Dora Billington

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Dora Billington
Born1890
Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent
Died1968
EducationRoyal College of Art
Known forPottery

Dora May Billington (1890–1968) was an English teacher of pottery, a writer and a studio potter. Her own work explored the possibilities of painting on pottery.

Life and career

Dora Billington was born into a family of potters in

Central School of Arts and Crafts from 1919 and left the RCA in 1925 when William Rothenstein appointed William Staite Murray as pottery instructor. The circumstances of her leaving remain somewhat unclear. By that date Rothenstein had been in place for five years, and although he supported Billington's work he criticised the teaching of pottery and other crafts as "too unexperimental and derivative. No consistent attempt appears to have been made to deal with the interpretation of the contemporary world in design and execution... the research work towards the discovery of new subject matter and new treatment, so noticeable on the Continent, seem to have been wanting."[1][3]

In 1938 she became head of department at the Central School, assisted by Gilbert Harding Green. Her teaching emphasised the importance of hand building as the first stage of working with clay but all students were expected to learn to throw on the wheel. She had an extensive knowledge of glaze technology and the history of ceramics. Among her students were

William Newland, Gordon Baldwin, Ruth Duckworth, Alan Caiger-Smith, Margaret Hine, Kenneth Clark, Ann Wynn-Reeves, Katherine Pleydell-Bouverie, Stella Rebecca Crofts, Ursula Mommens, Ray Finch and Valentinos Charalambous.[5]
She retired from her post at the Central in 1955 when Gilbert Harding Green became Head of Department.

At the Paris Expo (the

tin-glazed earthenware made by her protégées Alan-Caiger Smith, William Newland, Margaret Hine, Ann Wynn-Reeves and Nicholas Vergette.[7]

She was President of the

Smithsonian
touring Exhibition of British Artist Craftsmen in the 1950s.

Her book The Art of the Potter (1937), was the first to relate contemporary craft practice to its historical context and in The Technique of Pottery (1962) she gave a comprehensive account of different methods of working.

Since the 1980s there has been an increased interest in her influence on twentieth century British studio pottery.[8][9][10]

Selected publications

  • The Art of the Potter, Oxford, OUP, 1937
  • The Technique of Pottery, London, Batsford, 1962
    ISBN 9780713457674
    , revised edition 1972

References

  1. ^ a b c d Colman, Marshall (2015). "Interpreting Ceramics : issue 16 – Dora Billington: From Arts and Crafts to Studio Pottery". interpretingceramics.com. Retrieved 10 July 2015.
  2. ^ a b c John Farleigh, The Creative Craftsman, London: G.Bell & Sons, 1950
  3. ^ Colman, including Rothenstein quote
  4. ^ Bell, Quentin, "My Day". Ceramic Review, London, No. 158, March/April 1996
  5. ^ Dora Billington: time for re-assessment, Marshall Colman
  6. ^ Marshall Colman, “Dora May Billington", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
  7. ^ Dora Billington, “The New Look in British Pottery”, The Studio, vol.149, no.742, January 1955
  8. ^ Tanya Harrod, "The Forgotten '50s", Crafts, no.98, May/June 1989, pp.30–33.
  9. ^ Julian Stair, "Dora Billington" Crafts no. 154, September/October 1998, pp.24–25
  10. ^ Jones, Jeffrey, In Search of the Picassoettes

Further reading

External links

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