No 25: Bowl, 1983 (P.84.12)

This bowl represents David Leach at his most accomplished, working at his Lowerdown Pottery, Bovey Tracey, Devon. It is thrown in porcelain, for which he developed a clay body which is now commercially available, and glazed in blueish white. The interior is brushed with a swaying willow tree, in iron, cobalt and red oxides, encircled by a cobalt (blue) line near the rim. The tree's trunk and branches are composed of only three brushstrokes and the fronds dripping from them less than a dozen more. The coolness of this bowl shows the influence of Chinese imperial porcelains of the early eighteenth century.