Alan Caiger-Smith MBE (8 February 1930 – 21 February 2020) was a British ceramicist, studio potter and writer on

pottery Pottery is the process and the products of forming vessels and other objects with clay and other raw materials, which are fired at high temperatures to give them a hard and durable form. The place where such wares are made by a ''potter'' is al ...

Life and work

Caiger-Smith was born in

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires, controlled by the government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the Capital city, capital and largest city of Argentina. It is located on the southwest of the Río de la Plata. Buenos Aires is classified as an Alpha− glob ...

Argentina Argentina, officially the Argentine Republic, is a country in the southern half of South America. It covers an area of , making it the List of South American countries by area, second-largest country in South America after Brazil, the fourt ...

. He studied at the

Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts Camberwell College of Arts is a constituent college of the University of the Arts London, a public art and design university in London, England. The college offers further and higher education programmes, including postgraduate and PhD awards. ...

and read history at

King's College, Cambridge King's College, formally The King's College of Our Lady and Saint Nicholas in Cambridge, is a List of colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college lies beside the River Cam and faces ...

(1949-1952). He trained in pottery at the Central School of Art & Design in 1954 under

Dora Billington Dora May Billington (1890–1968) was an English teacher of Ceramic art, pottery, a writer and a studio pottery, studio potter. Her own work explored the possibilities of painting on pottery. As head of the pottery department at the Central Sc ...

. According to Grove Art, Alan Caiger-Smith established the Aldermaston Pottery in 1955, "a cooperative workshop of about seven potters making functional domestic ware and tiles, as well as individual commissions and one-off pots. By trial and error he revived and perfected two virtually lost techniques: the use of tin glaze and painted pigments on red earthenware clay, and the firing of lustres on to tin glazes." However, "virtually lost" is questionable: in his ''Lustre Pottery'', Caiger-Smith himself covers relatively recent revivals of

lustreware Lustreware or lusterware (the respective spellings for British English and American English) is a type of pottery or porcelain with a metallic glaze that gives the effect of iridescence. It is produced by metallic oxides in an Ceramic glaze, over ...

William De Morgan William Frend De Morgan (16 November 1839 – 15 January 1917) was an English potter, tile designer and novelist. A lifelong friend of William Morris, he designed tiles, stained glass and furniture for Morris & Co. from 1863 to 1872. His tile ...

Vilmos Zsolnay Vilmos Zsolnay (April 19, 1828 in Pécs March 23, 1900 in Pécs) was a Hungarian industrialist and entrepreneur. As the director of the Zsolnay porcelain manufacture he introduced new materials and inventions into the manufacture of pottery an ...

Clément Massier Clement or Clément may refer to: People * Clement (name), a given name and surname * Saint Clement (disambiguation)#People Places * Clément, French Guiana, a town * Clement, Missouri, U.S. * Clement Township, Michigan, U.S. * Clement's P ...

and Pilkington's Royal Lancastrian Pottery. In particular his researches "reconstructed the medieval Islamic lustreware technique". He was joined at Aldermaston Pottery by a number of other potters, including Geoffrey Eastop (1921–2014). Alan Caiger-Smith's book on ''Tin-Glaze Pottery'' (1973) covers its history and much of its technique. He co-translated and annotated with R.W. Lightbown a detailed contemporary description of the materials and methods of

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

maiolica Maiolica is tin-glazed pottery decorated in colours on a white background. The most renowned Italian maiolica is from the Renaissance period. These works were known as ''istoriato'' wares ("painted with stories") when depicting historical and ...

Cipriano Piccolpasso Cipriano di Michele Piccolpasso (1524 – 21 November 1579) was a member of an Italian patrician family of Bologna that had been settled since the mid-fifteenth century in Castel Durante, which was an important center for the manufacture of maiol ...

's ''I Tre Libre Dell'Arte Del Vasaio'' (''The Three Books of the Potter’s Art'') (1980). His history of lustre ware, ''Lustre Pottery'', was published in 1985. Caiger-Smith was Chairman of the British Crafts Centre (1973–1978) and was awarded the MBE in 1988. He ceased employing assistants in 1993 to concentrate on personal work and in 2006 announced his decision to sell the Aldermaston Pottery.

Bibliography

*Caiger-Smith, Alan, ''Tin-Glaze Pottery in Europe and the Islamic World: The Tradition of 1000 Years in Maiolica, Faience and Delftware'' (

Faber and Faber Faber and Faber Limited, commonly known as Faber & Faber or simply Faber, is an independent publishing house in London. Published authors and poets include T. S. Eliot (an early Faber editor and director), W. H. Auden, C. S. Lewis, Margaret S ...

, 1973). . *Caiger-Smith, Alan, ''Lustre Pottery: Technique, Tradition and Innovation in Islam and the Western World''(Faber and Faber, 1985). . *Caiger-Smith, Alan, ''Pottery, People and Time: A Workshop in Action'' (Shepton Beauchamp: Richard Dennis, 1995). . *Piccolpasso, Cipriano, ''The Three Books of the Potter's Art (I Tre Libri del Arte Vasaiao)'' (trans. A. Caiger-Smith and R. Lightbown) (Scolar Press, 1980). . *Caiger-Smith, Alan, ''Said el Sadr 1909-1986. Potter, Painter, Sculptor, Teacher.'' (ACS Shalford Publications, 2010). *Caiger-Smith, Alan, ''Times and Seasons (I Tempi e le Stagioni)'' (Published 2012 in English and Italian). *Caiger-Smith, Alan, ''English Medieval Mural Paintings'' (Oxford University Press, 1963). *Wettlaufer, George and Nancy Wettlaufer. “England’s Alan Caiger-Smith.” 'Ceramics Monthly' 28, no. 1 (January 1980). *White Jane, ''Alan Caiger-Smith and the Legacy of Aldermaston Pottery'', Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2018

References

External links

National Electronic and Video Archive of the Crafts
{{DEFAULTSORT:Caiger-Smith, Alan 1930 births 2020 deaths Alumni of King's College, Cambridge Alumni of the Central School of Art and Design Argentine emigrants to England Argentine people of British descent English potters Members of the Order of the British Empire Aldermaston Writers from Buenos Aires

Life and work

Bibliography

See also

References

External links