David Partington is inspired by 18th and 19th century ‘country potters’ and like them, creates pots that are ‘utilitarian and unpretentious’ both useful and beautiful. Instantly likeable, he is a modest man, who never stamps his pots but nonetheless has managed to sell thousands of handmade pieces to John Lewis, the White Company and to local bars and restaurants around his local Salford (where he works at Islington Mill).
I found myself admiring him, not so much for the work he produces, which had a certain elegance – but wasn’t compelling, but for his zen-like approach to the process of making. From his early beginnings, making bowls and jars with restrained ash glazes, he has loved the acts of throwing and glazing. He takes pride in his work, despite having to make thousands of identical pieces for some of the more demanding clients. Quite simply, he still loves to start each piece anew.
Perhaps because of this, he’s not sentimental about individual work. Once made and shipped, it is time to move on to the next pot. He keeps relatively few. There is some affection there, looking back on his early student pieces (he studied in Sunderland), he says: ‘I’m quite proud of them really, they’re nice little things’ but it’s interesting that so few of his thousands of pieces remain close to home.
Is it because so few of them are distinctive? The joy of repetition might mean that he’s less attached to individual pots, but I guess its also part of the job – learning to send things out into the world so that others can treasure them.
So, what lesson to take home from today’s Creative Lives talk? It clearly isn’t that I should stop experimenting and just settle on the joy of making simple forms for myself – because David strongly urged us all to ‘experiment as much as you can’ whilst studying. But there is an important message there about enjoying the journey that I’ll try to hold in mind, instead of rushing from one kind of making to another.