Chapter 13
a quartet of potters from all manner of folk interpretations and studies by holbrook jackson reading by bellona times before me as i write stands a vase there is nothing remarkable in that but this is a vase of distinctive yet unobtrusive grace it is not necessarily the grace that holds you in thrall at the first glance although it has that power also but the grace that insinuates and wins you unawares its proportion is so exquisite that it affects the mind like music like slow stately music or better like the balance of the large easy flight of certain sea-birds it compels you to think of such things of balanced accomplished things things which round off as it were the infinitude in which every man's thoughts flounder and fret or take their ease yet you are not only delighted by the proportion of my face for this proportion is wedded unto a subtle colouring of equal charm there is something strident something of the brass band in the colouring of so much pottery
even in imari and satsuma in severes and derby and in delft but no hints of high sounds spring out of the greens and greys which bewitch the eye on the shell-like surface of my vase all is modulated to a harmony of whispering quiet to look at my vase after the hurly-burly of the modern day is like going into a retreat where the telephone bell is not and the motor never was you feel grateful to those greens fading into greys and greys fading into green in and out of which curve and float the quaintest and most graceful of fishes etched richly into the clay a little to the westward of chancery lane on the opposite side of holborn there is one of those dim lanes of tall and somewhat unkempt houses with shop-fronts which are if not particular to at least at their best in london about half-way down the lane which is called brownlow street there is a little shop in whose white-framed window may be seen at any time of the year an assortment of stoneware vases akin to mine
and there are as well jugs and other objects of the potter's craft pieces of craftsmanship which every now and then hold up the judicious passer-by in wonderment there is nothing about the little shop at all like the shops of modern commerce business you imagine may possibly take place there but you feel that the main object is something different the pots are not arranged like the crockery in an ordinary shop and there is slight evidence of antagonism towards the dust when you enter the shop the effect is much the same you find yourself in a dim-lit passage with crowded shelves of stoneware jugs carved into leering laughing grinning and ogling faces jostling the most impossible and withal most fascinating pot-birds with delightfully disturbing anthropological expressions
faces as beautiful as the one i have described and of innumerable shapes and sizes and queer little imps blowing horns or beating cymbals a curious but goodly assembly of unique ceramic products huddled together in their dim and dusty domain with every appearance of self-satisfaction and content opposite the shelves is a desk with an ink-pot of the same ware as the other pottery and a little chaos of papers and this last is the only suggestion of commerce you are undecided how far to proceed for you see more light and more strange and beautiful pots in a small square room beyond but presently you are set at rest by the appearance of a little man bespectacled and neglect with a half-carved figure of clay in one hand and a wooden tool like a scalpel in the other you notice although the light is dim that his face swathed though it is in a shaggy beard
and crowned with a tangled mane of brown and gray hair is quick with the intelligence of the artist and if you are patient you will soon realize that you stand before a master craftsman wallace martin the eldest of the quartet of brothers who make the stoneware which has given me so much delight or it may be that you will be received by edwin martin a taller man of middle age with the sensitive face of a poet he also comes with his work in his hand in all probability an unfired vase into whose drab clay he is etching some quaint device for that is his contribution to the art of creating martinware these potters do not approach you as shopmen and i dare not think what would happen if you attempted immediately to open up commercial relations i have seen many pieces of stoneware bought of wallace and edwin martin but i have never seen them sell a piece the pots are there they have their prices marked on them you may examine them and admire and if you wish purchase them but if you only admire you are just as and
i sometimes think more welcome for the martin brothers are reluctant to part with the treasures they have made they are jealous of other ownership even after they are convinced of its worthiness there is a charming simplicity about these brothers their craft is everything and they never tire of discussing it in quiet homely phrases which tell you far more than all the art talk of the drawing-rooms and the coteries all about you are pots of superb proportion and exquisite colouring and there is also enough quaintness and whimsical fancy in clay in their shop to make the fortune of any black-and-white artist yet there is no talk about art as such only about the actual making of these things by men who have a childlike joy and pride in their work and who love their work and are happy in telling you about it william morris would have delighted in these men whose creations are the quintessence of joy and work combined and he would have loved to hear wallace martin
clay in hand discussing enthusiastically problems of life and religion commingled with a deeply informed technical interpretation of his craft this enthusiasm and practical knowledge is manifested even in the simplest piece of martinware you have but to look at these creations to recognize that their makers live for them it is this reverent and joyful craftsmanship infused with rare imagination which turns the rough clay into beautiful faces and jugs strange birds and imps and satyrs that have become devils in the medieval vision of wallace martin martin brothers are all the more remarkable in our age because they are pure londoners and indeed there is not a little of the colour of london in the low tones of their dyes their father was robert thomas martin stationer of queen highth thames street e g coming originally from norfolk but their mother was actually a native of thames street in the city and in that street wallace also was born they first began as potters at fulham in eighteen seventy three and in eighteen seventy seven moved to southall where their pottery has remained till now
rarely have four brothers so complemented one another and for forty years their complementary qualities worked eloquently together when death took charles martin away from them a remarkable circumstance of this fraternal partnership is the fact that each brother has carried out a certain and definite part of the work and a kind of division of labour has existed throughout which in other circumstances might have had ill effects on the completed objects of their craft but the sympathy of the brothers in their co-operate aim has saved their work from the evils of that bane of all good craftsmanship the division of labour wallace martin who is nearing the age of seventy is the sculptor and modeller quaint face-jugs musical imps and delightful grotesque birds are the outcome of his genius and handiwork walter martin combines the art of potter and chemist it is he who mixes the west of england clays of which the pots are made and stands all day at the ancient potter's wheel throwing
the beautiful shapes which are later etched all over with the strangely fascinating devices of edwin martin who is the etcher and painter of the combination walter is responsible also for the pigments used in the colouring of the clays the late charles martin who died in june nineteen o nine in his sixty-second year used to preside over the little shop in brownlow street watching affectionately over the beloved pots and releasing them reluctantly all the work of firing mixing clays and chemicals throwing modeling etching and selling is done by the brothers martin without any outside help and every piece they make is unique no shape or design ever being repeated with medieval simplicity and sincerity the martin brothers go to work requiring few aids from modern science and although they seem to be far apart from the scramble and shouting of the modern world throwing back as it were to the remote middle ages yet are they modern in a very real way the modern note is struck in each of their creations
they are out of touch however with all save a few in this age in their rule of never repeating a single design the uniformity of to-day has not reached the martin pottery which means that these craftsmen are not manufacturers and their pottery remote from the pot banks of staffordshire all the prodigality of genius is to be found in the infinite variety of their products but at the same time there is no striving after vain effects each piece of martinware is unique but all martinware is alike just as you will find variation and personality expressed in the details of the harmony which goes to the building of a gothic minster the two chief variations of martinware are color and decoration the colors are generally worked into the actual clay before firing and sometimes inlaid by the decorator the bulk of the designs especially those of edwin martinware are etched in clay charm of color and design is always a characteristic of martinware but besides these qualities an incalculable charm is derived from the hard shell-like surface of all the pieces
this surface is a triumph of the ceramic art it is really a salt-glaze produced by submitting each piece to the ordeal of actual contact with salt-fed flames in the early days of the pottery experiments were made in design and it was some years before the potters found the real trend of their genius at first they borrowed motifs from the renaissance but to-day these early efforts though excellent in form look crude in design beside their later work to-day they follow no school but find a real basis of design in their own whims and fancies inlaid and indented devices following the geometrical designs of the artificer nature as she reveals herself in gourd and sea-shell now dominate the vase-shapes varied by strange and beautifully etched devices of fishes crustaceans weird lizards and dragons the martin brothers love of the grotesque is best exemplified in the modeled figures and birds of aulis martin
in these there is a mastery beyond praise quietly for years and almost unknown seeking no fame and content with an income that would be despised by a suburban grocer wallace martin has gone on carving his balls of clay into fancies that will live he has passed the age when praise might have spoiled him indeed praise of his genius is unnecessary for if i understand him aright he wants neither that nor fame nor great wealth if you enjoy the things he joys in making it will be enough but when we deplore the absence of originality among our native sculptors we may find hope in remembering wallace martin his grotesque face jugs are joys for ever worthy receptacles of generous beverages his imps and satyrs conquer by the very abandon of their impishness whilst his birds defy all words they are inexplicable and irresistible they are a new species
an addition to nature half humans they are and wise and sad and knowing and you find yourself talking to them as though they lived perhaps they do somewhere or if not i am sure they will some day wallace martin it may be is teaching nature some new tricks elsewhere we have nothing to compare with them save such literary cattle as the jabberwock the quangle-wangle-quee and the snark still lewis carroll and edward lear did think along the same lines as wallace martin they dreamed similar dreams only wallace martin has dreamt them in clay and baptized them with flame end of a quartet of potters by holbrook jackson
