Before and After the Potter’s Wheel

A close look at the lore surrounding ceramics’ most iconic tool

This project challenges a footnote found in a celebrated potter’s guide written by the “father of British studio pottery” Bernard Leach (below). Leach’s remark typifies ceramics lore valorizing or denigrating  techniques and technologies through an ideology that frames technological progress as the dialectical triumph of the masculine over the feminine. The battle of the sexes is an impoverished way to account for technological change. This research seeks alternative, more compelling narratives to explain incentives to innovation in ceramics production and to address why, among potters of every stripe and generation, ancient methods persist alongside technological advancements.

University of Utah Office of Undergraduate Research, Fall 2024

Summer 2024 Detailed Summary | Annotated Bibliography

Fall 2024 Detailed Summary | Annotated Bibliography

Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the University of Utah Office of Undergraduate Research. Dr. Meekyung MacMurdie mentored this investigation. 

Photo: Bernard Leach by Tadahiko Hayashi, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.