Jim Malone - Monograph, 2011

JIM MALONE

GOLDMARK 1

For Jim the practice of making is stubborn, quiet and timeless. He cares little for that fleeting world whose careless trends seek neither depth nor meaning. He carries on in constancy, expressing what he sees and feels and takes wry glances as a shallow, blinkered world slips past him in the fast lane.

Andy Christian

above:

Pot number 53

front cover: Pot number 63 back cover: Pot number 7

JIM MALONE

This catalogue is available as a printed hard copy, price ÂŁ10 + p&p. A free documentary dvd is also included.

To view more of Jim Malone’s work and our documentary on Malone please visit modernpots.com.

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JIM MALONE

Essay by Andy Christian

GOLDMARK 2011

Jim Malone

Introduction Jim Malone’s studio is on one side of an old farm cottage which is balanced by a verdant vegetable and flower garden on the other. It is in no way a monkish place but there, the deliberately slow pace of things permeates a retreat that he has found is the most fertile way for his life and work. It is quiet and there are very few passers by. If you want to visit the studio you have to be prepared to make a substantial effort to find it. I think that is the way that Jim prefers it to be.

His weathered face creases questioningly and his eyes constantly scan for the depth of meaning behind what is being said. He has a wry sense of humour and a fathomless commitment to his work.

His integrity is deep rooted. For the entire length of his mature life he has taken the most simple, easily available, traditional materials and made them his own. He has eschewed all fashion and quietly but firmly tended the fire which was fuelled by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada and kept it burning brightly. Like the quiet but technically brilliant and persuasive jazz he favours, Jim has found his own interpretation of a twentieth century creed and used it to reflect his belief in its enduring relevance.

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Fire and Wine The barn workshop at Lessonhall is divided between the throwing area (focussed on a towering kick wheel) and the shelved ranks of pots that await their first firing. On that same level is the store of completed work awaiting consideration. Below, on the ground floor stands a large two-chambered kiln which was built by Jim. It is fired by wood and oil. The kiln takes twenty four hours to get up to temperature and it needs Jim’s constant attention. He is reverential about the firing process. Even though his knowledge of firing is extensive and his understanding of this particular kiln substantive, he is conscious and respectful of the dominant spirit of fire. Despite all of his experience he acknowledges that fire is an untamed element. Jim knows the best places in the kiln for particular forms and certain glazes but watching several months’ work be put to the fire demands that he bows to the kiln’s ability to partner the fire and bless or curse those elusive glazes. There is still a sense of nervousness, of risk and sometimes, eventually, the relief of a delightful result. Each firing is preceded by a pagan offering of a cup of good wine. I do not know if, at the end of a firing, Jim feels he can drink whatever the kiln has left for him but I think he should do so; it would be well deserved.

The Place In his native Yorkshire and in Cumbria where he now lives the skies seem immense and the wind whips them into heady dances. From his home in Lessonhall the distant Solway sparks on the horizon

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and the hills roll like a heavy sea. The limestone, the granite and the red sandstone order the surface of the Earth and the peat-bound Pennines provide a pasture of scanty, sage-green grass. Between the haunting cry of curlews and the tremble of celestial blue harebells there is a sense of an ancient place where the very ground is dosed with the blood and bone of long forgotten wars and the sweat of hill farmers and miners. I can understand why Jim has chosen to be there. It is a place without any kind of pretention which marries aptly with his plain spiritedness.

Use In my kitchen at home is a jug of Jim Malone’s which I have owned since the early nineteen eighties. It recalls its robust and handsome mediaeval forebears. The wood ash glaze fits the toasted stoneware body like a favourite old overcoat. Iron spots pepper its surface tranquillity. It weighs less than you might expect from its resolute appearance. It is clearly the work of an expert thrower. As I looked along the shelves of his work some thirty years later I found my jug’s descendants sitting there with only minor variations. By nineteen eighty Jim was making beautiful, practical jugs, so why would he change them? They were comfortable to use and handsome to look at and they were also unmistakably his work.

These jugs, the bottle forms, the slab sided vases, the tea bowls, the small bowls, serving dishes and all of his vessels demand to be used. Jim is a good cook and he appreciates how appetising, hearty fare look handsome in his pots rather than on the bleak, ubiquitous white plates used by unimaginative restaurant and

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television chefs. The jugs and vases also call for flowers and grasses and their decorations often hint at these uses.

Drama and Restraint Many Welsh and Northern painters have purposefully restricted their palettes; Jim Malone has shown a similar restraint. He makes good use of local ochre, of granite dust and the ash from his fire. Added to these are classic tan to black tenmoku glazes and white slip. He swirls a hakeme brush across his pots and incises and stamps the clay surfaces. He lets his brushes fly to make a spray of flowers leap over the underlying glaze or takes a slower stance to raise a bamboo stalk. There is colour but like those hues in the Cumbrian landscape, its range is transient. Out of these quiet tones, bright notes are sometimes allowed to sing; they are all the more luminous for that. The vigour of his brushwork finds its movements amplified on the quiet stage of his solid forms. These are the fundamental dramas for which Jim is the conductor and author but the metaphors they call upon are as old as human history. It is in the act of throwing that his signature is asserted. A piece of his work already bears his hand writing in its naked state. Such authority with clay is shared with that other contemporary proponent of thrown stoneware, Richard Batterham. Few others have established such clear provenance without our needing to read their seals or signatures.

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The Clay Witness Jim Malone’s pots hold ancient metaphors. The ‘green’ clay, freshly dug from the earth is kneaded like bread dough and then divided and thrown or slabbed. This process of making things out of clay and firing it is probably some twenty five thousand years old. The making of vessels has followed this practice for at least ten thousand of those years. Humans needed containers and we still need them today. Into them went our food, our most sacred and precious objects and even our ashes. They were, and still can be, our life companions. They witness our births, our loves and our deaths. The fire vitrifies the pots making them hard wearing and water tight. They surround us all of our lives and they can assume the beauty of function and also feed our eyes.

Granite, that apparently most obdurate of stones, is powdered by frost action and becomes a willing glaze. The ash from ancient trees, burnt to warm our dwellings, can be mixed to a paste, sieved and poured on clay to make myriad, mellow greens. Old nails, wire and the occasional rusted remains of ancient arrow heads, lace the ash with orange iron particles. These clay vessels hold and mirror our histories. We have taken them for granted and we have thoughtlessly accepted their ugly industrial substitutes. At times, throughout history, various cultures have honoured clay’s mysterious alchemy as they combined it with the magic of fire. For Jim, the practice of making is stubborn, quiet and timeless. He cares little for that fleeting world whose careless trends seek neither depth nor meaning. He carries on in constancy, expressing what he

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sees and feels and takes wry glances as a shallow, blinkered world slips past him in the fast lane.

North Jim Malone’s work is born out of the Northern landscape. He is part of a tradition that celebrates the unsung places of Cumbria. It was near here that the painter Sheila Fell mused on the dark power of the ‘mountains’ close to the bleak winter streets of Aspatria, using the dark drama of her sombre tones. Her fellow Cumbrian, the poet Norman Nicholson, describes a landscape; ‘. . . where a lather rinse of cloud pours down . . .’

In turn his contemporary, the poet and Blake scholar Kathleen Raine, wrote; ‘All turn to fossil Turn to stone The delicate shell And the mighty bone.’

Kathleen Raine’s great friend, the painter Winifred Nicholson, lived at ‘Bankshead’ on the Roman Wall which overlooks Cold Fell, marking the northernmost limit of the Pennines. There she painted wild flowers spilling out against the vast skies; her celebration of Heaven on Earth.

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Together with Jim Malone, these artists do not constitute a movement but they share expressions of those humble places to the North and to the West of the much more celebrated and romanticised Lake District. Each of them has found their language in visions of the ‘ordinary’ and in the overlooked. However tenuous Jim’s links to these others might seem to be, he shares with them a curious, primal compulsion which firmly binds him to these same environs. That magnetism and his marked integrity have left him with no other choices. He has dug his work out of this ground.

Andy Christian, Summer 2011

Notes I have quoted from ‘Scafell Pike’ by Norman Nicholson and from ‘Still Life’ by Kathleen Raine. The best source for the work and life story of Sheila Fell is Cate Haste’s recent book; ‘Sheila Fell, a Passion for Paint’. ‘Unknown Colour; Paintings, Letters and Writings by Winifred Nicholson’ remains an unparalleled feast of her work though it is now a scarce book. A.C.

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87

23

52,22

24

4

25

13

26

31, 114

27

5

28

30

29

20

30

34

31

144

32

70

33

28

34

123, 100

35

47, 11

36

18

37

67

38

62

39

61

76

58

40

77

78

112

49

41

86

51

42

74

43

41

44

75

45

117, 115

46

110

47

40

48

92

49

155, 167, 158

175, 149, 161

173, 154, 159

151, 170, 172

50

194, 179, 182

2, 176, 198

178, 185, 195

193, 184, 177

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Biographical Notes

1946

Born Sheffield, England

Education 1972-6

Camberwell School of Art and Crafts, London

1975

Studied at Winchcombe Pottery, Gloucestershire

1976

B.A. Hons. Ceramics, First Class Honours

Grants 1976

Crafts Council, New Craftsman Grant

1993

Northern Arts Bursary

Workshops 1976-1982 Horseshoe Pass, North Wales 1984-2001 Ainstable, Cumbria 2001-2003 Burnby, York 2003

Lessonhall, Cumbria

Teaching Over thirty years, Malone has given many lectures and demonstrations to colleges and ceramic societies around the country.

1980

Artist in Residence, Cardiff College of Art

1980

Visiting Lecturer, Camberwell School of Art

1981-2

Visiting Lecturer, Wrexham School of Art

1982-90

Cumbria College of Art, Carlisle

Publications 1980

Tradition and the Individual Talent Christopher Reid, Crafts Magazine No.45

1983

A Point of View Jim Malone, Pottery Quarterly No.14/56

1989

British Studio Ceramics in the Twentieth Century Paul Rice and Christopher Gowing.

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1990

British Studio Pottery in the V&A Collection Oliver Watson

1992

Video – Jim Malone - Artist Potter made by Alex McErlain

1993

Jim Malone in Conversation Ceramic Review, March issue

2002

The Art of Throwing Alex McErlain

2003

Ash Glazes, 2nd Edition Phil Rogers

2008

A Guide to Collecting Studio Pottery Alistair Hawtin

2009

Modern British Potters and their Studios David Whiting

2010

The Man and the Pot Ceramic Review Issue 243

Exhibitions Over the past thirty years Malone has exhibited widely in this country and around the world.

His most recent shows include: 2002

Bettles Gallery, Ringwood, Hants – Solo show

2002

Totally Teabowls, Oakwood Gallery, Edwinstowe, Notts.

2003

Lynne Strover Gallery, Cambridge – Solo show

2003

Harlequin Gallery, London – Solo show

2003

Maltby Contemporary Art, Winchester – Solo show

2003

My Top Twenty, Alpha House Gallery, Sherbourne

2004

Contemporary Ceramics, London – Solo show

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50, 133

2005

Alpha House Gallery, Sherbourne – Solo show

2006

Oakwood Gallery, Thoresby Gallery, Newark – Solo show

2007

The Jug Show, Galerie Besson, London

2007

The Gallery at Shepherd Market, London – Solo show

2007

Castlegate House Gallery, Cockermouth – Solo show

2007

Bettles Gallery, Ringwood, Hants – Solo show

2007

Lynne Strover Gallery, Cambridge – Solo show

2008

Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham – Solo show

2008

Alpha House Gallery, Sherborne, Dorset – Solo show

2009

The Stour Gallery, Shipston-on-Stour, Warks – Solo show

2009

Red Barn Gallery, Melkinthorpe, Cumbria – Solo show

2009

Duncan Campbell Fine Art, London – Solo show

2010

Imagine Gallery, Long Melford, Suffolk – Solo show

2010

Great British Potters, Earthmarque – online

2011

Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham - Solo show

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Private Collections Malone’s work is represented in many private and public collections including: Victoria and Albert Museum, London Paisley Museum and Art Gallery, Glasgow Ulster Museum, Ireland York Art Gallery Bolton Museum and Art Gallery Southampton Museum and Art Gallery Cleveland Craft Centre, Middlesborough Manchester Metropolitan University Liverpool Museum and Art Gallery Crafts Council Permanent Collection, London The Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

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Illustrated Pots All sizes in cm

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

11.

13.

15.

17.

18.

20.

22.

28.

29.

30.

31.

34.

40.

41.

47.

49.

50.

51.

52.

53.

55.

56.

57.

58.

61.

62.

63.

67.

70.

74.

75.

76.

77.

78.

Yunomi. Brushed slip, iron painting & copper splashes Tall Bottle. Fluted. Coastal clay glaze with Nuka Globular Jar. Hakeme with leaping fish design Jug. Cut sided. Nuka Small Teapot with Thrown Handle. Iron & cobalt painting Very Big Bottle. Fluted. Granite & ash glaze with Nuka Tall Bottle. Tenmoku with copper glaze pours Tall Bottle. Fluted. Tenmoku & ash glazes Globular Bottle. Pellets. Nuka glaze Globular Bottle. Stamped repeats Tenmoku with copper pours Globular Jar. Ash & granite glaze with Nuka. Engraved willow pattern Globular Jar. Pellets. Olive Nuka Globular Jar. Tenmoku & ash glazes. Engraved grasses design Slender Bottle. Hakeme, iron painting & copper splashes Slender Bottle. Tenmoku Squared Bottle. Brushed slip with leaping fish design Big Footed Bottle. Fluted. Olive Nuka Big Footed Bottle. Cut sided. Olive Nuka Footed Bottle. Tenmoku & Nuka. Engraved willow design Footed Jar. Tenmoku with ash glaze & finger wipes Footed Bottle. White slip, copper splashes & engraved rushes Footed Bottle. Cut sided. Tenmoku & ash glazes Footed Bottle. Granite & ash glaze with Nuka. Engraved grasses design Footed Bottle. Brushed slip, copper splashes & iron rushes design Footed Bottle. White slip, iron & cobalt rushes Footed Bottle. Hakeme with iron painting & copper splashes Footed Bottle. Fluted. Olive Nuka Footed Bottle. White slip, engraved & painted rushes, copper splashes Slab Bottle. Kaki glaze with wax pattern rushes Slab Bottle. Hedgerow ash glaze with engraved willow design Slab Bottle. Tenmoku with finger wipes Slab Bottle. White slip with leaping fish design Footed Slab Bottle. Tenmoku with finger wipes Footed Slab Bottle. Brushed slip with iron willow design & copper Footed Slab Bottle. Hawthorn ash glaze with engraved rushes Big Dish. Brushed slip, iron willow by tarn design Big Dish. Brushed slip, cobalt rushes by tarn design Big Dish. White slip with copper splashes & engraved willow design Pilgrim Bottle. Tenmoku with fingerwipes Pilgrim Bottle. Olive Nuka with Tenmoku pours Pilgrim Bottle. Granite & ash glaze with Nuka. Engraved rushes design

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9.5 x 9.0 49.0 x 20.0 45.0 x 30.0 35.0 x 17.0 12.5 x 18.5 64.5 x 28.5 61.0 x 27.0 50.0 x 23.0 49.0 x 29.0 46.0 x 30.5 47.0 x 33.5 42.0 x 32.0 41.5 x 33.0 42.0 x 19.0 34.5 x 17.5 41.5 x 17.5 44.5 x 27.0 43.5 x 22.0 37.0 x 20.5 33.0 x 19.0 34.0 x 19.0 29.5 x 17.0 29.5 x 18.0 28.5 x 16.0 27.5 x 16.5 28.5 x 15.0 26.5 X 15.0 24.0 x 15.0 34.5 x 19.0 34.5 x 19.0 33.0 x 19.0 33.5 x 19.0 41.5 x 25.0 41.0 x 25.0 33.0 x 19.5 15.5 x 43.0 15.5 x 42.5 14.0 x 42.0 42.5 x 28.0 37.5 x 26.0 33.5 x 25.0

All sizes in cm

83.

86.

87.

92.

93.

100.

106.

110.

112.

114.

115.

117.

120.

121.

123.

125.

133.

144.

149.

151.

154.

155.

158.

159.

161.

167.

170.

172.

173.

175.

176.

177.

178.

179.

182.

184.

185.

193.

194.

195.

198.

Footed Korean Type Bottle. Stamp pattern. Hakeme Footed Korean Type Bottle. Olive Nuka with copper pours Footed Korean Type Bottle. Granite & ash glaze with Nuka.

Footed Korean Type Bottle. Tenmoku with fingerwipes Footed Korean Type Bottle. Tenmoku with iron rushes design Tall Jug. Tenmoku with copper pours Baluster Jug. Bands & pellets. Tenmoku & ash glazes Baluster Jug. Bands & pellets. Granite & ash glaze Lidded Pot. Ridge & stamp patterns. Olive Nuka with copper pours Footed Pot with Lid. Cut sided. Olive Nuka Footed Pot with Lid. Cut sided. Granite glaze Footed Pot with Lid. Cut sided. Tenmoku Tea Set. Kaki glaze with wax pattern Tea Set. White slip with iron pattern Teapot. Tenmoku with copper pours Coffee Set. Tenmoku Bowl. Brushed slip, iron decoration & copper splashes Teabowl. Iron & cobalt fish decoration Teabowl. Stamped. Tenmoku Teabowl. Ridged & stamped. Tenmoku & Nuka Teabowl. Tenmoku & ash. Fingerwipes Teabowl. Rope pattern. Tenmoku & ash Teabowl. Stamped. Granite & ash glaze with Nuka pours Teabowl. Iron & cobalt decoration Teabowl. Stamps. Ash & granite glaze with Nuka pours Teabowl. Brushed slip, iron decoration & copper splashes Teabowl. Brushed slip, stamped pattern & copper splashes Teabowl. Brushed slip, stamped pattern & coppers splashes Teabowl. Brushed slip with iron decoration Teabowl. Brushed slip, iron decoration & copper splashes Yunomi. Nuka with Tenmoku pours Yunomi. Stamps. Granite & ash glaze with Nuka pours Yunomi. Rope pattern. Granite glaze with Nuka pours Yunomi. Rope pattern. Granite glaze with Nuka pours Yunomi. White slip, stamps & copper pours Yunomi. Tenmoku with fingerwipes Yunomi. Tenmoku with fingerwipes Yunomi. White slip, stamps & coppers splashes Yunomi. Brushed slip, iron decoration & copper splashes Yunomi. Brushed slip, iron decoration & copper splashes Yunomi. Brushed slip, iron decoration & copper splashes

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42.0 x 23.5 40.0 x 22.0 39.0 x 20.5 34.0 x 18.0 35.0 x 19.0 34.5 x 19.5 33.5 x 21.5 29.5 x 18.5 26.0 x 22.5 19.0 x 17.5 20.0 x 17.0 14.0 x 12.0 22.5 x 20.0 22.5 x 19.5 23.0 x 19.0 23.5 x 18.0 10.0 x 18.0 8.5 x 15.0 9.5 x 14.0 8.5 x 14.5 9.5 x 13.5 9.0 x 13.0 10.5 x 12.0 9.5 x 12.0 9.0 x 13.5 9.5 x 14.0 9.0 x 14.5 8.5 x 13.0 9.5 x 13.5 8.5 x 13.5 10.0 x 9.5 10.0 x 9.5 9.5 x 9.5 9.5 x 9.5 9.5 x 9.5 8.5 x 9.5 9.0 x 9.0 9.5 x 10.0 9.5 x 9.0 9.0 x 7.5 8.5 x 9.0

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www.modernpots.com Goldmark Gallery, Uppingham, Rutland, LE15 9SQ 01572 821424

Text: © Andy Christian 2011 Photographs: © Jay Goldmark Design: Porter / Goldmark

ISBN 978-1-870507-87-5 2011

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GOLDMARK CERAMICS MONOGRAPHS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Phil Rogers New Pots 2005 Clive Bowen New Pots 2006 Lisa Hammond New Pots 2006 Mike Dodd Recent Pots 2007 Ken Matsuzaki (2007) Thirty Years of a Living Tradition Svend Bayer (2007) New Pots Jim Malone (2008) The Pursuit of Beauty Phil Rogers (2008) A Potter of our Time

9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

Lisa Hammond (2009) Unconscious Revelation Ken Matsuzaki New Pots 2009 Mike Dodd New Pots 2009 Clive Bowen New Pots 2009 Svend Bayer New Pots 2010 Nic Collins New Pots 2011 Ken Matsuzaki New Pots 2011 Jim Malone New Pots 2011

GOLDMARK CERAMICS FILMS 1 2 3 4 5

Phil Rogers - A Passion For Pots Ken Matsuzaki - Elemental Svend Bayer Nic Collins Jim Malone

For further details or to order: visit www.modernpots.com or phone 01572 821424

Goldmark Uppingham Rutland LE15 9SQ England www.modernpots.com 66