“The staff – or the customers – broke them all the time so they regularly reordered and it was a very good earner,” he tells us. The trays were eight and a half inches across with a rim to keep the five individual relish pots from slipping and a central thrown handle for carrying. He became a skilled production potter, making tableware for London restaurants, including relish dishes for the Hard Rock Café. His studios were always in urban spaces, necessitating electric kilns which he decided to embrace. Gwyn Hanssen gave him an early position in her studio, then “let him go.” When he applied to become a member of the Craftsmen Potters Association (CPA), he was rejected because his work did not form a “coherent group” Fortunately, six months later he reapplied and was accepted. What we do have, thanks to Horbury, is this fascinating memoir.Ĭooper was first a potter. In Making Emmanuel Cooper: Life and Work from his Memoirs, Letters, Diaries and Interviews, edited by his longtime partner David Horbury, we learn that in his last days – he died in 2012 of prostate cancer at the age of 74 – Cooper was thinking of such projects as a biography of Hans Coper, this memoir, and was “fired” about writing a book on Josiah Wedgewood “from a maker’s perspective.” Oh, how I would love to read the Wedgewood book. And then, his last book, his opus, the thoughtful biography, Lucie Rie: Modernist Potter. I have his very early Handbook on Pottery Making and of course his biography on Bernard Leach. I have read and re-read the various editions of his book on ceramic history, culminating with the magnificently illustrated tour de force, 10,000 Years of Pottery.
I think I have more books by Emmanuel Cooper in my ceramic book collection than by any other writer on pottery.
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