The first workshop
The first kiln
Whitnell in the snow
The Whitnell workshop
Demo in the Evercreech
workshop
Little Pennard
John Harlow, Early Working Years 1968-1987 |
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The first workshop |
In the summer of 1968 I left Westminster College, got married, stuck a pin in the map and moved down to Somerset. My then wife had a job to go to at a primary school just outside Bridgwater, in a village called Chedzoy, but I had been unable to find a teaching post. When I visited the local employment exchange offering myself for any work whatsoever I received a lecture from the incumbent "officer" to the effect that the country had just spent a great deal of money training me and I was therefore under an obligation to seek a teaching post in a deprived inner-city area, such as Birmingham. Really helpful....... |
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The first kiln |
I did manage to get some supply teaching work in Watchet and then a permanent post in Puriton primary under a wonderful headmaster, Arthur Greenslade, in 1969. Although I loved this work, and put my heart and soul into it, after four terms I realised I could hardly earn any less (the take-home pay then was £49/month...) so decided to become self-employed as a potter. The workshop was tiny, around 10'x10' and my showroom was the porch of the cottage we were renting. After about a year I built a 16'x8' workshop in the garden, a crude oil-fired kiln to supplement the two electric top-loaders and, using the skills of the local blacksmith, a pug mill. Somehow I managed to produce enough standard ware to start supplying galleries but the inadequacies of the workshop space quickly made it imperative to find a more appropriate premises. In the summer of 1972, therefore, I borrowed about £8k from various sources and bought a large and ramshackle old farmhouse near Nether Stowey, at the end of a no-through road, in a tiny hamlet called Whitnell. |
Whitnell in the snow |
Whitnell Pottery was the right size and configuration for a serious business; the kiln room was about 20'x20', the throwing room and claystore about 60'x10', the glazing room about 12'x10' and the gallery about 25'x14' on each of two floors. From 1972 until the winter of 1984 this pottery was my life - and by now I had two children, Jonathan and Simon, and was a source of much inspiration, happiness and hard work. I found a bakers' doughmixer in Whitney for £12 which I used for mixing the clay and built a ball-mill for glaze mixing. |
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The Whitnell workshop |
There were two large electric front-loading kilns and sufficient racking for several hundred pots in various stages. I put a huge amont of energy into restoration of the buildings as well as, in the style of the times, chickens, ducks, rabbits, vegetables and all the paraphenalia of the self-sufficient, self-employed artisan. I had moved from high-fired earthenware to stoneware and was experimenting with numerous local materials - inspired by Cardew. As if all wasn't enough I was heavily involved with the Somerset Guild of Craftsmen, Bridgwater Arts Centre, a folk club and was regularly playing in a folk band. It couldn't last and by the end of 1984 I was in the throes of divorce which meant selling the property and looking for an alternative career. |
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Demo in the Evercreech workshop |
It was through divorce, therefore, that the love affair with computing started and in early '85 I started to work for FACE in Glastonbury, a YTS management agency, as their IT trainer. Somehow or other I seemed to have an aptitude for computing and from the outset spent hours programming, building training applications from scratch. I even wrote a full-blown database for an Exmoor brewery in basic! The pottery didn't cease, however. The house in Evercreech to which I had moved had a large double garage which was just large enough to house all my equipment, so production continued alongside the IT training, albeit on a much-reduced scale. During this period I also became besotted with windsurfing as well as regular gigs with a different band. In the spring of '87 I left FACE for more lucrative work in the University of Bath Computing Service whilst still continuing to pot regularly. In the autumn of '88 the band split up, my then partner and I went our separate ways, I had a large mortgage, an insufficient income and a pottery that was too small. |
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Little Pennard |
I married my second wife in the summer of '90 and in November '91 we bought the property where I am currently based at Little Pennard. This was at least as ramshackle as Whitnell, but was larger and had more potential. I knew that restoring this would take several years but it was, and is, a worthwhile project. And it meant I could consider returning to full-time potting. |
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