Phil Rogers (1951-2020) A Celebration Exhibition _ GOLDMARK_2.mp4

9.99, get on the phone now, don't hesitate! There's this very sort of egotistic thing about potters and painters and sculptors where I don't care what they say, in the back of their mind they're thinking about what they're leaving behind. And when David Hockney dies, look at all the paintings that he's going to leave behind and he will be remembered for centuries. So there's a little element of that as well. The people who create stuff, I think they like the idea that they're going to leave something behind after they're gone. I've been on a quest to elevate pottery to a level that it was taken seriously on a par with good painting. He manages to be constantly creative and inventive, break new ground, but always sort of maintain a distinctive identity and also the highest standard too. You see I'm talking it all up and I know that Phil will sort of talk it all down, like most people who are extremely good at what he does. He does not speak about it in a particularly extravagant sort of way. This is a master at work, you know that. It started in 1978, I'd been a school teacher for almost five years. So if you do that for five years, anything's better. I decided to rent a little shop in Reader for four pounds a week and then in 1984 I was able to buy this place and the building to the right there was the cow shed and that's the building I turned into the pottery. I have three kilns, one salt glaze, one for this kind of glaze, temaku and so on, and a wood fire kiln. Where are you living? In Wales. Wales, Wales. You know Wales? I know Wales. For me as a potter who has always thought that Hamada Soji was the greatest potter of the 20th century, for me to come to Mashiko and have an exhibition here is very important to me. An exhibition that I had in the Museum of Contemporary Ceramics in Japan, I was the first western potter to ever have a show there. This one, mine. Yeah. Phil brings to the experience, one, his ability to communicate so competently about the work itself and about the passion that he brings to it that it is infectious. But beyond that there's a kind of process of introducing people to the joy of clay. So you can challenge people and then introduce them through learning to what you're showing them and they'll respond. I love the handle, I mean a pulled handle like that is absolutely medieval, it's there forever more. I think the most stuff I've got is Phil. I mean just look at it, how could you not? I love that. Phil's work is very much part of a living legacy. Did you recognise that? That was one of Eric Clapton's greatest hits. I think one's work is always a reflection of what you've seen and what you've reacted to and what's turned you on and for me that's always been other pots. Other potters look at things outside the pottery world for their ideas but speaking for myself, I've always been more interested in seeing other pots from other cultures, other ages and so on and hopefully at the end of it all what happens is that you assimilate all of those influences and something comes out the other end which is a little bit yours rather than anybody else's. Our first major pot show here at the Goldmark Gallery in Uppingham was the work of Phil Rogers. Phil more than anybody helped us here hugely in terms of advice. Phil developed for himself a worldwide reputation as a potter. He was known not only in the UK and in Japan but also in America and Korea and wherever you went people had heard of him. Big in stature and big in heart and reputation too. These days nobody needs to buy a big jug. People don't need them so why are they buying them? Partly because they want to feel a connection between the pot and the maker and themselves and partly because they see it in the same way that someone else might see a sculpture. It's an object, it's got line, it's got shape, it's got form and people just like to have them around and look at and to appreciate and feel the sort of historic connection in the object. I want people to see that I have succeeded by daring to fail.