Large Plate

A work which shows the taste for rich colour and abstract design of this Yorkshire-born potter.

Sutton Taylor is one of Britain’s leading potters and his work is exceptionally well represented in the Leeds collection. He is a Yorkshireman, born in Keighley.  He trained as a teacher and worked in Manchester before moving to Jamaica and travelling in America. .  In 1970 he returned to England and  for a time lived in the stable block at Temple Newsam House.

He then moved to the Old House at Lotherton Hall where a ceramic nameplate still bears witness to his presence. There he had his kiln and wrestled with the extraordinary technical problems of firing lustreware – while managing not to burn the house down!

This magnificent charger shows his taste for working with rich colour and abstract design, sometimes fluid, sometimes geometrical and often with a mixture of both. It makes a telling comparison with the Victorian lustreware of William de Morgan (1839-1917) with its symmetry and use of figurative design – see the Charger painted to a design by William de Morgan of c. 1885, also at Lotherton Hall.