Leach Pottery Wood Ash & Iron Glaze Bowl

A beautifully humble straight-sided bowl made at the Leach Pottery, England, circa 1955.

The vessel has been hand thrown on a potter’s wheel using a peach-coloured clay local to St Ives. To the interior of the bowl is a translucent sage-green coloured wood ash glaze.
A glaze containing wood ash has also been thickly applied to the exterior. However, this has then been lightly over brushed or sprayed with an iron-bearing glaze. Resultantly, intricate streaks and speckles have been created, which are reminiscent of the “hare’s fur” glazes on ancient tenmoku tea bowls.
The transition from the soft spinach-jade appearance of the interior to the heavier more dynamic dark-green-brown of the exterior has been artfully dramatised by a band of iridescent iron oxide hand-brushed around the rim.

Although this item does not carry Bernard Leach’s makers mark, it was certainly made following his ideology that “simplicity reveals, ornateness conceals”.