Quotes by Warren MacKenzie

Warren MacKenzie

[ Bernard] Leach was the one who taught us that, because he, too, had started out as a painter and an etcher and had only gotten into ceramics by chance when he was in Japan trying to teach the Japanese how to do etching, which, as he said, they were not ready for yet.

Japan

Taught Us

Trying

[Bernard Leach] talked about painting, but we never talked about ceramics in that evening. But at the end of the evening he said to us, “Well,” he said, “I’ve changed my mind, and if you want, you can come back a year from now and apprentice in the workshop.”

Ceramics

Mind

Years

[Bernard Leach] was an incredible draftsman, and at the end of breakfast time, for instance, he would push his plate back, and he’d pull an old scrap of paper out of his pocket and a little stub of a pencil, and he’d begin to make small drawings, about an inch and a half, two inches tall, of pots that he wanted to make. And they were beautiful drawings. I really wish I’d stolen some of those scraps of paper, because those drawings were exquisite explorations of his ideas of form and volume in a ceramic piece.

Beautiful

Ideas

Two

[I made in army] all sorts of dumb things, but it did teach me a lot about the silk-screen process.

Army

Dumb

Made

[In the Field Museum of Natural History] we could see very simple, primitive, hand-built pottery from Babylonia and ancient Egypt and so forth, Greece. We could see the most sophisticated things that came out of the Orient – Japan, Korea, and China – some few pieces of European porcelain, majolica [tin glazed earthenware], and that sort of thing. But they had a marvelous collection.

Egypt

Museums

Simple

[Sculpturing] didn’t stick with me. I never felt I wanted to go on with that.

Goes On

Sticks

Wanted

[St. Ives] is a wonderful place to live. It’s a small fishing town and one can live there inexpensively. There’s a sympathetic population of other artists, where you can exchange ideas, and it’s quite rich in artistic thought.

Artist

Fishing

Ideas

Alix [MacKenzie], on the other hand, found that her painting would translate much more readily into decoration, and she could play with the spacing and the intensity of imagery on the form in a way which I could not. So that when we established our pottery, I was most unhappy with my decoration.

Hands

Play

Unhappy

At the end of that two weeks Bernard [Leach] asked us if we would like to sit with him tending the kiln, the big oil-fired kiln that they had. He was still sitting what we call a kiln watch at that time, and he wondered if we would like to sit the watch with him and talk. So naturally this was our last opportunity to talk with him, so we said yes. We didn’t realize Bernard’s kiln watch was from 1:00 in the morning until 4:00 AM.

Morning

Opportunity

Two

Bernard [Leach] had acquired many [Shoji] Hamada works. Some of them, it was interesting – first of all, Hamada worked in St. Ives for about four years before returning to Japan to start his own pottery. He had exhibitions in London, and if these exhibitions didn’t sell out, the galleries were instructed to send the remaining work down to the Leach Pottery, where they would go into the showroom for sale. If Bernard saw one that hadn’t sold that he really admired, then he would take it (he would buy it), and it would go into the house.

Interesting

Japan

Years

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Air

America

Army

Arriving

Art

Artist

Association

Beautiful

Blessed

Blood

Book

Can Do

Ceramics

Challenges

Chicago

Chinese

Cities

Class

Clay

Country

Couple

Curves

Cutting

Design

Differences

Different

Dinner

Done

Drawing

Dumb

Egypt

Europe

Everyday

Fall

Firsts

Fishing

Form

Goes On

Good Friend

Hands

Home

House

Ideas

Interesting

Issues

Japan

Jobs

Kansas City

Korean

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Quotes by Warren MacKenzie

Warren MacKenzie

[ Bernard] Leach was the one who taught us that, because he, too, had started out as a painter and an etcher and had only gotten into ceramics by chance when he was in Japan trying to teach the Japanese how to do etching, which, as he said, they were not ready for yet.

[Bernard Leach] talked about painting, but we never talked about ceramics in that evening. But at the end of the evening he said to us, “Well,” he said, “I’ve changed my mind, and if you want, you can come back a year from now and apprentice in the workshop.”

[I made in army] all sorts of dumb things, but it did teach me a lot about the silk-screen process.

[Sculpturing] didn’t stick with me. I never felt I wanted to go on with that.

[St. Ives] is a wonderful place to live. It’s a small fishing town and one can live there inexpensively. There’s a sympathetic population of other artists, where you can exchange ideas, and it’s quite rich in artistic thought.

Alix [MacKenzie], on the other hand, found that her painting would translate much more readily into decoration, and she could play with the spacing and the intensity of imagery on the form in a way which I could not. So that when we established our pottery, I was most unhappy with my decoration.

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The Behaviour Diary

The Dating Diary

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