Pottery In Australia Vol 15 No 1 Autumn 1976

BRYAN NEWMAN IN AUSTRALIA
Janet Mansfield
English potter, Bryan Newman was brought to Australia by the Craft Board of
the Australia Council. According to many potters here, he has been one of the
most successful of the visiting craftsmen that the Board has sponsored. With
workshops given in all States, potters have had every opportunity to learn
practical technology and some aesthetic assessment of the ceramic art. That Bryan
is an experienced teacher was obvious by the fact that he sustained his enthusiasm
and good will during what must have been an exhausting programme continually
working and travelling.
It is obvious too that Bryan is committed to clay. He says there are jobs in
the pottery to correspond to all one's moods and the facets of one's personality.
Even balancing the books suits a part of his nature although Bryan admits to
being the only potter he knows who can find enjoyment in book-keeping.
Bryan Newman delights in paradox, he likes to keep a flexible attitude to
life and enjoys nearly everything. He finds the silly and ludicrous just as meaningful
as the perfect and sublime maintaining that life is as it should be, just
a little bit crazy with a balance between chaos and order. What he says today,
he may contradict tomorrow, happily changing his ideas and emphasis regularly.
Bryan's work schedule in his own studio allows for plenty of variety. He
will spend three to four months on sculptural work, using slabs and combinations
of slabs and thrown forms, turning in relief to repetition throwing, making one
activity an antidote to the other. He feels the shapes he makes metamorphose,
subtly changing as the working time progresses. He is not pedantic about the
functional aspects of his domestic ware but likes to believe that most of it does
work mechanically. It is more important that a shape pleases him and if it
should have a small defect, well he says, it's like accepting defects in one's
friends.
At home, a farm house in Somerset, Bryan works with his wife Julie who
is also a professional potter and who mainly makes domestic ware. For six
months of the year he employs an assistant. His pace of work is very fast using
very few tools believing that they are only an extension of his body which is
more responsive anyway. His record output was 607 saucers in one day and that
included preparing and weighing out all the clay.
Bryan uses two clay bodies. For small pieces he mixes 25% fire clay with
75 % ball clay. For larger work he adds sagger clay to this mix in the proportion
of one part sagger clay to two parts of the other mix. His clays are blended in a
dough mixer and then stored for six weeks to mature before use. Besides being
fast and efficient in his work, Bryan is also neat. He always covers ware boards
with newspaper which keeps them clean and dry. His schedule of work usually
involves three weeks of making and then one and a half weeks glazing to firing.
Bryan normally bisque fires.
'
He has two kilns, one of 18 cubic feet, do ndraught, which has a David
Etchel! oil burner mounted at the top. The larger kiln, not so old nor yet quite as
reliable has a capacity of 55 cubic feet and is fired with two swirlamiser burners
in conjunction with a I" compressor. Bryan likes to combine dry glazes with
shiny areas of glaze on the one piece. For the dry glazes he uses unwashed ash
with China clay. When using pigments, an amount of china clay is added to
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