The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 50 No 3 November 2011

Focus: Ceramics + Narrative
And the writing is charming and very English - here is an example:
Tower Square, in Tunstall, is to my mind the prettiest ... This is a peaceful, open square,
with a sniff of fresh air and a lingering memory of a country market town. It is ridged in the
middle, so that the houses seem to lean outwards. Mostly they are small, unassertive shops,
selling things like jigsaw puzzles, goldfish food, and the libraries of defunct clergymen.
For all the faddishness of lin de Zen. we shou ldn't forget that the vast bulk of Australian ceramic
history lies in England, or that the wealth, skill, scale and success of the manufactories of Stoke-on-Trent
are a singular moment in manufacturing history.
This book certainly doesn't paint a romantic picture of life in the factories, and I doubt if many of
the Mashiko-bound potters in 1961 would have altered their destinations to the English Midlands after
reading it. Nonetheless, it gives one a taste of an industry that, in its heyday, supported thousands of
workers and, together with the mills, steel and shipbuilding, made Britain great. Now, just let me check
if that souvenir cup from Kate and Wills' wedding was 'Made in China' ...
May by May Davis
Self published May Davis, New Zealand 1990
ISBN 0-473-01000-3
After reading this autobiography by May Davis, one wonders that she had the energy to write
anything down at all, given the almost ridiculous extremes of discomfort she endured at various times
and places to, together with her husband Harry Davis, make pots that people might sometimes have
wanted but, in reality, nobody actually needed.
Bright, artistic and beautiful, born into a privileged household (her grandfather was the founder of
the Manchester Guardian, later to become The Guardian newspaper), one is left with the overriding
impression that May Davis might have had a far easier life if she had just .. well, if she had just not met
Harry Davis.
Then again, one wouldn't want to convey the impression that May Davis was a shrinking violet,
blindly following 'her man' as he travelled around the world on yet more arduous ceramic adventures.
Indeed, as is obvious from the text, May was a little bit 'out there' herself, wholeheartedly identifying
with various causes, sometimes to the detriment of both her personal life and health. This, combined
with her husband's proclivity for taking on large challenges of a ceramic kind, make Harry and May
Davis an interesting case-study in both how to conquer difficulties and yet at the same time make
the easy difficult and to render success, if not a failure, then at least hard to savour by virtue of sheer
bloody-minded ness.
Of all the biographies included in this essay, May is probably the most 'tell all', in that it eschews
almost all detail about the making of pots while including a great deal of detail about the life of the
author. To be honest, there is a bit 'too much information' for me; the details of May's first orgasm,
clutching Harry's knee as she sat beside him, fully-clothed and still decidedly in possession of her
virginity, is interesting as far as it goes, but there is also surely something a little vain about recounting
such an episode; as one reads further, it becomes apparent that the text is characterised by such
observations.
THE IOURNAl OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS NOVEMBER 2011 39