Viva Lewes Issue #107 August 2015

its and bobs
lewes worthy: kenneth clark
Kenneth Clark ‘was to
tiles what James Dyson is
to vacuum cleaners,’ his
Guardian obituary noted,
while the Times said he
‘became one of the most
widely respected and best
loved artist-craftsmen in
England.’
His work, like his dress
sense, was bold and
colourful. Clark worked
in collaboration with his
wife, Ann; she did the
designs, while he handled
production. “He was
basically a very brilliant
ceramic chemist; he understood
ceramic materials
completely,” his daughter
Camilla says. “He had a
very good idea of what
raw materials would go
together to make the effect
that was wanted. But mum
was the designer.”
Photo by Fergus Kennedy
“He was very inventive, always thinking of new
stuff to put on tiles, that not many other people
were doing at the time,” his grandson Dan says.
“Quite pioneering really.”
Born in 1922, Clark was originally from New
Zealand. During WW2, he served in the British
Navy, manned a Landing Ship Tank on D-Day,
and was mentioned in dispatches.
An ex-serviceman’s grant enabled him to go
to art school after the war. “The only one he
knew the name of was the Slade,” so he went
there, Ann says. Later, at the Central School of
Art and Design’s ceramics department, he rose
from student to technical assistant to teacher.
One of his four books, The Potter’s Manual, was
a standard text for many years; “a seminal work,
really,” Camilla says.
He and Ann, who he’d met at the Central
School, founded Kenneth
Clark Ceramics in the 1950s.
Around 1980, priced out
of London, they moved to
Ringmer and set up a studio in
Lewes, at Southover Grange.
Dan recalls it was “kind of
organised chaos” in there, with
endless pots of glaze, containers,
samples, etc, stacked
everywhere. “They were both
real hoarders, the kind of
wartime mentality.” “Dad was
an incredibly life-affirming
person,” Camilla says. “He was
very positive, very enthusiastic,
very interested in supporting
other artists, and just very
interested in people.” He got a
lot of joy out of life, and once
told his great-grandchildren
that his favourite colour was
‘sunshine’.
A keen gardener and vegetable
grower who was always asking
guests if they “wanna lettuce?”,
he was “big on health foods and very clean
living.” Dan says. He had a study full of books,
and “was always talking about the fascinating
articles he’d read.”
Christianity was central to his life, and probably
helped drive him. Camilla says “he had a great
belief that you have a duty to God to develop
what talents you have and make the most of
them, and also somehow to celebrate God’s
world, I suppose.”
“He was a very particular person; he had his
ways,” Dan says. But he was also “a very bright,
cheerful and enthusiastic person, very healthful
and lively, had a big laugh.” Both Dan and
Camilla use the phrase ‘quite eccentric’. Ann
remembers him simply as “a shining example,
really, of how to be; how not to be defeated by
things.” He died in 2012, aged 89. Steve Ramsey
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