Colin Pearson: Tall dark vessel with wings

Colin Pearson (1923-2007)

Colin Pearson used his skills as a consummate thrower, well versed in the traditions of good functional pottery, to radically rethink wheel-made form. Trained at Goldsmiths’ College and Winchcombe Pottery under Ray Finch, Pearson ran a production workshop at Aylesford before concentrating on individual more sculptural work from the early 1970s. It explored a much freer and gestural type of throwing and altering, the pots soon acquiring attachments or ‘wings’ that gave them a new expressive dimension, particularly as he became more experimental with glazes and colour as well. The stoneware could be bold and powerful, the porcelain often more refined and delicate. Pearson was an influential and charismatic teacher, particularly at Camberwell College of Arts. He was based in Islington, London in the last phase of his career.