Leach Pottery
The Leach Pottery was founded in 1920 by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada in St Ives, Cornwall, in the United Kingdom. The buildings grew from an old cow / tin-ore shed in the 19th century to a pottery in the 1920s with the addition of a two-storey cottage added on to the lower end of the pottery, followed by a completely separate cottage at the top of the site added by Leach in 1927. In 1922 Tsuronosuke Matsubayashi came from Japan to rebuild an unsuccessful climbing kiln for the pottery. Matsubayashi built a three chambered traditional Japanese Noborigama, the first Japanese climbing kiln in the western world, and this was used until the 1970s. Bernard's son David Leach who trained at the North Staffordshire Technical College, became manager in 1937 abandoning production of earthenware, developing a new stoneware body and taking on local apprentices. Michael Cardew was an early student and William Marshall an apprentice. Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie became an apprentice in 1924 Warren MacKenzie from the US, Charmian Johnson from Canada and Len Castle from New Zealand also worked here. The pottery's Standard Ware was first issued in 1946 and can be found in the V&A collection. Mail order catalogues