Passion for pottery
Jenny Morten gave a most interesting talk to the Friends of Scarborough Art Gallery on October 10 about her ceramic art and her past experience in commercial art. She now works in Bridlington where she has a gallery in the Old Town selling her fine porcelain pieces and her late husband’s paintings.
Winning a prize for a self portrait at the age of nine launched her into a life of art in spite of being told that art does not lead to a ‘proper job’.
But she has always worked productively while her brothers, well-qualified engineers, have both suffered redundancies.
When she appreciated that the urns and jugs she saw in museums were expressive portraits, pottery became her chosen field.
After art school in York in the late ‘60s and an intensive course in pottery in London, she taught in evening classes and worked for a potter who expected her to produce 100 mugs each day, valuable experience!
A highlight in her early career was a visit to Zambia where her father was working. She was fascinated by the bright colours, feathered head-dresses and native robes.
She returned to her studio and gallery in south London and made tea-pots, cheese dishes and jam-jars with elaborately crafted and colourful lids.
These were very successful and brought her a commission for Sainsburys. Jenny showed us slides of several, one, a cheese dish covered with a winged helmet of Mercury. Success also brought problems; reproductions licensed but the promised royalties never appeared; poor, cheap copies of her pieces massproduced abroad, but her greatest difficulty resulted from an article in an American magazine. A visitor to London wrote about a teapot she had bought for £60. This brought a postbag full of American cheques for similar teapots, an overwhelming task for her.
After she had recovered she moved to Yorkshire with her husband and son and opened a pottery in Richmond. Her business prospered and after 10 years she was employing nine staff, but profits were meagre and she was exhausted, so retired.
Her husband, whom she had met at art college in York, had gone into education and had arranged exchange visits abroad. He saw an opportunity to emigrate to California and was given a lifelong work permit, a great honour. In America she refined her work, experimented with different clays and shapes and produced wonderful pieces, one of which was bought by a museum in Sydney. She showed us work based on the curves and sharp edges of crab claws, on upturned empty crab shells, the unfurling leaves of hostas and sycamore buds, and strata, erosion and fossils in rocks.
In America she was working on the back of her husband’s work permit; after his sudden death her position was uncertain so she returned in 2012 and is now producing beautiful bowls, vases and jugs in Bridlington.
She gave us a revealing insight into the life of a hardworking artist, full of creative ideas, while well aware of the practical problems of making a living.
The Friends’ next talk is on Monday, November 14, at 2.30pm in Scarborough Art Gallery.
John Freeman, the Whitby artist, will ‘Meander down the Esk’.
Admission for visitors £4 (includes refreshment) Please book a place with the gallery 01723 374753.