Svend Bayer: "Potter" short film about his life and work

[Music] [Music] I think um that good part it has to kind of reveal something about the maker what you find in it is actually not so different um from what you would hope to find in another person um you would hope to find sort of life and uh a kind of response sort of brightness um I think it's important that you would want to touch it to hold it I used to think that there had to be evidence of um of good craftsmanship I'm not sure about that anymore in fact I don't think it really matters I think that craftsmanship um is is is simply the tool which has enabled you to express yourself so that um I think I'm I'm misquoting but Hamada I think he said something like he spent the first half of his life learning how to and the second half forgetting uh in other words your Technique it's only there to help you in itself it's nothing it can actually hinder [Music] you in Michael cardu um I found the perfect teacher um he didn't teach in the in the conventional sense in fact he was quite difficult to approach directly like for example if he was throwing he hated people watching him I I think because at one time he'd been quite an athletic thrower but in his he was already 69 when I got there and I think that a lot of his strength had gone and so he he was kind of a bit ashamed of what he was making and he had a very very very quick temper and and he would shout something I was totally unused to I I certainly wasn't going to you know have confrontations with him every day that that wasn't why I was there I was there to learn and I didn't really do an apprenticeship I I I just just kind of um um I just kept a low profile and just got on with it that's all I basically taught myself but I taught myself in a very very good environment but I was totally totally motivated when I went there and um I think those three and a half years that I spent there they actually have provided me with um with the momentum that's kept me going ever since one of the things that we lack in the West in terms of tradition Pottery is um in Britain anyway there's no real tradition for a specific pot for a specific food so in Japan everyone understands that this pot is used for that food you drink this out of that uh you cook this in that we don't have that and that's a real shame because actually food and this kind of pottery they intimately linked the people that you show in your gallery are all very heavily influenced by tradition but none of us is a traditional Potter none of us was taught by a traditional Potter well I Clive and I were slightly because we we both worked at brandom's Pottery whilst there were still two old BLS there but we kind of dip into tradition um we use the techniques of tradition it has kind of almost Rel status uh but in fact it's also something that can can stifle you so for example uh there's a few of us in Britain who fire in a so-called anagama you Japanese kind of way very protracted firings I think in Japan they would have a tough time recognizing what we're doing um and I think the difference is that in Japan a lot of The Potters that I've come across incredibly skillful but they work in a uh the people who work in the Woodfire tradition they have specific Traditions to which they go so they're going to work in a shigaraki kind of mode or uh in an eager kind of mode there there seem to be very strict parameters Beyond which They Don't Stray uh and we put combinations together which probably wouldn't be allowed in Japan the customers would understand it um I'm not sure that our customers understand but there is a kind of a freedom from from being totally High Bound by tradition like a lot of people who um were trained in the 60s and 70s you know it was like slightly puritanical time you know it was going back to being pure um so uh when I started out I'd been to the Far East and uh what impressed me was the scale at which everything was done and away from places like mashiko there was a kind of total lack of pretention whereas in the west there already was so when I came back from the Far East um I'd already I already knew I wanted to to work on a big scale that simply confirmed it for me so um I built a very big Kiln it was 600 cubic feet and my idea was to make lots and lots of pots thousands of pots and to sell them as cheaply as I could um and so that people would buy them and and use them that was the important part they would use them they they wouldn't kind of they wouldn't put them on a shelf it would be cheap enough for them to use them break them and come and replace them and um that was a very idealistic um um thing for me to do but I mean it's it suited my temperament I I certainly I would have described myself first and foremost as a thrower I think probably making big pots is my favorite form of throwing um I think I started making big pots really early in in in my career and Michael cardu he encouraged that he was actually incredibly generous to me there is no way that I'd allow someone unless I had a big gaping hole somewhere in my kilm to put a big badly made pot quite often the feedback I get is is that um when I'm doing big pots that this is some kind of Macho activity you know that I I indulge in you couldn't be more wrong uh it's the complete opposite it's actually it's a process that I've been through thousands of times uh I kind of um um it's a sort of repetition it's like a mantra it's it's like uh for me it's like meditation I haven't made as many big pots as I used to it used to be about 80% of what I did was just making big pots and I could sell them there was no problem now it's more difficult especially because I want real money for them now because I suddenly realize there's no one else doing it and actually my time is pretty is coming to an end I don't mean my life but I hope not but I mean you know the the the the the um you know just having the strength uh to do it glazing yeah that actually has become quite important to me um it never used to be everything was unglazed um but you know this is just where it work do I enjoy it um not really all my glazes are slightly costic and uh your hands and skin get really really dry but the what's really nice about my job is that it's it's got lots of aspects to it some which car me right down others would get me going if you're going to fire with wood would it's a very very timec consuming very very expensive way of doing it and the losses are enormous um I've I've had firings where I've lost 80% of the of the pots I've looked in sometimes it's been something a mistake that I made in the last 5 minutes of the firing and I and I've just destroyed everything I think now I kind of approach firings like a whipped dog tail between my legs ears back whimpering sideways and and uh you know so um you know experience has taught me to be afraid if you're going to fire with wood you may as well actually take full advantage of what's happening and one of the things that's happening is that throughout the firing Ash is being deposited on the pots that Ash at high temperature by itself will melt and make a um a glaze it's not exactly random because when you have experience then you begin to place pots in such a place where you kind of expect something is going to happen you begin to understand different parts of your Kil and so on so not only is Ash landing on the pots but if you're firing in this anagama style you're actually side stoking in over the pots U so the pots are actually covered in Embers so then another thing's happening there's very very intense changes in atmosphere and uh so one side of the pot might be slightly oxidized and you'll get some rather Bland colors the other side will be in such intense reduction maybe for up to five days that it'll be completely different so it'll be a little bit like like the moon you see like the the bright side and then you can just make out that there's a dark side and often the pots have that and I I take advantage of that so in my kilm I tend to pack it symmetrically so that I have two pots one either side one up against the wall and that side one up against the wall and that side and you get like two different sides on this one if you look at it from the front there's a pale side and a dark side the dark dark side was the bit facing towards the the the middle of the Kiln where there's um a lot of Embers piling up against the pot this side which is slightly oxidized is away from it and uh I that's I really kind of love that and you can see uh then you can also see the work of the ash this Ash and Embers have been accumulating on on the top of the pot it's lying on its side and at high temperature it melts and comes around the pot and kind of joins up kind of here in the the midd in in the middle I don't think in Japan I'm I'm not sure I don't think they would kind of like this very much uh this this this is not how you treat chinos something else that I noticed in the firing was I I have a seladon glaze it's a really basic Celadon glaze um it tends to be I am actually color blind so be careful but it's a i i i perceive it as being a kind of uh a a Bluey greeny gray uh it's a cold when it's fired correctly um and it's thick it's actually quite a cool glaze and um I like that the combination of that uh with the the red of the body so like hot body cool glaze um and then I noticed that um on some of the pots U the liner glazes which I use this for uh when it was exposed to Ash um actually something very beautiful happened it it went from being um just a straight cadan to being a kind of um Chun which is a um an optical blue U but it was an exciting Chun because there although there was blue I think I can also see um yellow and green in it and um so then I began to to um to rather than just use shinos uh uh to to then actually glaze these pots in in um uh in a Celadon and then put them in the areas where they had maximum uh contact with Ash and Embers and uh so this would be an example let's get rid of that one this is a celadin and that's the color of the Celadon I don't know if you can see that but then it's been lying on its side on shells and this is the side facing in towards the Firebox and on top you can see it's kind of blue and then where it's kind of accumulated there's all sorts of different things happening and I also I'm not sure what color that is but it looks kind of sugary sort of off-white but um I think it's it it kind of gives life to the to the pot uh but I do have a favorite pot and it's not mine they come from Burma or from Southeast Asia and they were exported through a Burmese town called martaban and uh theyig big black storage Jazz it's a pot that kind of it grabs your attention you can't you can't ignore it it's it's very very quiet it doesn't shout uh very very very strong it's not mat in fact it's quite feminine and um I was thinking about it the other day and it's a sort of pot that I'd like to kind of lie down in Shadow and go to sleep uh it's it it has that kind it's just um um it just has this incredible presence if I was just throwing I would be bored out of my skull I actually like stacking wood and people laugh at it but um you know he who laughs last laughs longest because I go to help other people with firings their Woods all over the place they're still cutting wood during the firing and they Wonder wonder why it's so stressful my wood it's all there and it's it's been there so it's dry and it's in place everything is kind of sorted into different sizes so what you need you just go to the right place you don't have to struggle and I usually have two people come and help me and and then we do four hours on eight hours off and there's only one person at the kill at a time and I'm not that Keen on on people coming to watch inev what happens is that they um stri of a conversation with with whoever is is firing and you then you stop thinking about the Kiln and you start thinking about the answer I don't want to sound like get really kind of heavy about the Kiln but you do have to concentrate and even when you're kind of um when it seems that you're doing the same thing again and again and again for hours and hours you there are so many things that you can miss and if you're firing for 5 days and you use all that wood and you've missed something and you get a boring firing I mean what was that all about that's a complete waste throw it all away all that work and wood and stuff down the drain so you have to think so I I sometimes get quite shiry with people who who come by the other thing I can't bear during firings is and it's men who do it and men have this idea that um that uh Fire And Men I mean it goes together it's obvious it's like barbecues you know the fact that they in inevitably or invariably you know burn the meat that's beside the point that's good you know charcoal yeah uh it's not good in the kilm and and you'll be surprised how many of them want to break a record they want to get there really quickly and uh and also you know when they're stoking they're knocking pots left right in center and they don't give a if you're not careful um your your family life can suffer and I was sort of lucky I mean my family life did suffer I mean I ended up divorced um um but what was nice about it was that this kind of work was that um uh I work from home so um um I saw my kids a lot even though I was working hard um they they kind of they knew where I was and they would come out and talk to me and they could see what I did for a living and they understood all about that um um but I did work very very long hours and um and I felt that I had to because I was a sole bread winner well it's definitely changing Pottery I mean I think that actually this the pots that your gallery seem to be interested in um uh I think we're kind of sort of dinosaurs really we we're kind of heading for extinction because simply that that that interest in that horrible word tradition isn't being reinforced and lots of people come out of college they can't even throw um they can design something and then they they can get a little man to do it uh I think that's that's the way it's going and and so that whole slightly idealistic approach of the functional Potters of the 60s and70s I I think that that'll go with us and U it it'll just be different I mean our generation was different to the people who taught us I make uh sort of jars that come from from the sort of things that I love that which I've seen all over the world and uh which had a function once but I know for a fact that their only function now I hope that that this still this function still exists is that um that they kind of that they bring people some kind of um um happiness some sort of consolation that these are um items that they can um you know hold and uh in their hands and and uh I think that a lot of um oil or gas or electric fired pots they can be spectacular but actually they tell their entire story first time you see them there is what you see see is what you get there's no hidden message there with a woodf fired pot especially ones that come from these very uh protracted firings whichever side you look at it it's different there's so much going on uh you can look at the pot you can turn it around slightly it's a different pot and so it um it releases its story to you very very slowly and I hope that it's money well spent I hope that the function is that they bring some kind of consolation [Music]

Channel: Goldmark Gallery

Views: 127,957

Keywords: painting, arts, philosophy, educational, Goldmark, uppingham, exhibition, svend, bayer, phil, rogers, shoji, hamada, lisa, hamond, ceramics, pottery, michael, cardew, kiln, The Arts, Education, Potter, contemporary, pots, modern, british, jim, malone, ken, matsuzaki, clive, bowen, nic, collins, mike, dodd, goldmark, gallery, goldmarkart, rutland, uk, england, Svend Bayer, Home Made, United Kingdom (Country), Short Film (TV Genre), What artists do all day?

Id: St5u94Wf5eg

Length: 20min 39sec (1239 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 16 2011