIN LUNGLEY IS A DIFFERENT KIND OF POTTER.He makes pots that are raw, rugged and yetrefined; his skill is evident but to him it is a

burden. So often we look first at the material and thetechnique before we look at the pot. Lungley looksfrom the other side; from the perspective of someoneassured of his or her skill. He wants us to look at hispots and ignore his skill.

From the beginning he has marked himself out asan unusual potter for the modern age. He completed arenowned Higher National Diploma course, from theKent Institute of Art and Design, England, in 1989,with a profound understanding of working with clay.However, he didn’t follow the logical potter’s pathalongside his contemporaries, into further educationand a life as a dedicated studio potter. Instead he tookthe harder, less prestigious option of making a livingthrowing garden pots. He began his working life as askilled piece-work potter throwing flowerpots. Thephysical performance of throwing kept him addictedto the wheel. In a true labour of love he cared lessabout the end product than the process itself. Hun-dreds of pots came to life in his hands. There followednearly 10 years of working in this way.

Endless throwing and single-firing producedmountains of garden pots. Lungley has a fascinationfor the qualities of a bisque surface. Its dusty simplic-ity is the perfect vehicle for a potter exhilarated bythrowing. A bisque surface hides nothing; every dropof slurry, fingerprint and touch of the maker is onshow. A bisque pot is good honest pot.

The exercise and exorcise of throwing is in keepingwith one of Lungley’s heroes. He cites Shoji Hamadaas having a hand in his work. Hamada believed thatone of the signs of a great pot was repetition; couldthis form be repeated endlessly by a potter skilledenough to let the pot sing for itself on the wheel.Through his time as a production potter Lungleyclearly held true to this belief; that it is only in themind-numbing and back-breaking timetable of masshand production that a potter could achieve the one-ness that Hamada sought.

Yet, even for someone as spellbound by throwingas Lungley, there was a call to create pots beyond thecycle of production. After the security of steady workand running his ceramics business, Lungley decidedto go back to college. Breaking away from the routinewas a risky move but it was a risk that he needed to

The Risk of SkillArticle by Helen Bevis

Facet Bowl. 2007. Porcelain, lead glaze with mother of pearl lustre. 10 x 38 cm.

28 Ceramics: Art and Perception No. 72 2008

take. His 1999 book Gardenware marks a rite of pas-sage between the sensible solid pots and the pots hemakes now. He describes how he “took all the piecesof my ceramics world and threw them up in the air”.1

According to Lungley, the pieces are still on the waydown and are forming the future, but the result thenwas that he was able to take risks within the cocoonedenvironment of higher education.

After an undergraduate degree at the University ofWales, Cardiff, he spent two years in the enviable MAcourse at the Royal College of Art (RCA), London.With Alison Britton among his tutors, Lungley wasimmersed in the sculptural end of the ceramic spec-trum. Here he had the scope to question and push hiswork; to take and grasp risks.

He banished terracotta and turned his attention tostoneware and porcelain. It was while at the RCA thathe was seduced by the charms of porcelain. For him, itwasn’t the genteel side of porcelain that grabbed hisattention; it was porcelain’s ability to hold its ownagainst fiercely physical throwing. The drive to takerisks with porcelain became part of his work; as amaterial and a concept. Pulling and pummelling athick slurry-covered form on the wheel was Lung-ley’s way of addressing the risk of working withporcelain – the risk of pushing the material too far andthe risk of pushing the concept of porcelain too far –but so far there is no end to its potential to accept Lun-gley’s way of working. At the RCA he was wrestlingwith the accepted view of what a honed throwershould make with porcelain. Celadon tableware fol-lowed, but it was the immense shallow dish witherupting walls he presented at his final show in 2001that was the emblem of his time at the RCA andindicative of where his future lay.

He describes the style of that time as a “minimalchic movement” into which his bisque porcelain fit-ted perfectly. The largesse of the form and the grey-white colour were unwittingly a sign of the times. Yetit wasn’t and isn’t his intention to be part of a trend.There is a movement of extravagant porcelain,headed, willingly or not, by Takeshi Yasuda. There issomething in the zeitgeist guiding the potters and thepots. Lungley agrees that Yasuds’s work has un -doubtedly had an influence on his own work, albeitnot a “conscious direct influence”. If there is a move-ment he doesn’t consider that he’s a “mover andshaker”, although he’s “glad to be associated with it”.For him, there are other influences beyond porcelain.

Lungley recalls that when he first saw the work ofSimon Carroll, a potter who has had an influence onhim and his work, he felt an odd sense of déjà vu. Theywere exploring similar concerns at the same time,without colluding. Of the utmost importance is thatclay is a vehicle to demonstrate a skilled anti-skillapproach. The pots and potting are bold. Risk-takingis an important part of their work. It implies failure as

Tea Bowl. 2007. Black earthenware. 10 x 9.5 cm.

Tea Bowl. 2007. Porcelain, lead glaze with mother of pearllustre. 10.5 x 11 cm.

Ceramics: Art and Perception No. 72 2008

much as success and it requires a potter of extremeself-confidence to accept this way of working. ToLungley, “risk-taking is personal, what is a risk to oneperson, might not seem a risk to another… that’s cer-tainly a part of taking porcelain away from what thepreconceived notions are and exploring it in a differ-ent way”. The skill of the maker is in getting the bal-ance of risk and creative adventure right.

It’s a far step from the safety of garden pots into theworld of contemporary ceramics, but in Lungleythere is a confident unpretentiousness about him andhis attitude to his work. Allied to risk-taking is thewillingness to not take himself too seriously; these arejust pots. His roots have shaped this approach to life;his father also works with clay, but in a more practicalmanner as a bricklayer. With a heritage like that it’snot surprising that Lungley has a solid pragmatism.

Since leaving the RCA, Lungley’s work has becomea medley of his different guises. Bisque is still there asa favourite surface – unashamedly naked and proud –but the pots are pushed far away from the reassuringform of a garden pot. Perhaps the most striking pieceshe makes are the bowls where a large piece of clay isthrown to a cylinder, then compressed down againand allowed to spin off-kilter. He begins as the skilledproduction thrower and ends as the artist-potter. Therim is deftly sliced away at angles and the foot is deco-rated with delving thumb marks. There is a bold sen-suality to these pots. Lungley has been enjoying theconundrum that a mother-of-pearl glaze gives whenloosely applied to his pots. They are neither delicatenor boisterous but a delicious melange. In a recentexhibition The Pot, The Vessel, The Object for the 50thanniversary of the Craft Potters Association, heshowed bowls with a honey-hued lustrous glaze on alow-fired porcelain body. The dusty glints of thenaked body peeking through the thick glaze gave anextra dimension to his gestural pots.

Lungley’s openness extends beyond his pots. Likemany potters, he also teaches ceramics. For him thereis no debasing of his own work through the stricturesof teaching; instead the contact with debutant pottersseems to inspire him further. In a return to his origins,Lungley is teaching potters at the start of their careers.Students come to him having never touched claybefore and in the space of two years he turns theminto potters, able to throw, fire and glaze their ownwork. He also designed the excellent Foundationcourse in Contemporary Ceramic Practice at Newcas-tle College to create fully fledged potters able to runtheir own businesses, pack their own kilns and holdtheir heads above water in this difficult game.

Lungley takes his students to key pottery festivalsto demonstrate their newly acquired skills. This isanother form of risk-taking; if the student flunks thedemonstration then it’s the teacher that suffers therebukes. However, his ability to transmit the skill of

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Tea Bowl. 2007. Porcelain, lead glaze with mother of pearllustre. 10.5 x 11 cm.

Tea Bowl. 2007. Porcelain, lead glaze with mother of pearllustre. 11 x 11 cm.

30 Ceramics: Art and Perception No. 72 2008

throwing is impressive. It is a fine irony that in hisown work he fights with the idea that a pot should beassessed on the skill of the maker, while he insiststhat students have solid skills. He’s right on bothcounts. You have to be skilled to make an asymmetri-cal pot that looks right, but it isn’t difficult to make aweak pot. The difference is subtle but clear.

A performing potter is on trial and risks (that wordagain) becoming the pantomime dame: all showydressing with nothing but a cheap corset (or poorskills) holding her up. However in his demonstrations– once on Simon Carroll’s head at a pottery festival andonce as part of a cello-potter improvisation perfor-mance at the V&A, London – Lungley uses his skill totake pottery out of the privacy of the studio. The art ofthrowing has always had a fascination for the public;just think of the 1990 film Ghost and you have a famousimage of throwing. It is Lungley’s willingness to acceptthat public curiosity and work with it that marks himout, yet again, as a different kind of potter. He has theshamelessness of youth and energy, and of course,skill, that lets him get away with doing this kind of per-formance.

Now his pots are not for use. He has served enoughtime as production potter to see the restrictions thatfunction imposes. The pots he wants to make areabout finding a satisfying shape. Lungley enjoys thephysicality of clay and his pots echo his pleasure. Hisrecent tea bowls, in a rich chocolate manganese body,are too heavy to be used, the glaze too delicate towithstand hot liquids and the form cumbersome tohold. Despite this, they have a satisfying form. Theweight of the pieces is important; work from his RCAperiod is almost anchored to the table and these newshapes strain the hand of all but the most determineduser. He challenges us about use. If it looks like a

teabowl but is awkward to use then we’re forced toquestion its presence.

There is a dialogue with the roots of the craft. Hereis a new generation potter who accepts that the daysof the idyllic country potter, producing wares for thelocal market, is a fact of history. Pots today are asmuch about us as consumers as they are about thepotters and their place within the artistic community.It is an elite consumer who can use – really use – stu-dio ceramics on a daily basis. The concept of skill andthe craftsman’s tacit knowledge are just a small part ofwhat makes a pot valid today.

If there is a word to embody a Lungley pot, per-haps the most apt is ‘wrestle’. There is the wrestlebetween form and function, the tug between theglaze and the bisque body and then a tussle with theomnipresent issue of skill. As Lungley says, “skill isjust something that I wrestle with generally”. A pot-ting philosophy enters the ring and confuses thewrestling match. Lungley believes that a good pot isone led by the concept and not by the process. It isonly by having skill that a potter has the luxury ofexpression and the ability to take the material fur-ther than we expect. Skill without emotion is a sterileart. Martin Lungley takes his skill and throws it intothe face of accepted practice. It is a risk, but oneworth taking.

FOOTNOTES:1. Martin Lungley, ‘A Potter’s Wheel’, Ceramic Review,

March – April 2007. All other quotes taken from an interview with the author,

September 2007.

Helen Bevis is a writer on the arts living in France.

Facet Bowl. 2007. Porcelain, lead glaze with mother of pearl lustre. 15 x 34 cm.