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We with Alix MacKenzie had decided we needed further training, and certainly Leach was the one we turned to. So we went to England this summer and we took examples of our work along with us and showed them to Bernard Leach and told him what we were trying to do. And of course he took one look at our work and he said - very quickly he said, "I'm sorry, we're full up," and this was his way of politely saying, you just don't make the cut.
Warren MacKenzie -
We did respect Bernard Leach, although we also were willing to challenge ideas and at least put forth our feelings about the way the pottery was run, about things that were done, about the pots we were making, etc. And we would get into sometimes some very fierce arguments. We'd be shouting at one another because of disagreements.
Warren MacKenzie
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I thought, oh, I'm going to be a painter. And eventually my family had moved near Chicago, and when I graduated from high school, I went to the Chicago Art Institute, and it was there that I thought, well, now I'm going to be a painter.
Warren MacKenzie -
Shoji Hamada seldom drew an exact drawing of a pot that he was going to make.
Warren MacKenzie -
If you didn't know what you were trying to do, Robert von Neumann wouldn't say a word. He would just turn and walk away. So you very quickly learned to think that you'd better be attempting to do something in that painting class.
Warren MacKenzie -
We moved up here to St.Paul with my wife and started to teach, we very quickly found out we were not equipped either to teach or to run our own pottery, and so we decided that we had to have further training.
Warren MacKenzie -
In the Field Museum of Natural History we could see very simple, primitive, hand-built pottery from Babylonia and ancient Egypt and so forth, Greece. We could see the most sophisticated things that came out of the Orient - Japan, Korea, and China - some few pieces of European porcelain, majolica tin glazed earthenware, and that sort of thing. But they had a marvelous collection.
Warren MacKenzie -
We asked a lot of questions and we watched everyone who was working in the studio. And we had an opportunity to sit in on discussions, aesthetic discussions at the pottery, which took place generally over tea breaks in the morning and afternoon. So we learned a lot just from being around there with Bernard Leach.
Warren MacKenzie
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At the end of that two weeks Bernard Leach asked us if we would like to sit with him tending the kiln, the big oil-fired kiln that they had. He was still sitting what we call a kiln watch at that time, and he wondered if we would like to sit the watch with him and talk. So naturally this was our last opportunity to talk with him, so we said yes. We didn't realize Bernard's kiln watch was from 1:00 in the morning until 4:00 AM.
Warren MacKenzie -
At that childhood time, of course, if you were involved in art, it was going to be drawing and painting, because that's the only thing that was taught in the schools.
Warren MacKenzie -
We me and my wife went back to St. Paul, worked for a year - again, I guess I would have to admit now, doing a rather shaky job of teaching people - but at the end of that year we returned to England and worked in the Bernard Leach Pottery for two and a half years.
Warren MacKenzie -
There was a school in Chicago called the School of Design. This was started by Laszló Moholy-Nagy, and it was a wonderful school, but we with Alix MacKenzie didn't go to that school. We did have friends who went to that school and we would visit there often, and I'm sure it pushed me in my painting direction very strongly just by association.
Warren MacKenzie -
I was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and I do know from what my parents tell me that I was always interested in art, although not very good at it.
Warren MacKenzie -
Bernard Leach was making pots which were duplicates of his drawing, and that was a difference of approach, which I think is quite critical to these two men Leach and Shoji Hamada.
Warren MacKenzie
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When Bernard Leach wrote his book, he wrote about the fact that even when pots are made in a series, there is a personality to each pot and that the person who made it reflects their personality into the clay.
Warren MacKenzie -
Living with Bernard Leach, who thought about pottery 24 hours a day, was a fantastic experience, and we really began to get inside his mind and understand what had motivated him to work all his life as a potter.
Warren MacKenzie -
When you're young, you think you can do anything, and we thought.
Warren MacKenzie -
If you take Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, their work didn't even relate to what we were trying to do, because they were moving in a different direction, both of them coming out of Europe and the Viennese school of design, which Lucie came from, and Coper learning from Lucie and then springing off on his own when she encouraged him to explore more widely. So he created his own work instead of just working for her and doing her forms. So that was a wonderful thing.
Warren MacKenzie -
Friends of Bernard's Leach came to visit, and when we went to London, we were given introductions to people like Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Richard Batram. All these people were, let's say, made available to us by a friendship with Leach. In addition there was a potter's group - what was it called? I think it was called the Cornish Potters Society, but I'm not sure of that. Anyway, they had meetings and we would go with Leach to these meetings and meet other potters, and they would have programs where they would discuss pottery and people would interchange ideas.
Warren MacKenzie -
The interesting thing was we never talked about pottery. Bernard Leach talked about social issues; he talked about the world political situation, he talked about the economy, he talked about all kinds of things.
Warren MacKenzie
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Robert von Neumann taught painting, and when I finally got into a painting class of his, he reacted in much the same way.
Warren MacKenzie -
Here is this ability to explore ideas, but with minute changes, and then look at the results. Often you get so excited about what you're doing that you think, "Oh, wow, this is just great." And you look at it a week later and you realize you'd been excited by the act of creation, but what you've created is not really exciting when you look at it in cold blood. And so that, to me, is a valuable lesson also.
Warren MacKenzie -
It was a wonderful opportunity. And so for two and a half years we lived with Bernard Leach.
Warren MacKenzie -
Shoji Hamada's drawings were little one-line notations of something he wanted to remember about a pot or a piece of furniture or a landscape or something like that, and they were just done very quickly and they had, he thought, no artistic quality. They're not great drawings, but they served to remind him of something he had in his mind, so that when he then went to the studio, that would stick in his mind and he could explore the making of the pot with the clay on the wheel.
Warren MacKenzie