CRAFTS SEPTEMBER | OCTOBER 2013 35

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A maker of still lives

Tanya Harrod remembersGwyn Hanssen Pigott 1935-2013

On 10 July a group of friends gathered atthe London gallery Erskine, Hall & Coe tocelebrate and mourn the fine andremarkable life of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott,one of the world’s greatest contemporarypotters. Matthew Hall spoke first,movingly recalling her solo show – whichhad ended on 8 July, three days after heruntimely death – and the pleasure Gwyntook in setting it up. Jennifer Lee read out telegrams from all over the world.Alan Caiger-Smith spoke with eloquenthumour, recalling Gwyn when he first met her in the late 50s. Finally her sisterBeverley Larwill recalled Gwyn as a childin Australia. To stand together, raise aglass and remember Gwyn was the bestthat we could do in sad circumstances.

She was born Gwynion Lawrie John in 1935 in the former Australian miningtown of Ballarat, south of Melbourne. She was to take the names of both herhusbands – the late Louis Hanssen (whocommitted suicide in 1968), and JohnPigott, from whom she separated in 1980.To do that as an ardent feminist may seemparadoxical but it was part of Gwyn’sgraciousness, loyalty and modesty that inturn was born of an absolute integrity.

Her upbringing was both strict andprivileged. Her father was the director ofa large engineering firm while her mother,who had trained as an arts and craftsteacher, worked in an eclectic range ofmedia, from watercolours to earthenwarepottery. At the University of Melbourneshe majored in art history and paidregular visits to the National Gallery ofVictoria, going down a long corridor thathoused the Kent collection of Chineseceramics. It was ‘these seductive objects’that increasingly fascinated her.

When she met Ivan McMeekin, anartist and potter who had served as a firstmate on the Yangtze River, she realised(to her father’s dismay) that she wantedto devote her life to ceramics. McMeekinand his young apprentice embarked on anexploration of local materials as theysought to create the dense, almostporcellaneous qualities of Sung waresthrough raw glazing and wood firing.

In 1958 Gwyn arrived in England and

rode a push bike to all the major ceramicworkshops, working at WinchcombePottery with Ray Finch, discussingoriental ceramics with Sir Alan Barlow,working at the Leach Pottery at St Ives,where she met her future husband andassisting Michael Cardew with hishistoric summer course FundamentalPottery with an emphasis on geology and raw materials. By 1960 she set up apottery in West London, working for AlanCaiger-Smith and attending classes givenby Lucie Rie at Camberwell School of Art.

Four years later she bought a house in Achères, near Bourges, inspired by the traditional stoneware of the Haut-Berry area. She had worked at Cardew’sWenford Bridge Pottery during 1964-65and was now committed to wood-firingand digging her own clay. In France she went on to make some of the finestfunctional stoneware and porcelain of all time. But in 1973, she walked away from her rural idyll and a variedteaching career.

She briefly worked with the Bread andPuppet Theater in Vermont, returning to Australia in 1974, setting up a pottery in Tasmania and marrying her assistantJohn Pigott in 1976. By 1980 she wasworking in the Jam Factory Workshop in Adelaide (a difficult period when sheconsidered abandoning ceramics) and 12 months later she moved to Brisbane as potter-in-residence at QueenslandUniversity of Technology. In 1989 shemoved to Netherdale, a sub-tropical sugarcane region west of MacKay innorthern Queensland, and in 2000 set up her final pottery near Ipswich in south east Queensland.

By the early 1990s she was exhibitingworld-wide and her work had taken adecisive turn away from productionpottery. In 1971 she had been profoundlyaffected by a large retrospectiveexhibition of paintings by GiorgioMorandi at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris. In the early 80s she was using theJapanese-Korean potter Heja Chong’snoborigama kiln, a method of firing whereglaze is redundant. New shapes seemedrequired, memories of Morandi floatedup, and she began making bottle formsthat were to develop into the still lifegroups for which she became renowned.These groups were given a further beautyby her subtle glazes, which made herarrangements both painterly andsculptural. It was a move in the directionof fine art, seen at its most ambitious inher 17 metre installation Caravan shownat Tate St Ives in 2004.

In 2002 she was awarded the Order ofAustralia Medal, and in 2006 the NationalGallery of Victoria staged a majorretrospective of her work. At the time ofher death she had plans to work in Japanand Spain and to show her work atChatsworth House, Derbyshire.

Once she explained of her pots: ‘Theyare about themselves, and about the yearsof needing them that are behind them.Sometimes they are beautiful and worth all the trouble. They sustain me. I have tomake them; they are about what sustainsme.’ Her pots were what she called her‘daily pleasure mines’ that brought, out of the chaos of life, silence and calm.Gwynion Lawrie Hanssen Pigott, née John, born 1 January 1935, Ballarat, Victoria, died 5 July 2013, London.

In 1958 Gwynarrived inEngland androde a pushbike to all themajor ceramicworkshops

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