Walter Keeler: Treasures of the Everyday | Documentary film about UK potter | GOLDMARK

my dad was keen on history he was keen on the past I think because it's served in North Africa and he was in Cairo when the Cairo Museum reopened at the end of the war and he saw the 210 come in and and the actual discovery of the tomb was news when he was a boy and so we went to museums British Museum sometimes Museum of London's he would want to look at documents and boring stuff like that so I was free to wander about and look good it's one of those artifacts and gravitated towards pots pots are always there we have any civilization however old it seemed have pots I joined the Local History Society they had a very boring dig in Wembley which I used to go to with a friend on Saturdays and I was introduced to a an archaeologist but he said why don't you like to go mud Larkin so suppose that's mud marking any face or even it done when the tide goes out on the Thames walk along the foreshore and you pick up all sorts of interesting things it recommended Ivan all humans but called treasure in the Thames and that the rest is history archaeology even [Music] [Music] sometimes I find myself working and I'd much rather not be in no working but nevertheless what else would I do you know it's it's Who I am I could if I don't do that you know I'm not who I am I'm being you know I'm denying myself we've had made parts which is this craziest new and the whole the whole point in making pots is to produce things that actually live in some way keep the vitality of the making process [Music] I'm Dyslexic when I was young I was stupid I was a sicko and I went to Secondary Modern School where we were treated as people who weren't that bright and didn't have great prospects I was a poor performer at school academically and treated really rather badly and we know it's one of 2/3 of the population at that time you failed to pass the 11 class and that 2/3 were treated as no hopers even to this day I'm not a documents person I'm hopeless with documents and texts panic at the sight of a written text along written text and that goes straight back to my inability as a kid to count boys the word on the page I could draw I wasn't a great from Arsenal but I could draw and because most kids stop drawing when they get to be on primary school it seemed to be important people seem to recognize that I still had this ability to draw so art was the thing that was the thing that consumed me and I was an academic so when I got to the end of my secondary education and I would talk to my above I suppose I went to say goodbye to my art teacher who'd been him but probably the best person in the school as far as I was concerned the only person who treated me like a person and he said what do you know him now so I said well suppose I have to get a job and he said well why don't you go to art school what's in a school so that was what happened I mean through the art school [Music] on the first day they handed round a sheet of paper with the crafts but you could do on Friday and you had to choose so I looked down the best and there was pottery and of course I had this instinct for pottery I looked at pottery and I'd also seen the now sort of legendary interlude on the television of a man throwing a pot [Music] I thought you have pottery that's long for me [Music] by chance victim I agree he later went on to be the first director of the crass council had just taken the job of running the pottery department but that and he was a formidable man or be he was very critical he was very fastidious very demanding but he was very good he had a hooked friend who used to come in and teach the evening service he was michael castle now why do we fire a clay pup Wally perhaps you'd like to tell me that yes well we fire the clay to transform it into pottery and this usually happens in a fire at first firing a biscuit firing it's the first time for most pots and up to that point that the dry clay is very brittle rather like a chocolate egg I look at Nick Carson's life he was the most influential person I've ever met and Nick was the man whom one immediately warmed to who immediately gave off vibes and said you're just import very great right okay well you know and and so one was drawn in by mix enthusiasm so that was a great start to my career in pottery because we lived on a crossroads in the suburbs by default I'm told story I'm having to shout at me to get me out of bed to go over a sound of pneumatic drills outside when I went to art school I was up and out before if you could look round and I couldn't wait for term to begin after the summer holidays it was a transformation I was treated like a person it was a window into a whole world of culture and possibilities in my very early days as a boy picking up little bits of pottery from the tens I had those insights into what the inside of a pot should look like so it even started to add up I left arrow in the mid-60s and then I did two years teach training as a sort of but insurance policy I suppose so you know always gonna do some teaching you hurt me you know spam they came from working-class background my parents didn't have any money they didn't know they earned their wages each week but I was committed to being a Potter but this time Madeleine and I had paired up a Madeleine went on to the Royal College after she finished at Harrow and and while I was doing this teacher training thing they wouldn't have me that you want me Emily guys the right material I think I just didn't fit the bill whereas Madeleine was much more inclined to be a designer and probably saw her as more malleable only I don't blame him for taking Madeleine and not me I could lovely made much better use of it than I who did I think it transformed her the other thing that happened at that point through Madeline's engagement at the Royal College was that her view of the pottery world broadened you know I will always rush into the V&A look at the medieval jugs this German song plays have a look at the old hammer a teapot or a cans and t-bone or something and walk straight past all the 18th century industrial pottery because that wasn't for people Cass industrial stuff a Madeleine of course was encouraged to look at that and to draw it see the beauty in them see to see the dynamics of them see the quirkiness and cranking mission of them so she dragged me into the the industrial section maybe look at these things and when course I acknowledged that yes they had certain qualities I've been too prejudiced to look at and to to see and that stayed with me always that sense that there's more to pottery than the sort of knuckle marks and you know the wobbly bits pick this chap up take that bit off victim are very tentatively offered me some teaching I don't think I was any good at it but I used to go in and do it and I got paid so that we were then in a position to buy our first house in Buckinghamshire with a big chicken shed but it became the pottery the Horace Julia pottery cause the stage had taken off seriously so that the course drew together a whole mix of talents you have these people with a terrible addiction and instead of trying to cure them you encourage it and say now just one more you know just it's just another kill and that will do it yeah that point should be approximately opposite that point but this is pottery and things like precision are relative so I'm gonna make a usable plastic to connect those two dots just temporarily just as just a sort of and make a gentle line around there so that was that 'slap-ass fear of mutual endeavor in a project that it excited you you know it was an extraordinary experience working there that stayed with me forever I would arrive in the morning in my car and people would come and you mind your window down and they'd say right could you come see this can you I would ask you about that and and you would be accompanied into the building either to look at their pots or to look at their kiln or to look at some results so that there was this absolute hunger for knowledge not only that and what was more important to me and I think important to the whole nature of education is that it was a mutual process that I didn't go in there to tell them everything I knew I went in there to share with them the process of finding out about this obsession that we had so that I didn't necessarily have answers for their questions but I might have ways of approaching those questions that would find an answer you know so it was a collaboration not me just take that bit off either and it was just so enriching in every way you know maybe it was the time of my life he had to justify everything to the students and I can remember a student challenging me one day he said oh really I saw your pots in the in in the CPA the other day and you turn the bottoms of your bowls why did you do that you need to do that that's what I explained only accepted it but but they were you know if they thought you'd stepped out of line you were doing something it was an economic or unethical or whatever you would taken to task and I thought that was great really important important to be challenged and important to to be able to say to yourself yes there's a good reason for doing that and I started teaching at Bristol the thing that dragged me out of teaching was the fact that it deteriorated so much essay he wrote about ceramics was more important than the ceramic she made and therefore because that's more important you didn't actually have to come in to do it you know you just had to have a tutorial once a month with somebody who was not a Potter but an academic you know if students were pleading for for teaching and you couldn't give it to them because you know they ie were too thin on the ground and B you were expected to be doing something else like paper work of some description which of course is my strong point anyway and they were paying ever-increasing fees for the privilege of being robbed I had to get out and they were pleased to get rid of me because I wasn't sourcing they wanted I didn't want people like me anymore you know people want to encourage this sort of addiction that I was talking about earlier no welcome tragic absolutely tragic there's a story about David Leitch believing is my Kannada demo and then got disappearing into the loo broadcasting to the nation when I left Harrow and I had my first serious workshop I was just practicing my production throwing but I was trying out techniques I was learning how to make some delays --is of my own so I was throwing quite aggressively using a rib against the clay making torn edges and detailed bits that were a result of the tool impacting material I would show those pieces in places like the Design Center so I developed a sort of there's my reputation but people were aware of the fact that I made these things I'm driving into Oxford to a gallery in little Clarendon Street and kicked the door struggling with your box of pots and said you want to buy some parts and they said don't have a look and you'd unwrap these pots most unprofessional way you could manage you made they'd say they would have some of those and those give you a check so I had these two strings to my bow and I hope that the the the sort of relatively nasty but one intentioned production wears and I had the more satisfying I suppose more true to my nature pieces that always making I had no function at all but were interesting so I made these really nice functional pots to make a living and made the arty stuff just a sort of satisfy our songs reached a crisis point when I had so many order this blasted boring stuff I know it certainly had two small electric kilns which could run a 13 M plug and so one day I said surviving I'm going to put a lot in the song kill so I did I put all these parts with a normal box elimination glazes on on words in the song cover fire them up now a fabulous change was happening gradually and I started to make the one-off pieces in salt glaze which were much more compatible shall we say they did reflect who I was I was finding it more and more difficult to sell pots and I was getting really bored with these parts as well I never had a conversation with Gordon Bombay I said Oh Alan go how are you in your usual chit-chatting what did you do over the summer he said oh I I was making pots for the house I said oh just functional things bottles and cups and teapots I said I didn't know you made functional pottery he said boy just just because it's functional doesn't mean to say you don't he gave you a mind that struck home suddenly I think he thought well yes that's absolutely true and then the penny dropped that I could engage my sub sculptural pottery in stained in the making of thankful things I applied for crafts Council mature craftsmen's grant and I didn't get it I was disappointed I felt I go I'd been trying to sell my ash glazed teapots and it was a struggle I put these funny little teapots and I made handles and a squish spout into the show teapots are so inviting because you've got lid spout handle body knob on the lid maybe and endless ways of playing around with combining them I think that's that's very attractive to me as a Hospit nothing only two of them in the show they both the crafts council brought both of them for that collection that made a postcard awesome and it was the sort of turning point suddenly they capture people's imaginations somehow your boots they don't ever you need restaurants I like the idea of lids not being in the middle of the pot because no reason why I should be in the middle of the pot and it's amazing easier to empty the contents it's it's quite entertaining to do it as well it was a successful show in the end it did sell quite well so by the time I made a second application foot to the craft Coast for this grant I got the award and it transformed our lives I have you know absolutely because we've never had more money in the bank than we needed to spend within the next month that support his life it was extraordinary what I done in effect was bring those two elements together we got them what had been quite anonymous functional things and very individual sculptural things so now I'm saying forget the sculpture forget that bringing together I'm gonna put this onto the base and see how it looks now I'm just gonna be careful not to headbutt the lip when it comes hurt so and it's just it's a curious thing isn't it with with pottery that I indulge in lots of different qualities I mean I love as I say turning on the lathe but I also love all these burrs and little sort of scrappy bits that come out when you're holding at all against the pot as it rotates and you know as I say it's that conversation between your intentions and the clays intentions and the clays nature and your nature and it's such a a wonderful thing to be engaged with really ideas come in different ways but I'll sit down Rogers and drawings I will find if I've just finished making about your work kind of firing maybe it's an empty studio don't quite know what I'm doing where I'm going I might sit down with a sketchbook for half an hour and just doodle away at ideas and then find that one of those ideas seems to have something about its proportions the relationships it's a bit more intriguing so you start to look for ways of exploiting that his ideas often come from old pots amongst all that stuff are the crap stalks now the crap stalks came from the Far East the idea initiates in the 18th century crab stock handles were handles on teapots and jugs and so forth that looked like gnarly bits of tree branch I don't want to make crab stalks that look like 18th century crab stalks but I want to reflect that idea of branches and twigs and things growing out so i've stylized it simplified it made it of now rather then obviously once you start doing that you start to look around at weeks of quite a lot o get twig obsessed around here like most places these days they they don't cut and lay their head use very often more often than not they just go pass them a big flail and say these wonderful nobly kind of joints developing which gives give the hedge a fabulous character if you ignore the brutality I will just say look at that trying to come back again is they're never gonna beat it that's another little analogy that's always made with mismo certain works that made is the analogy with Tim where Tim's missing almost like dressmaking patterns you know you cut out a shape and Bend it round detect it and it becomes a three-dimensional form from flat sheet the the nature of clay at a certain point you know when you squeeze a firm leather hard pot it resists slightly in the same way that if you had a tooth of tin and squeezed it would resist so there's that analogy between the clay and the metal I find it very hard to be free you know I love the idea of freedom in clay because clay is so rewarding when you when you treated freely but the freedom it can't just be reckless can it it's got to have a it's got to have purpose I suppose people say to me oh I've got one of your marks and and I have my coffee home every morning and I really love it and that's so rewarding it is amazing a bit of mud that you've been messing around with then somebody has that as a significant object in their lives well I just think that it's just so powerful and and there is that element of opposites it's in making a pot but the exchanges personality you can make it more or less engaging you know if you're not 5 min off the back edge it suddenly perks up you know so that aspect of my pots is is important you know the fact that they do have sort of attitude I mean I hope more often than not playing will amuse you know just cheer you up a bit just to see a pot looking like that at you you know what can say well you see what I meant for do it you're provoking something but you're not actually dictating something it's a dialogue because you you can do your bit with your arm and move tweet but the clay is going to respond as it freezes you don't know Kate you've got something totally unexpected then then balls in your court again yeah do you accept that well do you attack it again then you change it it's that's what makes it all so well you know is the challenge of looking this crazy stuff it's just so responsive and so rewarding there's no bloody frustrating so you [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Goldmark Gallery

Views: 35,893

Rating: 4.9675927 out of 5

Keywords: Pottery, Potter documentary, Walter Keeler, Pottery film, Ceramics, National Museum Wales, Victoria & Albert Museum, American Craft Museum, Goldmark, Goldmark pottery, what artists do all day?, goldmark gallery, ken matsuzaki, Goldmark films, walter keeler pottery, Ceramic Review: Masterclass with Walter Keeler, Michael Casson, ceramics films, michael casson pottery, michael casson jug, michael casson pottery mark

Id: xIMMoPmaAMY

Length: 28min 20sec (1700 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 15 2019