Bailey Pottery

On Friday, March 8, 2019, artist Kiki Smith and her Columbia University graduate students toured four arts-related businesses in the Kingston Midtown Arts District.

In England, where Richard Batterham was born in 1936, he is considered the leading living maker of domestic stoneware. It’s a reputation that has been made by a life spent diligently working with discipline and talent to perfect his functional forms and lovely muted glazes.

Interested in craft and design from a young age, Richard studied at the Bryanston School. He was taught pottery by Donald Potter who had worked with Eric Gill and Michael Cardew. After his National Service, he apprenticed with Bernard Leach at St. Ives for two years. He married Dinah Dunn in 1959, and they set up housekeeping in Durweston, Dorset.

Bringing movement to the traditional forms of pottery has always been on James Lawton’s mind. Early work has floating furniture, falling pots, and clothing flying by as if inhabited by the Invisible Man. In many pieces, there are several constructed forms coming together to make a flowing, cohesive statement, while always maintaining the utilitarian functionality of his vessels, teapots, vases, and flasks.

Fifteen years after graduating from High School, Tom Guell returned to the pottery wheel that he had loved so much during a senior year Independent Study in Pottery. He tells us about his journey juggling a full-time job as a union ironworker, a young family, and aspiring potter in rural Wisconsin.