We spent last weekend in Boston, about 90 minutes north of here. A weekend of dance, museums, galleries, good food and a Thai dinner with our niece Kate. But we started the weekend on Saturday at the Pucker Gallery on Newbury St., the best place in New England (and one of the best in the nation) to see good pots.
The week before, the gallery opened the semi-annual show of work by Welsh potter Phil Rogers. I've admired Phil's way of making pots ever since my friend Lorraine Colson and I took a workshop with him at a Maryland college almost 20 years ago. Phil works in the Leach/Hamada tradition, and is not only a terrific potter but is also a historian of the craft.
But his pots continue to move me. In recent years, he has used more Shino glazes and has gotten wonderful work out of the wood kiln at his studio in Wales. (Phil's no longer working in Rhayader, and is looking for another place to make and fire pots.)
This show in Boston has many more wood-fired pieces in it than I remember from the last one. His shapes have loosened up a bit - particularly the small vases and teabowls - and he's using in some cases a gritty clay body with almost Shigaraki-like melt-outs of feldspar.
This is a beautiful show, well worth traveling to Boston to see. If you're there on a weekend, you can park reasonably under the Boston Common and take the short walk up Newbury St. to the Pucker.
At the Pucker website - puckergallery.com - there is a downloadable pdf file of the show's catalog. I've taken a few images from philrogerspottery.com to illustrate what's in the show. The photo of Phil was taken when he did a workshop a few years ago for the Cape Cod Potters at Plymouth Plantation.
5 comments:
Hollis, what happened to your website? I haven't been by your blog in a while, and then I went to your web site, and it is gone. It was looking very good, did you decide to take it down?
Hi there. The blog site is at http://web.me.com/hatchvillepottery/Site/Home.html
I let the other address expire and re-built the site, which should soon be up as hatchvillepottery.com.
And who is IB? Sorry, don't recognize the name and can't bring up the blog.
WHAT A SUPER WKD HOLLIS....ooops C/l on :))
Sounds like a great time! I am a big fan of Phil Rogers work. I contacted the Pucker last year about their catalogs, which are very beautiful. They will very kindly send you one for not a lot of $$
Really nice to see some of Phil Roger's work, and the information about the Pucker is wonderful for us "out of towners" here in NZ. I have just had an enjoyable time browsing through some of the collection at the Pucker on line. (What a great name Pucker is!).
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