Muchelney
Muchelney's GalleryCentral to the remarkable 20th century revival of international studio pottery has been one family name – Leach. Bernard Leach was the movement’s founder. Potter, philosopher and writer, he was a cultural missionary between East and West. The pottery he set up in St Ives became the movement’s focal point.
Today, his eldest grandson, John Leach, continues the St Ives tradition, making hand-thrown, wood-fired pots at Muchelney in Somerset – each echoing the Leach philosophy of beauty in simplicity of form and decoration.
Classic Muchelney kitchenware, with its warmly textured patina, has been in constant production since John first set up the pottery in 1965. This familiar range of sturdily rounded casseroles, bowls, jugs and jars is used daily in thousands of homes. Only since 1983 has John felt free to develop individual signed work, notably his “Black Mood Pots”. His style draws on a lifetime’s influences, such as his own training at St Ives, a love of English mediaeval pottery and early American folk pottery to the traditional leather water vessels of the Middle East combined with the impact of a 1984 study trip to Nigeria.