Warren Mackenzie
American potter inspired by the Japanese Mingei tradition in the St Ives workshop of Bernard Leach
WARREN MACKENZIE, who has died aged 94, was one of the foremost potters in America; as a young man, he was apprenticed with Bernard Leach in St Ives and became entranced by the Englishman’s interest in Mingei crafts, which favour the handmade and functional over artiness and ostentation. He took the Japanese folk tradition back home to Minneapolis, where he was to establish his studio.
He produced thousands of works a year, his pots, plates and teapots characterised by undulating lines, a rejection of symmetry and minimal decoration. Mackenzie insisted his pottery was for everyday use – so much so that for a period he sold his work far below its true value from a stand outside his farm in St Croix River Valley. Buyers were instructed to leave the money in an honesty box.
Warren Mackenzie was born in Kansas City on February 16 1924 to Fred and Adelaide Mackenzie. His father worked for the Crane Corporation and the family eventually settled in Illinois.
In 1941 he enrolled at the Chicago Art Institute, where his studies were interrupted by war service in the army. Due to poor eyesight, he never saw combat; instead, he worked as a printer producing military posters and instruction manuals. After V-J Day he was shipped to Japan, where he ran a printing plant that occupied the grandstand of the Yokohama racetrack.
On his return to the US in 1946, Mackenzie found the painting course at his art school oversubscribed so, despite having never handled clay before, he took the pottery class. There, he met Alix Kolesky, whom he would marry in 1947, a year before graduation.
The two became obsessed by Bernard Leach’s A Potter’s Book, and resolved to travel to England to apprentice under Leach. In summer 1949 they checked into a St Ives B&B for two weeks and, taking examples of their work, climbed the steep hill to Leach’s pottery, only to return disappointed.
“He said, ‘I’m sorry, we’re full up’,” Mackenzie recalled. “This was his way of politely saying you just don’t make the cut.” Leach did, however, allow them to visit the pottery on a daily basis during the holiday, and the three struck up a friendship: “We never talked about pottery. Bernard talked about social issues; he talked about the world political situation, he talked about the economy, he talked about all kinds of things. He talked about painting, but we never talked about ceramics.”
At 8am on their last day, having chatted through the night with his new friends, Leach decided to give the Mackenzies a chance and invited them to return.
Living in St Ives for two years from 1950, Mackenzie experimented with new glazes, and the couple attempted to bring their wheelwork up to the pottery’s daunting standard.
Mackenzie possessed printmaking skills alien to the St Ives artist community. He taught the Cornish landscape painter Peter Lanyon how to silk-screen and, in 1951, staged an exhibition entitled Prints Under £1. Works by the US couple, sold on the cheap, show an influence of the Bauhaus in their geometric simplicity and are now held in the Tate collection.
In 1952 the Mackenzies bought their farm, setting up a studio in a former barn. Warren would throw and Alix, until her death in 1962, decorate the results. In autumn 1953 Mackenzie started to lecture at the University of Minnesota, remaining there for 35 years.
He became a fellow of the International Academy of Ceramics in 1984 and in 1998 was honoured with the Gold Medal from the American Crafts Council. His work is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the Smithsonian in Washington, DC; and the Victoria & Albert Museum in London. In 2013, he returned to the Leach Pottery for a second residency.
In 1984 he married, secondly, the artist Nancy Spitzer, who died in 2014. He is survived by two daughters from his first marriage and by a stepdaughter and a stepson.
Warren Mackenzie, born February 16 1924, died December 31 2018