The studio potter Trevor Corser, who has died aged 77, played an often unsung but deeply influential role at the world-renowned Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall. He was the longest serving member of the pottery, starting as a consignment packer for deliveries, and went on to be one of the last three potters, along with Joanna Wason and Amanda Brier, to remain there until its closure in 2005. He worked mainly in stoneware, but sometimes in porcelain.
Never shy to declare that he was “a Leach potter” and that he had learned his craft in the workshop, he graduated from the important if ancillary tasks of kiln packing and clay mixing, through to the demanding, repetitive work making Leach domestic pots, the pottery’s standard ware.
After national service with the Household Cavalry, Trevor had hitchhiked to St Ives from his home town of Oldham, where he was brought up by his mother, Emily, on her own, when his father left early in his childhood. He took with him a lifelong love of jazz, some experience in jazz promotion and an interest in fishing. At first he joined crews for mackerel fishing off the coast around St Ives or Penzance, and took diving trips to wreck sites.
Trevor became an adopted son of St Ives, where his distinguished employer, Bernard Leach, who used to offer supper to the potters, served him tripe on the grounds that this was what he was accustomed to. Trevor learned from Leach as he developed his own language and style for the individual pots that the team were allowed to make after the day’s arduous shift. But he learned most from William Marshall, one of the finest studio potters in St Ives. In time, Trevor became a fine mentor to many young potters who were apprenticed there.
Trevor’s pots sat squarely in the Leach Pottery tradition, taking their shapes and glazes from Japanese, Chinese or Korean originals. His unfussy and undemonstrative work was, in the main, meant for food and drink at home, although he made some more elaborate pieces that reflected his love of Greece. Sometimes he favoured a sharply coloured glaze, and kept his favourite green vase in his characterful home in St Ives alongside a commanding wood carving from Vanuatu.
His independent work sold well. He held one solo show at Oldham Art Gallery, and was proud to be asked to exhibit several works in a 2013 exhibition that presented works in the Leach tradition at the Mashiko Museum of Ceramic Art in Mashiko, Japan.
The potter John Bedding curated a successful joint exhibition with Trevor in St Ives, and in 2016 there will be a solo exhibition, Trevor Corser: 40 Years a Leach Potter, curated by Bedding at the Leach Pottery, which has reopened as a museum and a working pottery studio, producing a new range of standard ware and training a new generation of studio potters. It will be a homecoming for a fine potter.
A marriage ended with the death of his young wife in 1985. His partner for many years was Janet Penfold, who until her death last year encouraged him to travel widely and enjoy her more gregarious lifestyle.
