A friend of mine once owned a vase by the potter Hans Coper — until, that is, her teenage son had his friends around for a party. It wasn’t clear who knocked it off the shelf, but it was an expensive accident; a similar Coper pot sold last month at auction for almost £400,000. But then the tricky thing about studio pottery is where to put it — in more senses than one.
It isn’t just whether it will be safer on the mantelpiece or in a cupboard. There is also the problem of how to categorise the stuff: is it art or is it craft, and what’s the difference? Such conundrums perplexed me as I walked around Things of Beauty Growing at the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge.
This is billed as ‘British studio pottery’, but quite a few of the exhibits, including several of the most beautiful, were made in the Far East about 1,000 years ago.
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