Legacy — the studio pottery of Ian Glenny (1952–2023)

Abstract

Scholarly attention to South African studio pottery of the later twentieth century has been negligible, succeeding at best to provide an overview of its rise in the 1960s, the emergence of a fraternity of studio pottery practitioners, and the development of individual expressions. There is a lack of in-depth scholarly accounts of the lives and oeuvres of the more eminent studio pottery figures of that era. The posthumous disclosure of his own works in the personal collection of the studio potter Ian Glenny (1952–2023) presents not only the opportunity to illustrate the development over the span of five decades of his oeuvre but also to reflect on the cultural pottery traditions that the studio potters referenced in the later twentieth century. In the case of Glenny, his preference to borrow from the cultural pottery traditions of Japan, China and Korea and the manner in which he adapted those influences as distinctively personal expressions, can now be detailed and illustrated with reference to works in his collection. The essay provides further substance to the dismissal of the randomly used discriminatory label of the twentieth-century South African studio pottery for its assumed adherence to the Anglo-Oriental tradition of studio pottery. This discourse on Glenny’s oeuvre shows that influences were not summarily copied but that their essences of form and intent were attentively studied to enable the re-representation of that in forms that would appeal to a consumer and collector base.