Saying More With Less
In the years after finishing my apprenticeship with Geoffrey Whiting I’d frequently receive long letters from him, in his firm handwriting, a teabowl sketched across the back of the envelope like a seal. These letters would patiently and humorously answer my question on glazing problems, and would often contain a recent haiku he’d written, a collection of overheard remarks from the schoolchildren he taught, and a brisk summary of his latest firing: some ‘rather not so good’ pots, a decent teapot to show me. Visiting him in his small flat in Canterbury, near the ruins of St. Augustine’s Abbey was always a pleasure keenly anticipated. It wasn’t an austere flat: there was just the total absence of unnecessary things. Two chairs, one for him with a large press-moulded dish for his endless poisonously strong cigarettes by its side. One chair for his visitor. A few pots that he was pleased with on the mantlepiece, an artlessly placed branch of greenery in a jar. His desk would be covered in sketches or with a recent watercolour. An ascetic library to hand, a few shelves with the books that were truly necessary to have: Auden, Thomas Merton, D. T. Suzuki ’s Essays on Zen Buddhism, R. S. Thomas, Leach. And pots stacked everywhere: teabowls unceremoniously packed on top of each other and underneath everything, teapots below the bookshelves, jars and platters in confusion with a few privileged by having a brick underneath them. A large cider-jar had to be climbed round for several years. It was a study, living-room and gallery all in one. If you were clever you could sit and talk and work your way through the latest firings like an archaeologist, asking questions as you went.
The characteristic pattern of a Whiting apprenticeship was established immediately. For the first weeks I threw nothing but ashtrays. Each of the hundreds would be criticised by Geoffrey and discarded in the slopbin. Rather in the manner of an English Zen Master, once he saw the stirrings of facility with one form he’d switch you to another: a pleasing run of casseroles would be interrupted by jugs. Self-confidence would be constantly wrong footed, not from any malevolence, but as part of a teaching style that rested not on the acquisition of technical ability alone, but on a belief that vigorous pots came about in a different way. We’d work in silence, Geoffrey’s early experiences of Quaker schooling giving him an aversion to empty talk.
There was however compulsory cricket commentary in the summer. A Cistercian monk once remarked to him that there was a more contemplative atmosphere in the workshop than in his monastic enclosure, a remark that delighted Geoffrey. Learning alongside him was fascinating. We had parallel kickwheels—his was a hundred year-old country wheel that needed constant damping and caulking to stay together, on which he threw with that indescribable intense relaxedness of the completely experienced thrower. Whether he was turning his teapots with a precision that never seemed to leave them fussy or inert, or was decorating bowls with one of his constantly repeated motifs, there was a feeling of the ‘forgetful ’ hand, of effortless attention. Some of his ‘hakeme’ bowls he once laughingly demonstrated to me, removing his glasses and loading a brush with white slip, could best be decorated with a ‘myopic’ hand too.
Geoffrey could offer devastating critiques of work, and frequently did. But the context was of his own fierce self-criticism and high standards. When I somehow managed to overfire a complete kilnload biscuit pots, he suggested that I might ‘learn by mistakes’ less thoroughly next time and started to remake the pots. The atmosphere of the workshop was serious, without being over-reverential. Sometimes we’d stop work, and bicycle off to see a particular stand of elms that might not survive much longer, or go walking, preferably somewhere melancholy and ‘shibui’ like the Romney Marshes or the flats near Faversham. Wherever you went, you were aware of his particular quality of attentiveness. His sensibility drew him to battered bits of the English countryside. His devotion to Cotman above all other water colourists was in keeping with this, for in Cotman there is the juxtaposition of landscape and broken fencing, grandeur and ruin, brickwork and plaster. He was close to a Tea Ceremony aesthetic in this, but it was an aesthetic natural to him and without preciosity. The lack of show in his pots expresses this: a distrust of effect that extended towards ‘Chun’ glazes, and even made him anxious about his marvellous ‘Kuan’ type crackle glazes in that they drew so much attention to themselves.
Handling pots in the weeks after a firing was always interesting as any hierarchy of immediate pleasure was sure to be reversed, teabowls moved from floor to mantlepiece. Geoffrey explained that a necessary skill for a potter was stealth: you had to learn to catch pots unawares to discern their true nature.
In a letter about hurry, Geoffrey wrote of:
‘... the variegated colours and textures in the hedge to my right, the pattern of weeds and lichens growing through the asphalt of my path. In pottery, too, for long now I’ve had an indefinite, though largely unconscious urge to say more and more, with less and less.’
This is Geoffrey in typical mood: relating a pared down attitude towards working practice with a feeling for the overlooked. There was an asceticism in him that ran from his concentration on a few glaze materials and forms, to his pricing policy. It was futile trying to persuade him to put up his prices. His pots were cheap, not because he didn’t value his work, but because of a real commitment to the idea that pots should be affordable enough to use and break. This was as highly irritating as it was inspiring as you saw people walking away with wonderful pots for a pittance.
There was a measure of bravado in this too—a challenge to try and assess him too easily. It was there in the combination of the Indian Army Officer who made pots with untouchables, the well-known man who lived so anonymously with such a heterogenous collection of friends. When I came round proudly with a splendid jar by a Famous Potter, I found a note on my wheel the next day hoping that I wasn’t going to fall victim to ‘the current cult whereby everything by a famous maker is good’. His avoidance of such a role meant he could concentrate on making his enlivening pots, giving generously of time and advice, and sustaining many with his warm and loving friendship.