Clay pride

What a superb potter Michael Cardew was. What a fascinating, complex man. And what a lovely book this is. Next to Bernard Leach, who as the seventh Kenzan (that is, seventh in line of pupillage to the 17th-century Japanese artist Kenzan I) had something of the status of an English pope in the world of studio pottery, Cardew is considered by many to be the greatest potter of the 20th century. Others might make claims for William Staite Murray, Hans Coper, Lucie Rie or Edmund de Waal, who visited Cardew just before the master’s death in 1983 and was described in his diary as ‘a very good young man’.

Cardew was born of upper-middle-class stock in 1901 — just late enough to avoid being slaughtered in the Great War. Educated at King’s College School and at Exeter College, Oxford, where he read classics, he broke away from the establishment career intended for him to become a potter.