Michael Cardew

Who was Michael Cardew?

Michael Cardew, OBE, was an English studio potter who worked in West Africa for twenty years.

Cardew was born in Wimbledon, London, the fourth child of Arthur Cardew, a civil servant, and Alexandra Kitchin, the eldest daughter of G.W.Kitchin, the first Chancellor of Durham University. His family had a holiday home in North Devon, where Arthur Cardew collected Devon country pottery. Cardew first saw this pottery being made in the workshop of Edwin Beer Fishley at Braunton and learned to make pottery on the wheel from Fishley's grandson, William Fishley Holland.

He gained a scholarship to read Classics at Exeter College, Oxford. Already preoccupied with pottery, he graduated with a third class degree in 1923.

Cardew was the first apprentice at the Leach Pottery, St.Ives, Cornwall, in 1923. He shared an interest in slipware with Bernard Leach and was influenced by the pottery of Shoji Hamada. In 1926 he left St Ives to restart the Greet Potteries at Winchcombe in Gloucestershire. With the help of former chief thrower Elijah Comfort and fourteen year-old Sydney Tustin, he set about rebuilding the derelict pottery. Cardew aimed to make pottery in the seventeenth century English slipware tradition, functional and affordable by people with moderate incomes. After some experimentation, pottery was made with local clay and fired in a traditional bottle kiln. Charlie Tustin joined the team in 1935 followed in 1936 by Ray Finch, who bought the pottery from Cardew and worked there until he died in 2012. The pottery is now known as Winchcombe Pottery.