Bowl

This press-moulded bowl is a dynamic convex canvas. Rhythmic sgraffito lines and markings intersect and diverge across its luminous tin-glaze surface. James Tower’s ceramics capture the constantly changing patterns of the natural world. Influenced by his childhood on the Kent coast and in contrast to the area’s expansive landscape, the shapes that attract Tower are small, organic and detailed. He cites being captivated by the movement of reeds in the wind and graduations of shells and flints on the beach. [1] It is these types of subtle patterns he abstracts, magnifies and harmonises in his work.

Tower initially studied painting and then ceramics at the London Institute of Education in 1948, where he was taught by William Newland. It was Newland who, influenced by the tin-glazed ceramics of Picasso, introduced Tower to the technique of incised drawing over a fired tin-glaze that we see here. Tower went on to use this method, working primarily with black and white glazes from the 1950s to the 1980s.

Sim Panaser, June 2020

[1] Peter Lane, ‘James Tower: Artist Potter’, Ceramic Review, 88 (July/August 1984), p. 8.