Hansen-Ross Pottery:
Pioneering Fine Craft on the Canadian Prairies
October 3, 2012 to November 30, 2012
Prince
Takamado Gallery, Embassy of Canada, Tokyo, Japan
Organized by the Moose Jaw Museum &
Art Gallery
Curator Heather Smith and associate curator Julia Krueger
After WWII,
Canadian consumers had a new choice regarding the decoration of their homes.
They could either choose that which looked old-fashioned and carried the
associations of history or they could embrace modernism including the “Scandinavian”
design aesthetic. As Michael Prokopow states in “Design to be Modern” which is
included in the book Made in Canada:
Craft and Design in the Sixties (2005), “Scandinavian design’s ascendance
as the style of forward-looking, forward-thinking people represented nothing
short of aesthetic revolution...Accordingly, Canada’s rapid embrace of Scandinavian
design as the style of choice in the later 1950s and into the new decade was
but part of the country’s determination to be a modern nation” (95). Saskatchewan
in the 1950s might appear to be a strange location for “modern” thinking, but
the propensity of Saskatchewanians to think “outside the box” (remember that
Canadian-style cooperative health care was essentially invented in Saskatchewan
during this same period) allows for some surprising manifestations of ideas and
art. Even the development of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board (SAB) in the late 1940s, an arms-length independently-funded
arts agency, was unique in Canada and a contributing factor to why there is so
much fine craft activity in this province today.
The exhibition, Hansen-Ross Pottery: Pioneering Fine Craft on the
Canadian Prairies, and accompanying catalogue chronicles the
development of Scandinavian-inspired, modernist ceramics in Saskatchewan
through the work of the Hansen-Ross Pottery, a pottery in operation from 1961
to 2005 in Fort Qu’Appelle,
Saskatchewan which grew out of the SAB’s initiative “Craft House” (in operation
from 1954 to 1960). Located between two lakes in the heart of the Qu’Appelle
Valley and just 70km northeast of Regina, the Hansen-Ross Pottery welcomed
thousands of visitors through their doors and also taught numerous production
potters and craft enthusiasts throughout the province. In his essay “A Nordic Heritage: Scandinavian Design in Canada,” which is included
in the accompanying catalogue to the exhibition, Alan C. Elder examines the
term “Scandinavian” and discusses the impact of the exhibition Design in Scandinavia (exhibited across
Canada from 1954 to 1956) on Canadian craft and design and the work of the
Hansen-Ross Pottery.
Hansen-Ross Pottery was
named for business partners Folmer Hansen and David Ross (1925–1974). Born in 1930 in Denmark, Hansen
completed a four year apprenticeship in his home town before working for
various production potteries in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark. In 1957, Hansen travelled to Canada
where he worked for the Deichmann
Pottery in Sussex, New Brunswick.
David Ross, a Winnipeg native, who had studied under Cecil
Richards (1907–1981) at the University of Manitoba and then worked with
Hansen in Copenhagen, invited Hansen to visit Saskatchewan in 1958. Upon his
arrival, Hansen helped Ross with his duties at Craft House where Ross had been
living and working since 1956.
Hansen remembers in a 2004 interview
that in addition to the ceramic facilities at Craft House “They were [also] teaching all kinds of things. Upstairs,
they had looms, and someone teaching weaving. Downstairs, they had woodworking
equipment.” In order to fulfill
the handicraft mandate for the SAB, Hansen and Ross did a tremendous amount of
travelling. For example, in 1959
they travelled to at least 14 different towns and cities in three different
provinces where they lectured, demonstrated using local clays and ran workshops.
Julia Krueger highlights in her essay included in the catalogue, “Hidden in
the Valley: Overlooking the Hansen-Ross Pottery,” that the impact Hansen and
Ross had on fostering a ceramics community outside of the university setting in
Saskatchewan, through lectures, demonstrations, teaching women and children and
collaboratively working with other artists such as Lorraine
Malach (1933–2003) must not be overlooked.
In 1960, the SAB decided
to close Craft House. Hansen and Ross purchased the building and opened the
Hansen-Ross Pottery in 1961. The
two potters continued to teach through the Saskatchewan
Summer School for the Arts, but as the 1960s came to a close, they did less
and less teaching because they had to concentrate on making work to fill the
shelves of the retail spaces in the Hansen-Ross Pottery.
Hansen and Ross divided up the production tasks with Hansen doing the majority of the throwing and Ross responding to Hansen’s forms with his dramatic decorative lexicon.
Heather Smith notes in her essay “Fertile Ground: Hansen Ross Pottery in Fort Qu’Appelle,
Saskatchewan” included in the accompanying catalogue to the exhibition that “An
interesting outcome of two people making pottery collaboratively rather than a
single potter working alone is that they could spend more time on each piece.
This is particularly noticeable in the amount of decoration that Ross was able
to do on a relatively simple form. He would sometimes glaze and do extensive
scraffitto work on a little dish or bowl that might be only 20cm in diameter.
The price of a bowl like that could probably not justify all the work that
would go into its making but the results were highly desirable objects” (24).
By 1967, Hansen-Ross
Pottery was well-known in fine craft circles in Canada. Significantly, the
Canada Pavilion at Expo 67 in Montreal hosted an important exhibition of
Canadian craft, as well as fine art. Canadian
Fine Crafts, curated by Moncrieff Williamson (1915–1996), indicated that
Canadian craft was being taken seriously. Hansen-Ross Pottery had the largest
number of works selected for this exhibition from any single ceramics studio;
five pieces of their work were included among the fifty pieces of pottery
representing all regions of Canada.
Their professionalism was
established by this major exhibition, and they were enjoying considerable
success: inclusion in exhibitions, numerous pieces selected for the
Saskatchewan Arts Board permanent collection, high visitor traffic and
significant sales figures.
However, tragedy struck in
1974 when David Ross was killed in a car accident. Hansen had to reformulate his production strategy. The simple, elegant forms of earlier
Hansen-Ross Pottery remained, but Hansen streamlined the glazing and decorating
process. Although this
retrospective exhibition concentrates mainly on the period when Hansen and Ross
were working together, there are examples of Hansen’s work post 1974.
In addition to streamlining the
glazing/decorating processes, Hansen also took on a number of apprentices to
help satisfy the demand for Hansen-Ross wares. Over the years, he hired potters Connie Talbot (now Chaplin), Don Parker (fig. 11), and Brian Ring to help fill the enormous
demand for Hansen-Ross Pottery wares. In 2005, Hansen retried and closed the Pottery.
 |
| Connie Talbot (Chaplin) |
 |
| Don Parker |
The exhibition Hansen-Ross Pottery: Pioneering Fine Craft
on the Canadian Prairies is comprised of 70 ceramic pieces ranging in dates
from 1960 to 2001. Wares have been
loaned from private collections across Canada as well as from the collections
of the Canadian Museum of Civilization (Quebec), the Confederation Centre Art
Gallery (Prince Edward Island) and the Saskatchewan Arts Board (Saskatchewan). The accompanying hard cover, coffee
table-sized catalogue contextualizes the work of the Hansen-Ross Pottery with
contributing essays, a detailed chronology, bibliography and list of
exhibitions. The book is richly
illustrated with 70 colour images as well as 87 archival images.
Contact the Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery at 306-692-4471 to
reserve your copy of the catalogue today.
Touring schedule for Hansen-Ross
Pottery: Pioneering Fine Craft on the Canadian Prairies
Prince
Takamado Gallery, Embassy of Canada, Tokyo, Japan
October 3, 2012 to November 30, 2012
The Mann Gallery, Prince Albert,
SK
November 14, 2013 to January 19, 2014
Thames
Art Gallery, Chatham, ON
May 9, 2014 to June 8, 2014
Moose Jaw Museum & Art Gallery,
Moose Jaw, SK
April 30, 2015 to December 30, 2015
Further Reading
Collier,
Allan. The Modern Eye: Craft and Design in Canada 1940-1980. Victoria, BC:
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, 2011.
Crawford,
Gail. Studio Ceramics in Canada. Fredericton, NB: Goose Lane Editions,
2005.
Ebbels,
Virginia. Hansen-Ross Pottery.
Regina, SK: Dunlop Art Gallery, 1987.
Elder, Alan C. Made in Canada: Craft and Design in the
Sixties. Montreal, QC & Kingston, ON: McGill-Queen’s University Press,
2005.
McKaskell,
Robert, et al. Achieving the Modern:
Canadian Abstract Painting and Design in the 1950s. Winnipeg, MB: Winnipeg
Art Gallery, 1992.
Plested,
Lee. From Our Land: The Expo 67 Canadian Craft Collection.
Charlottetown, PE: Confederation Centre Art Gallery, 2004.
Smith, Heather.
A Way with Clay. Moose Jaw, SK: Moose
Jaw Museum and Art Gallery, 2009.
Williamson,
Moncrieff. Canadian Fine Crafts. Ottawa, ON: Queen’s Printer, 1967.
1 comment:
Good explanation and photos, Perfect Japanese Design.
Here, a gallery in Paris, which has nice japanese art pieces:
Yakimono Japanese Ceramics
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