Beauty of Bath
 
By Giles Adams
 
There’s a saying in jazz, “If you’ve got to ask what swing is, then you ain’t got it.”
 
This mantra often lingers in my mind when interviewing creatives, or rather perhaps I should instead say craftspeople, as I feel all of us can create in some form.
 
I’m not sure I do have it entirely, the ‘swing’ of craft, but there is always a warm underlying hum to the conversation. It’s not a rush interview job. It’s a time of calm. And you must remember that there are three of us in the studio – the artist, me and the material. It might be clay, stone, willow, glass, wood – inert on shelves in stages of development around us but radiant and purring in the mind of the creator.
 
And at that moment in Peter Hayes’ Bath workshop a few weeks ago, I was telescoped back to Muchelney Pottery and many conversations with John Leach. If I was lucky, it would coincide with ‘Crib’, a Cornish mid-morning coffee with cheese experience, where John’s sagacity and tales of clay communion would infuse me, the flagstone floors, the myriad of materials and anyone lucky enough to be there. A boy on his intellectual knee? Yes, I was. I miss him.
 
It was then that I remembered it was at Muchelney when I first saw the work of Peter Hayes, vibrant totem sculptures of light clay with aqua streams running through. It summoned up at least three of the deadly sins in me, starting of course with greed although ceramicists and potters would never utter such a distasteful word.
 
Peter and John were childhood friends, a relationship that withstood Peter relocating to Africa for eighteen months, which extended to ten years and then finding new soil in Bath where he has lived for a further forty.
 
“John was my best friend in Cornwall and the county is still my magic place,” Peter reminisced. “My love of materials came from there, I used to dig my own clay. In those days I was very broke as I was not in it for money. I thought I would never make a living at it, I was content to work in bars and restaurants or pick tomatoes!
 
“Pottery was not in the family, my father was a painter. As I progressed with clay I realised I could actually scrape a living off the wheel doing ashtrays and artefacts for tourists. I realised that I am three-dimensional artist rather than two-dimensional. In my early Bath years I shared this gallery with a painter, Tony Hudson, and the juxtaposition of sculpture and painting is a perfect alignment of those forms.”
 
The small gallery is at street level on Bath’s Cleveland Bridge, however Peter led me down an irregular wooden staircase to his workshop. I made the usual ‘Howard Carter’ remark upon witnessing the accoutrements of four decades’ innovation in various stages and places, each with a story, a vision, a purpose. Beyond on the bank of the river is a kiln and also a veranda where Peter has his daily peace with the River Avon, in a mirror of John Leach walking his land soon after dawn and talking to the trees.
 
“This is my world!”, Peter proclaims, “I am a believer in valuable junk, everything has a story but I have forgotten most of it.”
 
That’s not a surprise, I think to myself, as there is a lot in this living tomb. Lord Carnarvon would have leapt out of his bed eager to itemise it all. It’s also perfect for this building.
 
“The original plan when moving to Bath was to have a big Georgian house with studio at the bottom and live at the top. We found a place on Hannover St, it was beautiful but not viable for the studio. I used to walk past here on Cleveland Bridge, they were derelict gatehouses owned by the Council, I asked to put them over to the arts.”
 
There is not a huge passing trade but Peter’s main work is from commissions. At present he is working with his son Justin on a water feature for a big location in Fulham.
 
“I like to see where the clay takes me. I have some great galleries that go with my ideas.
For commission pieces I make maquettes – smaller versions – to take to the client. With sculpture you don’t want to dominate or be too insignificant, so you need to visit and plan.”
 
“I like rolling and punching clay, I am a very textural person. It’s about building textures up, thinking like a canvas, starting on white, it goes through changes, fire the first time, building up textures four or five times with the clay. Even when it’s out of the kiln it’s not finished, then there’s grinding down and polishing.”
 
It was at the invitation of the Lesotho Development Corporation that Peter flew south from Cornwall aged 24, to set up a ceramics studio. It started a remarkable journey and experience, leading to the employment of 28 people.
 
Peter explained, “It was about developing talent and commerciality. Many of those employed had come down from the mountains. They were using old techniques, scratch designs and engaging a barter system. I proposed that I relocate there, going from village to village on horseback and working with potters.
 
“It was a two-way process because I learnt loads. Also, thanks to a small Canadian funder, makers were given 40 cents irrespective of quality so it wasn’t helping the craft. I upped the buying price to two dollars on the condition that they teach the youngsters as there was no point with the previous work just ending up in storage. I found a gallery in Washington who ended up paying 120 dollars a pot they were that good. We upgraded the whole talent of the project, it was a great co-operative.
 
“I was then asked me to go to Swaziland as it was so successful. That was another 3 years, employing 175 people including various craftspeople from Europe.
 
“I was becoming an expert but I wasn’t getting my hands dirty. Too many boring meetings with a briefcase….so I came back here to be a potter.”
 
Lucky us.      
 
The river is not just for show. “I put pieces in the river, almost a lost and found process. I then forget about it, you have to lose a piece and find it again by which time it gets natural patinas. It takes the pot back to nature and is finished by it. Around a third of my work goes in the river, there are about 20 pieces there now! I used to have a 1935 rowing boat, I would paddle silently in the evenings after the tourists had gone, part of my enjoyment to go and check!”
 
Peter really needs to get back to work, but I just cannot stop myself asking more about processes including Raku. “It’s a Japanese and Korean method. I have travelled a lot there as well as Nepal and India where I have a studio that gives me diversity of materials.
 
“Ordinarily with a pot you would heat in the kiln and then slowly bring the heat down. With Raku, you open the kiln when the clay is still molten on the surface, bring it out and plunge into sawdust which starves the piece of oxygen so you get all the crackling. You can spray water on it to get amazing colours and textures, or copper oxide will yield rainbow colours.”
 
“I also love the imperfection of art, the discovered piece, the finger print of the artists – you can see it’s been handmade. I don’t go with that every piece has to be prefect, I like cracks, missing bits or archaeological fragments to see if they fit. Each piece has to tell a story.
 
“People say to me, ‘what’s the best thing you ever made?’ – and I say ‘the best thing I ever made is in the kiln right at the moment.’”
 
And that little quip with a huge life philosophy is precisely why I LOVE chatting to potters.
 
For more details about Peter and his work see www.peterhayessculpture.co.uk