RAY FINCH 

Winchcombe Pottery, Gloucestershire, 

09.04.1994.  

NEVAC no.: AC 77 (side 1),

Interviewer: Anna Hale

Transcription typed up by Janine Partington from original hand-written manuscript, 03.04.2000

N.B. bracketed number, e.g. [1], relates to page of original manuscript.

AH:	[1] Right, Ray, can we start in the 1930s, the Depression, Cardew in an article written in 1979 calls you 'a true child of the Depression'. I think that's rather a strange thing to say, but, how did you perceive the Great Depression?

RF:	How did I what?

AH:	How did you perceive the Depression?

RF:	Um, well, it was true really because, um, my father lost his job in the Depression and I, not unwillingly, asked to leave school. I was only 15 or 16 I think and I was able to get a job so I started work in, I suppose, about 1931 or '32 and..

AH:	How did your father lose his job?

RF:	Well, he was an agent for a manufacturer in Scotland who made woollen jerseys and pullovers and things and he was their London agent and I suppose the Depression um affected them as it has [2] many firms now, only it was much worse and, um..

AH:	It was much worse?

RF:	Much worse, yes.

AH:	How did this manifest?

RF:	Pardon?

AH:	How did this manifest - socially in the environment?

RF:	Well of course we lived in a fairly, um, in the country more or less and I don't think we saw really what was happening, but in the some parts of the country they were literally on the bread line.

AH:	Right.

RF:	Particularly in the North, in the sort of heavy industries and things. And it was the time of the Great March from the North of …you know who? um..

AH:	Yes.

RF:	..I can't remember, miners and so on and it was a very difficult time and I worked, I got a job in a paper mill.

AH:	[3] A paper mill?

RF:	Largely because my father knew the manager, you know it was who you know, and I worked in the laboratory there.

AH:	In the laboratory?

RF:	Yes, testing paper.

AH:	Testing paper?

RF:	And, um, I didn't really like it much.

AH:	You didn't? So what were the people like that you worked with in the laboratory and in the factory?

RF:	Oh well, I had some good friends there, yes.

AH:	You did?

RF:	I had two good, two very good friends who were a bit older than me and had quite an influence.

AH:	They did?

RF:	Particularly one, um, whose very great and very strong character and, uh, very keen, uh, very much against the industrial  system and keen on 'back [4] to the land' movements, that sort of thing.

AH:	Yes, I was going to ask you about that. Were you, um, familiar with Chestertons?

RF:	Yes, he lived in the same town, same village really.

AH:	Oh did he? Wow.

RF:	I didn't know him.

AH:	You didn't?

RF:	But I mean I used to see him about. He was a very characteristic  figure and, um, I used to go to meetings when he was speaking and that sort of thing.

AH:	So what was he like as a speaker?

RF:	Um, as far as I remember, it's a long time now you know, um, I think he spoke very much as he wrote, you know, but I haven't any clear recollection of him now.

AH:	So were you influenced by his ideas, by any of his..?

RF:	Uh, yes, um, he edited, or anyway wrote, on  a magazine called, um, what was it [5] called?.. I forget the name of it, it's gone, but it was on those lines of um, of sort of, 'back to the land' movement and, um, I wish I could remember the name of it...but anyway, it, um, it proposed and encouraged people to um, set up on their own in sort of, virtually sort of small holdings or communities or whatever.

AH:	So did many people take that up during that time?

RF:	Not very many I don't think, um, but this particular friend of mine was certainly much taken with this idea and eventually did start a small community.

AH:	Where was that?

RF:	Beg your pardon?

AH:	What was his name, your friend?

RF:	His name was Dunston Davison.

AH:	Dunstan Davison. And was it in a rural community? What were the aims and ideals that he was after?

RF:	[6] Well the ideals were to have a number of families living on the land, a particular, a fairly small piece of land and a sort of subsistence farming, they didn't have a large acreage or anything, it wasn't a large farm, it was more like a small holding, and he and some others set up a small community in Northamptonshire, about 1935 it was.

AH:	Gosh, so these ideas of community started way back?

RF:	Oh yes, they certainly did.

AH:	They sort of came to fruition later on as well. So, how did this affect you?

RF:	Well, it affected me quite profoundly really because I was certainly not all happy working in industrial conditions, um, though I was offered a job at another paper mill as a sort of head of the laboratory or something but um, I was very keen on this idea and though I used to visit them I [7] didn't quite see that it was the thing for me, and that was quite a near thing, I might well have done so.

AH:	So you were looking for alternatives?

RF:	I was looking for alternatives, yes, very much so.

AH:	So, going back to the factory, how much did you earn in the factory in that time, can you remember?

RF:	I think I started at 27 and 6 a week.

AH:	27 and 6, gosh, it sounds so little.

RF:	But I was of course living at home.

AH:	You were living at home, and I didn't ask you where you were brought up, where was that?

RF:	This was in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire.

AH:	Buckinghamshire?

RF:	Yes, near High Wycombe, though I was a Londoner born, South London actually.

AH:	So how many years did you work in this [8] factory, in the paper factory?

RF:	Um, I worked about, I suppose it was four or five years.

AH:	Quite a time, isn't it? So during that time, were you thinking about what other things you could do, what other work?

RF:	I was yes, vaguely, but I didn't get much in the way of any ideas for quite a long time. I did…I got quite interested in films.

AH:	Oh you did?

RF:	Yes, I used to go to the London Film Society, which I don't think works, functions any more, but, before the war it used to show a variety of films. There were Russian films, French films and so on, you know, films which were not shown on the normal circuit. And I was very much impressed with particularly Russian films. What was the name of the man? I'm sorry my memory fails.

AH:	Eisenstein, perhaps?

RF:	[9] He was one of the directors, and the one who wrote…oh um, well it doesn't really matter.

AH:	No, it's important if these people influenced you.

RF:	Anyway, I got quite interested and I did try vaguely to get into a film um…people who were making films for the Post Office, a Post Office film unit, and it was quite a near thing. I didn't actually get in, but they made some very good documentary films about, there was one on the uh…called 'The Song of Ceylon' which was very interesting and a contrast between the new and the old Ceylon, and I remember that well, and also one on the Post Office…

AH:	You mean a scintillating film about the Post Office?

RF:	The night mail to Edinburgh or somewhere - very good, and John Grierson was the director [10] and I suppose those films are still somewhere in the archives.

AH:	So the potential of film interested you?

RF:	It did, yes, but that was in great contrast, you see, to the other…to the idea of the simple life.

AH:	Yes, the media. Yes, so, do you think that that time the, the thirties had a profound effect on you subsequently?

RF:	Oh definitely yes it did. It…I think it showed me that life could be quite difficult, and also gave me quite new ideas, quite different from the sort of ideas…the way I'd been brought up in a way, which was just in a very middle class almost suburban surroundings.

AH:	So there were ideas and all sorts of other things being proposed during that time, for instance, I was going to ask you, you came across the ideas of Gill?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	[11] So can you tell me a little bit about that? Um…well Cardew calls you something of a disciple of his.

RF:	Yes, well I think he says somewhere that at that time everybody believed in, I mean meaning a sort of  craftsman sort of belief in what Gill was saying, and certainly his books had a great effect on me. I was re-reading one just recently.

AH: 	Which one was that?

RF:	It was called 'Money and Morals'.

AH:	'Money and Morals', yes.

RF:	And I'm sure so much of what he says is true still. I mean his attitude towards the banks and the financial system, the idea that money is a commodity, that it can be bought and sold - he's so much against that you see. I mean it affects everybody's lives in the way it affects the economics of countries and the world. I mean the fact that some [12] character in America can buy enormous sums of money from London and cause a crisis there and that sort of thing, it's quite wrong.

AH:	It's extraordinary isn't it, and wrong yes.

RF:	Anyway he was very much against the banks and he was very much against the industrial system, but, as you said, he could see no way it could be abandoned. I mean people were so enamoured of the products that it produced, you see.

AH:	He was very down to earth, wasn't he?

RF:	Oh yes, very much so, yes.

AH:	He wasn't a Marxist, was he?

RF:	Well almost, yes, though he was a Catholic, he spoke of Communism as possible the only real alternative to Capitalism, and you see that, to some extent, you see, now, in Liberal theology, which takes some ideas from Communism.

AH:	Yes, but then of course, the Christian ideal is a [13] Socialist one I think

RF:	Yes it is but you see there's always this slight feeling that the church should keep  out of politics which I think is perhaps changing, and certainly with Liberal theology it's changing, and you find priests who take posts in governments and that sort of thing, but it's not approved of officially by the Vatican, which is very conservative.

AH:	Yes, so are you a Catholic?

RF:	Yes, I am.

AH:	Were you a Catholic?

RF:	I wasn't a Catholic until about 1940.

AH:	Right, so were you influenced by Gill into Catholicism?

RF:	Yes, I think I was, and also by my friends who were Catholics, yes, Dunstan was, you see, and another one, Edward Langstone, both were Catholics and Edward also joined Dunstan in the community.

AH:	So was it a Catholic community?

RF:	[14] Yes it was.

AH:	So what did you think of Gill's idea of 'distributism' - or would it be…?

RF:	That's right, 'The Distributist's Weekly' or Monthly, or something, that's right.

AH:	That was a Chesterton as well.

RF:	That was what Chesterton was involved in and I suppose Gill was too, but he um…it was his general ideas that I was affected by. It swung me in that direction away from things like films and so on.

AH:	Yes, so in Gill's writings was there anything particularly that inspired you to be thinking about what you wanted from life?

RF:	Well, no, I don't think so. I don't think so. That happened in a different way. I certainly didn't think of being a craftsman actively at that time, at the beginning of that period certainly.

AH:	So his creative philosophy, how did that touch you?

RF:	[15] I think I was impressed by it, but I was impressed in the sense that I didn't, I mean what I was doing I felt  was a dead end job, you see, and I just felt that he was right about the idea that the present system reduced the worker to a condition of subhuman irresponsibility and I felt that absolutely. Though I suppose in those days there was a great deal more 'hand' work done than there is now. I mean he foresaw what was going to happen, in a way he was a bit of a prophet because he saw that the first step was taking away the workman's responsibility for what was done, and the next step, you see, the machine took over the responsibility for what was made, and the next step was that the machine took over entirely, which is exactly what's happened, you see. And now the machines can do almost everything, and all that's necessary [16] is a skilled mechanic to look after the machine. In fact there's a drawing by Dennis Tate in that book, which shows the old printer having to set out the type, and what hard work it was, and the modern printer who just presses a button and the press does the rest.

AH:	Yes, of course, that's happened quite recently hasn't it?

RF:	And that was, you see, in the thirties.

AH:	Yes, so did you ever go to hear him speak?

RF:	I think on one or two occasions, yes, but I mean he spoke very much along the same lines always. He had, really, this one idea which he put forward all the time.

AH:	Do you think there were many people that were influenced by his ideas at that time?

RF:	I don't think so, no.

AH:	It was a small, the art/craft community?

RF:	[17] Yes, I think so, I don't know. Outside my particular small circle I don't think (there were) - that I knew of anybody who was very much affected.

AH:	So what other things were you reading in that time and were influencing you, Ray?

RF:	Well, I really can't remember. We're talking about nearly sixty years ago, you see, it was sixty years ago. I certainly read all Gill's books and I…I don't know. I don't think I read an awful lot. I very much regret it in a way leaving school so early, so I did only get sort of half an education, and I missed out on things that I would have had later, but if I'd done that…

AH:	I want to ask you about your education as we go along later, because that's also very important, but in this time were you a sociable person? Did you have a wide range of friends?

RF:	[18] Fairly wide, yes. Lots of girlfriends.

AH:	Lots of girlfriends. This was your teens and early twenties, wasn't it?

RF:	Yes, that's right. I used to go dancing and all that sort of thing.

AH:	So you did? So that was in the thirties.

RF:	Yes.

AH:	Where did you go dancing?

RF:	Oh, well there were always dances going on around, just as there are now, I suppose, but different sorts of dancing. 

AH:	So, could you tell me how you came to have an interest in pottery?

RF:	Well you must have heard.

AH:	Yes, yes, I want to know.

RF:	Well this friend, Edward, Edward Langstone, now I don't know how he got here, but he'd been to Winchcombe and he'd bought some Winchcombe pots and he had them in his house and I used to go and see him, and I saw them, and I was very much taken [19] with them, I mean, it was just like seeing something with new eyes, seeing them for the first time, seeing sin for the first time, and it struck a very deep sort of chord in my imagination I suppose. So in due course, I can't remember how long this will be, I think in 1935, I decided I'd like to come to Winchcombe myself and I remember well driving over the hills for the first time, coming down to Winchcombe.

AH:	You drove?

RF:	Yes, oh yes.

AH:	You had a car in those days?

RF:	Yes, I had a car, well, I mean I wasn't mine really, it was my parents' car.

AH:	But you'd learnt to drive quite early?

RF:	Oh yes, I learnt to drive when I was sixteen. One could in those days you see.

AH:	Were you very into cars?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	Were you very interested in cars and driving?

RF:	Um, I don't know that I was particularly. [20] I liked driving in those days because the roads were comparatively empty. I mean it was quite a pleasure to drive in those days. Before I had a car I had motorbikes and I was very keen on motorbikes, but that's another story. Anyway, as I say, I came down to Winchcombe sometime in 1935 and I don't know whether it was a Sunday, it might have been. It certainly wasn't a working day, it was Saturday or Sunday, it must have been a Saturday, I think. Anyway, Michael was in the pottery and I came in and spoke to him and eventually plucked up courage to ask him if he would be willing to take me on as a pupil, or an apprentice or a student or whatever, and he was very nice really, and he said 'Well, I don't know'. He asked me why I wanted to do this and what I'd done and I had to tell him that I hadn't done anything, that I didn't really know what clay was even. And then [21] eventually he said, well I think you'd better go away and try your hand somewhere, at art school or something. Anyway, it was a gentle brush off. I think he probably thought he'd never see me again. 

AH:	How did you feel about that? How did you feel when he said that?

RF:	Oh, I can't remember, but well I suppose I…anyway I wasn't put off.

AH:	You weren't put off?

RF:	No, I wasn't put off. And I went back home and, my father died actually in 1934, and so I was just living with my mother, and I told her that I wanted to give up my job and go to art school, and she was like lots of mothers, she was much too tolerant you know, and she agreed to let me do that. I mean, I wasn't supporting her. She had a lot of money of her own to live on. And I went to the Central School in London.

AH:	How did you choose the Central? Why did you choose the Central?

RF:	[22] I've no idea now, I've no idea. And Dora Billington was there, and Dora was very kind to me. She allowed me to, I don't think you could do it now, she allowed me to be a sort of, what would you call it, a sort of extra-mural student, or something. I wasn't enrolled in the course.

AH:	You weren't? That's interesting.

RF:	No, I just used to go, and I just used to try and learn to throw and she was very kind. And I spent about a year there and then off I came way back to Winchcombe again.

AH:	So you didn't have a grant or anything to live on?

RF:	No.

AH: 	No, no grant.

RF:	I don't think there were any grants in those days.

AH:	No, there weren't. So how did you live?

RF:	I lived on my mother, I regret to say.

AH:	So, you could go back home? So you [23] commuted?

RF:	Yes, I commuted. It wasn't far you see, it was - I don't know, a 30 minute train journey to London.

AH:	So was it difficult financially during that year?

RF:	Well, I don't remember it being so, at that time. My father, before he became ill, and after his lost his job, had started a café in Winchcombe, in Beaconsfield, as something to do, I mean, as just an occupation really and hopefully to make a living, and my mother carried that on after he died, for a while, and eventually sold it. And I suppose that did bring in money. She sort of managed it, but she had somebody looking after it you know. So that was the position then.

AH:	So, what was London like in 1935? What do you remember of it?

RF:	Well it was quite a pleasant place really.

AH:	What vividly do you remember about it?

RF:	[24] I don't remember a terrible lot about it, I mean I used to…I don't remember…I just remember it as being a bit more civilised than it is now. You know not so crowded and not so noisy and not so many cars and lorries and things.

AH:	Did you enjoy being there?

RF:	Well, all I did was to go to the art school and go to the Central and just work there, and I suppose I must have gone out to the museums and things, but I haven't a very clear recollection of that. All I was concentrating on was trying to learn how to centre a lump of clay.

AH:	So that was the really important…?

RF:	That was the really important thing yes. And certainly at the end of the year I was more than convinced that that's what I wanted to do.

AH:	So what was Dora Billington like as a teacher?

RF:	I think she was good. Yes, I mean she used to [25] demonstrate throwing and so on.

AH:	And did she personally come and sort of teach you and take an interest in you?

RF:	Yes, she was there all the time. I mean she took it quite seriously I think, not like some, perhaps, lecturers now who just sort of let the students get on with it.

AH:	So she was sort of very much there as an instructor?

RF:	Yes, yes.

AH:	And you had quite a good deal of contact with her?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	So what was she like as a person?

RF:	Um, I don't know really.

AH:	In the terms that you saw her in?

RF:	I mean I didn't get to know her in that sense at all really, cos I was, I can't remember, I didn't go everyday. I mean, perhaps I went twice a week, I don't know, I don't remember now. But I didn't get to know her as I would if I had taken a [26] three year course.

AH:	So what was your impression of her?

RF:	That she was very competent, and, you know, really keen on what she was doing.

AH:	Did you think she was very knowledgeable?

RF:	Well, to me she was very knowledgeable, yes.

AH:	Yes, cos you didn't have any…no…in retrospect I'm saying now.

RF:	Yes, I think so, cos she wrote a good book, a good fairly straight forward book on pottery.

AH:	So did she encourage you?

RF:	Yes. She was quite enthusiastic about the idea that I should come to Winchcombe.

AH:	Did she know of Winchcombe?

RF:	Oh, I think so, yes.

AH:	And had met Cardew and all that?

RF:	Probably, yes.

AH:	So did you see the other side of her interests, i.e. her interests in decoration and majolica and all those things?

RF:	[27] Yes, well I didn't take an awful lot of notice of that really. I have an image of this one idea that I wanted to get sufficient experience to, or convince myself that I had enough to come and ask Cardew again.

AH:	So you were into basic skills?

RF:	Yes, I wasn't really interested in decorating or anything like that.

AH:	So you spent all your time throwing?

RF:	As far as I remember, yes.

AH:	Because she was very interested also in people hand building.

RF:	Yes.

AH:	But you weren't sort of side-tracked by that?

RF:	No, I didn't touch that, no.

AH:	So, we've talked about your time at the Central and Dora Billington. Going back to when you went to Winchcombe, and prior to that, had you any ideas about studio pottery or had you seen any [28] other studio pottery?

RF:	I think I'd seen an exhibition of Murray's and also of…um…who was his contemporary? I've forgotten the name now. Well, it'll come back to me.

AH:	This is William Morris?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	So, you'd had sort of some impressions of arts and crafts and how did that strike you?

RF:	Yes, I suppose so, yes. Well I think the thing about Staite-Murray's pots was that I was taken aback at the prices he asked.

AH:	That was your reaction?

RF:	I think that was the biggest reaction, yes. Because he definitely regarded potters as artists you see.

AH:	And what did you think about that?

RF:	Well, I don't know, I can't remember. I think I was impressed by his pots, I mean they were big and, you know, they were [29] quite startling really, but it didn't seem to me quite where I was heading. I already knew, you see, what sort of prices Winchcombe pots were, I mean even Michael's pots you see in comparison were dirt cheap really.

AH:	So how did Staite-Murray's forms and decorations strike you?

RF:	I don't think I was sufficiently knowledgeable or experienced to make any judgement.

AH:	Were you impressed?

RF:	Oh I think I was impressed, yes. But I think I looked round for the cheapest pot  there and wondered whether I could buy it.

AH:	And did you?

RF:	No. There were some little bowls, but I can't remember what price they were.

AH:	So was that important? Pottery being accessible, that people could buy it, that ordinary people could buy it? Did that seem important to you?

RF:	[30] That seemed important, yes.

AH:	So, had you come across Leach's pottery?

RF:	No, no I hadn't.

AH:	Right, so were you aware of the revival element of it, of pottery at that time?

RF:	Well, I certainly was when I came to Winchcombe, I mean, I obviously believed that it was something that could be done. I obviously believed  that one could make pots like this and make some sort of living out of it, or perhaps I didn't consider that, I don't know. I don't think I considered it very strongly at all.

AH:	Did Cardew, when you went on that first visit, give you a realistic idea of what it entailed?

RF:	Oh I think so yes.

AH:	He did?

RF:	Well, I don't know about the first visit, but certainly when I went the second time, I think he gave me quite a clear picture [31] of the struggle, I mean he did have to struggle in those days.

AH:	That's something that I think is interesting, that there was that, yes. So he made you aware of that. But did he…can you remember much about that first visit?

RF:	No, not really, no.

AH:	What about him as a person? What were your first impressions?

RF:	I haven't really any strong…I can remember him, oddly enough one remembers certain things, that he was dressed in a blue jersey and shorts, it must have been summertime, and not sandals but very 'Shaker' sort of shoes and bare legs, you know. That's the impression, but I can't remember anything very much about it. I know he was sorting out pots that had come out of the kiln and was going round pricing them all.

AH:	He was doing that, on that day? Did he make you feel at ease? What do you [32] remember of that?

RF:	Well yes, he was very kind, he didn't sort of rather brush me off, I mean he did it very gently so to speak, and I think I must have liked him and felt reasonably at ease, though I was certainly rather overawed by this chap who, you know, was most unusual and doing a very unusual sort of work, job.

AH:	So you went back to Winchcombe Pottery in 1936, after your year at the Central? How did you go about that? Did you write to him, and say, you know, you'd spent a year at Winchcombe? How did you communicate with him?

RF:	Well I don't remember if I wrote to him. Maybe I did, but I certainly remember coming to see him again and after warning, you know, I must have told him that I really wanted to do it and that I was quite convinced, and I think after warning [33] me what a difficult sort of life it was to be a potter in those days, he agreed to take me as, well, not as an apprentice, but as a pupil.

AH:	What was the difference?

RF:	Well, apprentice was more for local, there was a sort of apprentice scheme run by some charitable trust in Winchcombe, and I think it was only for local boys, you see, and certainly the Tustin brothers had both been apprenticed.

AH:	So there was a local charity that actually financed that?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	That's very interesting.

RF:	Any apprenticeship to a craft or, I think it was only craft, I don't know it might have been to anything, it might have been to a butcher or baker, or , certainly blacksmiths and potters came into it. They paid a certain amount towards their wages, for so many years, and then they were granted, I [34] think it was only three years, or four years, not a full seven year apprenticeship, which was the old apprenticeship of course. And then they were given a document to say they'd served an apprenticeship. 

AH:	So he took you on as a pupil?

RF:	As a pupil, yes.

AH:	And, so, what sort of things did you have to do as a pupil. What was a pupil's role and tasks in the pottery?

RF:	Well, it was just, I mean, I really couldn't throw in the sense of being a productive member of the team. And my first job was to make a lot of moulds, biscuit fire moulds for making press dishes. And I made the moulds and we fired them, and I made the dishes with them, and I washed clay and tied faggots.

	[break]

AH:	What I was going to ask was, what was Winchcombe like in those days?

RF:	Well, very much smaller, there weren't a lot of estates all round it as there are [35] now. It was a little, quiet, country town. And it's almost changed out of recognition. But I mean, the centre of Winchcombe is still the same, you see all around are new houses, new estates. And it was much more of a community.

AH:	Much more of a community? Everybody knew each other?

RF:	Yes, very much so. Now, I mean, it's full of strangers really. I mean, there are a few people, old people, who were here in those days, but not very many. I'm one of them, almost, now.

AH:	It's rather nice isn't it? I should imagine.

RF:	I mean there aren't very many people that I know now that I can remember were alive then.

AH:	Goodness, so there's been such an influx of new people?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	That's happened everywhere really, I think.

RF:	It does yes, I'm afraid so. But it was a…[36] it didn't have a market anymore. There used to be a market up at Greet, but even that had disappeared when I came. But it's main source of employment was the paper mill. There was a paper mill up in the valley on the Cleeve Hill and there was a collection of shops, there was even a sadler working in Winchcombe, but most…and there was a flour mill, which used, unfortunately, unhappily has been pulled down, an absolute scandal really. It was a beautiful mill for stone ground flour and soon.

AH:	How did that happen?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	How did that happen? When?

RF:	Well I don't know quite, some developer got hold of it you know, and before anybody knew about it, he'd pulled it down and built some houses on it.

AH:	So, there wasn't a preservation order on it?

RF:	No, not in those days I don't think.

AH:	[37] This was a long time ago?

RF:	Yes, this is in…I don't know when this happened, soon after the war I suppose. The fifties, or before that. So, you know, it was a nice town, and there was quite a lot going on, there used to be a swimming pool, there used to be a cinema, a dance hall, you know, all those things have gone.

AH:	Yes, it had all the facilities?

RF:	Yes, of a small community.

AH:	So what did you most like about it when you first came to live here in this area?

RF:	Well I liked the town, I liked the countryside very much, I mean it's very nice, it's beautiful country really, and it was more beautiful even in those days. The roads on the Cotswolds were nearly all the old limestone roads, except the main roads, they were wide roads, you know, they've all gone, and it was [38] delightful and I suppose the countryside hasn't changed so much, and Cheltenham has got so big now and noisy and so on. I'm speaking like an old man aren't I?

AH:	It's lovely though, I mean there were lovely things there weren't there, that we've lost to a certain extent I feel, as well. Are you a country person at heart?

RF:	I wasn't brought up, I was brought up as a town person.

AH:	You were?

RF:	Yes, but I mean I've acquired more of a countryman's characteristics I suppose.

AH:	But you like the town and city as well, do you?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	Do you like the town and city as well?

RF:	No.

AH:	You don't.

RF:	I never go to London now, and I rarely go to Cheltenham.

AH:	[39] Really? Why? If I might ask?

RF:	Well, partly because I'm a bit tied here with my work and I'm always so busy, so there's nothing very much for me to go for. I do go occasionally if I wasn’t to do some shopping or something, but not very often.

AH:	So you arrived at Winchcombe, did you find it easy to settle in?

RF:	I think so. I rented a very nice cottage up on the hill for five shillings a week and Sid Tustin took me under his wing. He was very kind an very friendly and, you know, he's about my age, he's about a year older than me. So, we were good friends and he helped me in the pottery, taught me the way round, what had to be done, and how the boss liked it done, and that sort of thing.

AH:	That helps, doesn't it?

RF:	Michael was very much the boss, you know?

AH:	[40] He was?

RF:	Oh yes.

AH:	The boss. Because I was going to ask you, what was his place in the scheme of things? He was the boss?

RF:	He was the boss, yes.

AH:	How did that convey itself?

RF:	Uh, well, everybody was very respectful to him. Sid and Charlie and Elijah Comfort used to say 'Good morning, sir' or 'Goodnight, sir' when they went, you see, I didn't call him sir, I used to call him Michael. There was a certain relaxation in our relationship.

AH:	Now why do you think that was? Why was that?

RF:	I don't know, I don't know really.

AH:	You were closer, somehow there was more of a…

RF:	There was a slight difference in the relationship between me as a pupil and the rest as the sort of um work team.

AH:	[41] Had they come for similar reasons to you, the other assistants? Had any wanted to be potters passionately.

RF:	No, I don't think so.

AH:	There's a difference?

RF:	Sid's story is that he came past one day and saw on the gate 'Boy wanted', so he came in and asked for the job.

AH:	That's rather nice. So what were the other apprentices like that you had to work with? and there names, can tell me about them?

RF:	Yes, well there was Sid Tustin, and there was Charlie Tustin his brother. And Sid had been there I suppose for, must have been nine or ten years, well certainly eight or nine years when I came, and he was a sort of foreman really, and Charlie his younger brother had been here I suppose I don't know four years, four or five years, and Elijah Comfort you see was [42] the old potter who worked here in the old days and had come back, and he was about sixty five perhaps when I came.

AH:	So what was his role in the pottery?

RF:	Well, he was a thrower.

AH:	He was a thrower?

RF:	Yes, his tradition was straight sided pots. He'd been a flower pot maker and a pan maker, you see, all his life. So he didn't adapt very well, to, you know round shapes, but he used to make casseroles, which were slightly rounded, and the lids. He used to make oval dishes of various sizes, from quite small up to quite big ones, very efficiently and they had straight sides. And he used to make things, we used to call them saucers, but they were fairly deep, I don't know whether I've got one about, about that deep and about that wide. He used to make two or three sizes of those, [43] which were very nice for eating cereals out of. But they had originally been sort of flowerpot saucers, you see. I can't remember what else he made. Oh, he used to make the saggers, the big saggers for the kiln. Yes, well he was a very useful member of the team.

AH:	So what was he like as a person?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	What was he like as a person?

RF:	Oh, he was quite a little man. I suppose he can't have been much more than about 5' 3" or something, and he was very deaf, even deafer than I am. And he smoked a pipe and foul tobacco called Black Beauty, and occasionally he would regale you with stories about the old days. Mostly he was pretty quiet because he couldn't hear people. I had the greatest difficulty in making him hear. Sid was better because he spoke more with a country accent you see, a local accent. 

AH:	[44] So can you remember any of the stories that Elijah told you about the old days and the pottery? Because he worked for the Greet Pottery didn't he? the pottery before Cardew took it over.

RF:	Well he worked at this pottery here when it was the Greet Pottery. Well, I don't know off hand. He used to say how, you know, he used to make sort of sixty thumb pots in an hour, they were little tiny flower pots. And he used to work in those days on a rope wheel, and he had a boy to turn the wheel, and, in fact when Sidney first came, Michael still had that rope wheel, and one of Sid's jobs was to turn the wheel for Elijah.

AH:	Goodness.

RF:	I think they used to make flower pots to start with. He used to come out with some stories, but I can't off hand remember them now.

AH:	If you do, do tell. If you can think of [45] some, because it's interesting that whole you know, sort of getting that whole picture of from way back.

RF:	Well, he used to tell us how they used to fire the kiln once a week, the big kiln, and you know with flower pots and pans, but it was only fired up to about 950.

AH:	The bottle kiln?

RF:	The bottle kiln yes.

AH:	And that was with wood?

RF:	They used to start with coal and they used to, I suppose, ????? it with cord wood and then finish with faggots, and of course in the heyday of the pottery, the Greet Pottery, there were twelve men working there. 

AH:	That's quite a large country pottery.

RF:	Oh yes, and they used to take the pots, the flowerpots and the pans away, as far as Stratford, on horse drawn wagons.

AH:	Goodness.

RF:	And sell them in Stratford market. I suppose they supplied all the local um the [46] Evesham Valley. The Vale of Evesham is a great small holding area, and I suppose they provided all the plant pots for there. And then the washing pans you see had great domestic use. They started out about that big, you know, just something to wash your hands in.

AH:	About 12-15 inches?

RF:	I don't know, perhaps 9 or 10 inches, and they went up to great big ones like that…

AH:	Goodness.

RF:	…for washing in, doing washing in and that sort of thing.

AH:	So they were very much needed for domestic purposes?

RF:	Oh yes, and they would be in general use in the country until the advent of galvanised ware, you see, and enamel ware, which was so much lighter of course. They were heavy and that's what killed the pan trade. And that was the [47] end of it. I don't think I've got one now at all.

AH:	So had he wanted to be a potter? Was it again this idea of the ideal of a country pottery? What impressions did you get from him about the way of life?

RF:	How do you mean exactly?

AH:	I mean, did he think it was a good life, the life of a potter?

RF:	Oh, Elijah?

AH:	Yes.

RF:	I don't think so, I think he just thought it was something…I think his father was a potter and he was just brought into it.

AH:	Choice? What about choice?

RF:	I don't think he probably had any choice. I think his father probably said to him, come on young Elijah, you have a job at the pottery with me, or something. And that's what he'd done until the First World War, and the Greet [48] Pottery closed down about 1916. There was only Elijah left and Will Beckett who was the owner. It all faded away really, and they couldn't get coal for the fire, so they shut down, and Elijah went and worked on the land until 1926 when Michael came and he was told about Elijah and he went and ferreted him out and asked him to come back, and he came back and started again as a potter.

AH:	That's interesting that you should say he went back on the land, cos I guess in the old days people, you know, they could move from what we, in rural areas they did do both I imagine.

RF:	Well, yes, the original potters here you see were farmers as well.

AH:	They were farmers?

RF:	Yes, they did both.

AH:	So, going back to those early days, as a pupil you were involved in the [49] basic tasks of running the pottery. Where did you get the materials? Where did the pottery get the materials from?

RF:	Well we dug our own clay.

AH:	You dug your own clay?

RF:	And we got wood locally and we imported things like white slip or slipping, it was all slip work then, and we imported galena, lead sulphide, for the glaze and that was really about all.

AH:	So the materials were not complicated in any way?

RF:	No, not at all. The clay…the original potters here had always dug their clay you see. In fact what's now a coppice was an orchard when I first came, it had been sunk below the river level by about five or six feet I suppose, and they dug it all out and turned it into flowerpots and washing pans. And we, well we did, I think Michael had a bit of trouble with the clay [50] when he first came. We used to did some clay from the orchard, it was very sandy. I think they'd had the best and we used to buy in clay from what was a brickyard in Cheltenham near Kempton, and there was a brickyard up at the top in Greet, I think perhaps we used some of that clay.

AH:	So it was essentially earthenware?

RF:	Oh yes, all earthenware clay, red clay, red pyrites.

AH:	Were there problems with the materials?

RF:	Well yes, the main problem was it was being a limestone district, there was a lot of lime in the clay and if you get, as you probably know, if you get a piece of lime in a pot and you fire it, it turns to quick lime, and as soon as any moisture gets into it, it blows, you see, and you get a piece of pot blown out. So it had to be washed and sieved. It had to be a mixture of water and [51] sieve and then settled and dried off. It was quite a laborious process.

AH:	Yes, absolutely. How did you cope with that?

RF:	Well over by the stream, the Eastbourne, we, well Sidney actually, when he first came, his first job I think was to dig clay pits, he dug out pits about that deep.

AH:	Goodness.

RF:	Long pits, and used to mix the clay in a small pit and run it down channels through sieves into these clay pits and then it was left, usually done in the summer and then left over the winter to settle and dug out in the spring, and that was the clay for that year, you see.

AH:	Quite a job?

RF:	Oh yes, I mean potting in those days was quite hard work, well still is really.

AH:	Yes, well that's what I, something I'm [52] very concerned with.

RF:	I mean these youngsters who buy in their clay and, you know, have a gas or electric kiln, don't really know what it's all about.

AH:	So, obviously it was important for Cardew, this being close to the source of materials…

RF:	Oh yes, I think so.

AH:	…and that as part of it was it?

RF:	Yes, I think so, yes.

AH:	And, was he very knowledgeable in those early days? What was he like?

RF:	No, he knew very little, very little. I mean he'd spent, I don't know, two and a half years with Leach, I can't remember quite.

AH:	It was a very short period, yes.

RF:	Very small time really, I mean, he'd had experience of Fremington Pottery, you see. Perhaps, but that was his first experience of pottery, but he really knew practically nothing. I mean he knew more than [53] I did, but from the technical point of view he was really very much a beginner I think.

AH:	So it was trial and error?

RF:	Yes, and a lot of error, I can tell you.

AH:	Can talk a little bit, can you go into that? What did it involve, you know?

RF:	Well he did have problems with the clay and he, I think he had trouble with the glazes too, because it was very much, as you say, a case of trial and error, finding out whether things would work or not. You see in those days there was very little information available. There weren't all these books on pottery and there were very few people who could give you any advice. It just didn't exist.

AH:	Who did you go to?

RF:	Well  you didn't.

AH:	You didn't? You just carried on until you…

RF:	I suppose he must have asked Bernard [54] about things.

AH:	But did Bernard know?

RF:	Well, he didn’t know a great deal about slip ware, I don't think. I mean, he obviously knew quite a bit about stoneware.

AH:	But also, St Ives also sustained losses and they were…

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	St Ives also had that happening as well, didn't they?

RF:	Oh, I think so, yes, in the early days, yes. No, it was very much a question of finding out for yourself.

AH:	So, it was pioneer stuff really?

RF:	Yes, it really was, yes.

AH:	So how did he respond to these? It must have been discussions at times you know the kiln - the losses.

RF:	Well, it was. I think the worst was over by the time I came.

AH:	Was it?

RF:	[55] Yes, that was in '36, you see that was ten years. But Sidney used to tell horrific stories about how whole kilns were wasted, about how Michael used to stand inside and throw the pots out, you see, because he used to get very worked up sometimes, and it must have been devastating for him. But, eventually, I mean he did find his way. By 1936, he was producing his best Winchcombe pots.

AH:	So by the time you came, there weren't such losses being sustained?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	There weren't such losses being sustained from the kiln.

RF:	No. He got to know the kiln. I mean, a kiln like that takes a lot of learning, any kiln takes quite a bit of getting to know. And when you get an up draft kiln like that, and without any experience, though he did have Elijah to help [56] him a bit with the firing you see.

AH:	So Elijah had used the kiln before?

RF:	Yes, he had used it many times. But not making, you know, this sort of glaze ware, you see. I mean you can take liberties to some extent with things like flowerpots, you see, unglazed, and the pans. I suppose they knew exactly how to fire them. But they were very soft fired and Michael was firing a bit higher temperature, about 100º I don't know. 

AH:	Lead glazes?

RF:	Lead glazes, yes. All lead glazes in those days.

AH:	For the slipware. Highly dangerous though wasn't it?

RF:	Yes, very dangerous for the, I think, well, very dangerous for the work people if they're not careful. In fact we used to have a doctor come round once a month…

AH:	Gosh!

RF:	…to look at our gums.

AH:	It was that indicative?

RF:	Yes, and if you were getting lead poisoning you had a blue line or something on your gum.

AH:	That's interesting. Gosh!

RF:	But we all survived!

AH:	You all survived brilliantly!

RF:	But the original Will Beckett was supposed to have died of lead poisoning.

AH:	Right, he wasn't careful.

RF:	I don't know whether that's just a legend or what.

AH:	In the past, it's not difficult to imagine that many potters weren't careful.

RF:	No, I think a lot of potters got lead poisoning. People didn’t know about it and they weren't careful, and they used to use raw lead, you see, red lead mostly, which is desperately poisonous, and it's an [58] accumulative poison, you see, you go on taking a little bit and a little bit and it builds up in your system, and you can't get rid of it…

AH:	It's quite horrendous.

RF:	Well we used lead sulphide, which is galena, which is less soluble, you know. If you swallow it, it doesn't dissolve so easily in your stomach, but even so, I mean, you have to be careful. And then, I think some of our pots, there must have been a certain amount of lead release from the pots themselves, especially with glaze coloured with copper oxide. 

AH:	That's supposed to be a deadly mix isn't it?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	[break in sound]…talking about materials, I think.

RF:	Yes, well, we got as much locally as we could. And one of the things we got, which was a most enjoyable job, was tying faggots. We used to finish the [59] kiln on faggots, which, as you know, are fine brushwood, and Sydney and I used to go up on the hills where there are, particularly Humble Bee Wood, where there were some fairly big larch and pine, and when they get a certain size they trim off the bottom branches, which tend to die off, and let the air get through. And we used to go up and tie these trimmings into bundles, about that diameter, and stack them up by the road, and the local carrier, with his Ford T I think it was,  a very ancient, old lorry, flat bed lorry, used to come up and load them on and bring them down to the pottery, and Sydney was a real countryman, and a bit of a poacher, you know, and very keen on that sort of thing, so he used to put wires down for rabbits, and all that sort of thing.

AH:	Which was not legal?

RF:	Not legal, no! There were plenty of [60] rabbits anyway, nobody was worse off, in fact the farmers were better off really. So that was a very pleasant job and we used to enjoy that. We’d go out for the day and take out a bottle of cold tea and sandwiches and have a really nice time, and do some faggot tying as well.

AH:	So where did you eat? You lived in a little cottage you said, on the hill…

RF:	Yes, well I used to feed myself.

AH:	You did?

RF:	Michael and Mariel were kind, Mariel was his wife. They used to ask me to go and have a meal with them, tea usually, and at one stage I used to go to a local lady who lived up in Greet and who used to cook a lunch for a few people you know. So I managed alright.

AH:	So, what sort of things did you eat?

RF:	What sort of things did I eat?

AH:	In that time, yes, what were the things…? Was it sort of typical English fare? [61] What sort of things?

RF:	Well, um, dear oh dear, I don't know. I mean she used to cook a normal sort of lunch of meat and two veg I suppose.

AH:	That sort of stuff?

RF:	And, I suppose I ate, I don't know what I ate for breakfast, I can't remember.

AH:	Not mueseli?

RF:	Not mueseli, no, that wasn't invented! More like bacon and eggs I should think. But I probably didn't have time for bacon and eggs in the morning, I would just have a cup of tea or a cup of coffee and have a snack I suppose. Anyway, it seems to have been alright.

AH:	Did you have lots of tea breaks?

RF:	No! No tea breaks at all! Tea breaks were a terrible invention!

AH:	No tea breaks?!

RF:	No tea breaks, no. We worked from eight 'til twelve and from one 'til five, and Saturday mornings 'til twelve o'clock.

AH:	[62] Goodness! So it was a long week?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	Did you, so how did you progress?

RF:	Very slowly. It took me a terrible long time to learn to throw.

AH:	Did it really?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	Because, I mean, you are considered a great thrower.

RF:	Well, I don't know that I'm a great thrower…

AH:	Well, these days you are.

RF:	But it took me a long time to become competent.

AH:	Because in the old days it took so many years to…

RF:	Yes, well I still think that's true. It's true in the sense that you learn to make a pot fairly quickly, I mean not, well it might take you a couple of years to become able to centre and throw reasonably light pots. It takes a good [63] many years to make a hundred pots that look the same. Repetition throwing takes a long time to learn.

AH:	Right. Did Cardew have that facility?

RF:	I think so, yes. If you see some of his early pots, they look pretty crude.

AH:	It took him a long time, well, it took him a while to perfect?

RF:	Yes, I think he says something in his autobiography, how he struggled and how suddenly he thought 'I can throw', you know. But I don't think he was a natural, and I'm sure I wasn't. Some people take to it much more quickly.

AH:	So, there was this thing that he says somewhere about how you…the acquiring of skills. Did you have the hunger for skills? He said that that underlined everything. The important channel for creativity. This is what Cardew says somewhere, did you have it?

RF:	[64] Oh yes, I tried very hard, very hard, as much as I could. Of course you see, if you're the last man in the team, you get less opportunity to practice than you do if you're already reasonably accomplished. I mean Sidney was quite an accomplished thrower by then, you see, and even Charlie wasn't bad at all. But I was way behind. So, I got the dirty jobs in a way, I mean the bottom of the ladder.

AH:	So how did you feel about that?

RF:	Oh I didn't mind. I think that's the way to learn you see. You do everything, you know, you fill the saggers with pots for the kiln, you roll snakes for the saggers and you hand things into the setter in the kiln and you set the glazes and you set the slips, you help wash the clay, you tie faggots. It was all part of a potter's life.

AH:	You were happy with that?

RF: 	Oh yes. I was very happy, yes. But when I [65] could I wanted to learn to thow, and as I say, it took me quite a long time 'cos I didn’t have such an opportunity perhaps, not like doing it everyday, all day, you see.

AH:	So when you had the slightest opportunity did you go on the wheel?

RF:	Yes. There were a limited number of wheels, you see, and I could usually only use the wheel when Michael didn't want it. We had a power wheel and a kick wheel. He had a power wheel and  kick wheel, Sid had a wheel, and Elijah had a wheel and Charlie had a wheel, but that was it.

AH:	So you could only use a wheel when somebody else wasn't using it?

RF:	Yes, but I didn't normally use Sid's wheel and Elijah's wheel. I may have used Charlie's occasionally, but I used Michael's wheel, if he was on the power wheel or something like that. So it was to some [66] extent limited.

AH:	So did Michael work closely with you all? Was he there every day?

RF:	Oh yes. Yes, he was always there. Well nearly always. I mean he did go off sometimes but I was nearly always there.

AH:	So how did he run the pottery?

RF:	Well he said what was to be done. He gave people lists of pots to make. And he took charge of the filing. He set the kiln himself. So he was very much the boss. And everything revolved around his wishes and so on.

AH:	If you particularly wanted to veer off that, was there sort of leeway? Was he flexible?

RF:	Well I'm sure we discussed things together. But I mean I would always have asked him if I could do something or if he wanted me to do something. I mean I wouldn't have done anything [67] without asking. I mean, I was definitely as I say, very much in awe of him really, as a master potter and everything, you know, and as a beginner as I was a beginner and as I knew so little about it.

AH:	So how did he relate to you in those early days? How did he talk with you?

RF:	Oh he used to talk and he used to say what he felt about things. It was very friendly, and the relationship was…he was not old enough to be on sort of a fatherly basis, there was only about, I think about thirteen or so years difference between us and on the other hand I wasn't near enough to him to be a sort of, in a brother sort of relationship, we were a little bit awkward sort of spaced…but I mean I had a great respect for him and as I say I liked him, I certainly learned a tremendous amount from him, well I learnt everything from him really, because [68] I came to him completely fresh, you see. It wasn't as though I'd worked somewhere else or had very much influence at all, other than his. So that certainly had a profound effect.

AH:	So did you get good feedback from him? Was he critical in a good way or…?

RF:	Yes, well he certainly would…I think he taught more by example than anything. I don't think he taught in an active sense. I think his attitude was that you learnt from being there and seeing what was going on and absorbing it, you see…I don't remember him sort of standing over me and saying do this, do that, you see, which I think is the right way really, on the whole. You have to learn…you have to teach yourself, but you must have guidance, and the guidance is being part of a team, you see. I mean Winchcombe already had a good tradition in those days. In those ten, twelve years he'd [69] established a sort of tradition and that's what I was brought up on.

AH:	Can you talk about that tradition?

RF:	Well, it certainly sprang from his first association with potters in North Devon. I mean, that's where it came from, is boyhood experience at Fremington, chiefly, which was a slightly different tradition from the Staffordshire tradition. I mean it went on in North Devon longer and there were still some country potteries there you see up until the First World War and that's where he first learnt at all, and I think that's where he drew the inspiration for what he did when he came to Winchcombe. I mean there were obviously other influences. I mean, he looked at pots in museums and so on, and he absorbed a certain amount of that, I think. But I think that was the basis, the North Devon tradition.

AH:	Right, so he wasn't so touched and [70] influenced by Leach?

RF:	No, you can’t see really anything in his pots related to Leach.

AH:	So…

	[end of side two]

RF:	Yes, well you see it's what I’d learnt and here was an existing pottery, albeit it had been interrupted by the war…here was Sidney demobilised you see and wanting a job again and the obvious thing was to go on. I felt very strongly that this Winchcombe tradition was a good one. I saw no reason to make a drastic change in it, any changes that happened were sort of a gradual evolution rather than any break, so that's how we did, that's how we went on.

AH:	Right, can you talk a little about how Cardew evaluated what was good and how you, um, how he communicated that to you, you know?

RF:	[71] Well, I think his umm…I think his essential philosophy was that potters made things for use, you know that he said somewhere that my chief inspiration in making pots is the idea that they should be used and that’s, that was really the essential thing…

AH:	To the function…

RF:	Yes, well not functional, I hate that word really. I much prefer useful, I think it's a better English word and that's what he…I don't ever remember him talking about things being functional, but certainly about things being useful, and all he made really related to that and no question about it. I mean he used to make big cider jars and things but they still were useful pots you see, and big plates and he did make pots for flowers but then that's a perfectly legitimate use [72] but not very many. There were much more cups and saucers and jugs and jars for this and that, store jars and so on, mugs and…

AH:	What of the aesthetic though? How did he, did he talk about that?

RF:	Um…I don't remember him talking about it very much. I think he must have got that…his attitude to that from Leach to some extent, I mean that's probably what he did get from Leach, but I don't remember him discussing it, he may have done, but I can't remember.

AH:	Right.

RF:	Ah…[break in soundtrack]…I think he must have done but I, you know I can't recollect that, he certainly wrote…I remember reading something of his about…that he wrote, not to be published, it must have [73] been from a lecture or something, but have you got any records of his lectures?

AH:	Not many, no.

RF:	No, they must be there somewhere. I haven't got them, but he did talk to art schools and things about pots.

AH:	Yes he did communicate greatly didn't he, yes.

RF:	And at workshops and what have you, but that was much later in his life. He certainly didn't do it when I was at Winchcombe. It must have been, you know, after he came back from Africa.

AH:	Yes [break in soundtrack]…

RF:	No, I think he steered clear a bit of that sort of thing. He was very keen on the material side, the technical side oddly enough, well as you know from his 'Pioneer Pottery'.

AH:	Yes.

RF:	[74] It's all about technical things really though at the end it's about the aesthetic, aesthetic ideas.

AH:	So when you made things and other people did, he sort of go around and say well you know that isn’t very good, that's good, how did you evaluate…?

RF:	Well I think occasionally he gave me a little praise or encouragement, but not very much.

AH:	You were left to yourself?

RF:	Yes, yes, I remember making some little jam pots and I remember him saying he liked them very much, and he liked the decoration and so on.

AH:	So you were left in a way to yourself to find out and to evaluate, or did you get feedback from the other assistants as well?

RF:	Um, not much I don't think, I think, I don't think Sidney bothered [75] about that sort of thing at all you know. He just made what he'd been instructed to make and Lijah certainly didn't. I think in a way it was a sort of folk tradition you know, and um one absorbed that, I mean obviously Mike, Michael wasn't…he was different, I mean he was an intellectual and he thought about all these things, but I don't think Elijah or Sidney or myself did, not really at that stage.

AH:	You said he was an intellectual, I mean he was a highly gifted, extremely clever man…

RF:	Yes he was, yes.

AH:	Did that, was that self evident in the day to day things?

RF:	Well yes, it was in his conversation and so on…yes, as I say I was a little bit awed of him, you know and uh…

AH:	[76] But did he talk down to you, or as an equal, how did he…?

RF:	I think he talked as an equal yes, but whether he thought I was an equal or not was another matter [laughter]. I mean yes, I mean he'd been to university you see and here was I, I'd left school at fifteen or something, so obviously we'd not had the same intellectual training at all, but he was an interesting, he was a very interesting man, he was very interesting…His conversation was always interesting and he had definite political view and so on.

AH:	What sort of definite political views? 
RF:	Well, I think he was very left wing you see. I don't think he was a communist, he was a socialist certainly, definitely a socialist and he would talk [77] about that, but that was all something I hadn't really got on board you know. I never thought about politics at that time, and I was too preoccupied really with learning the job.

AH:	Can you remember the sorts of things that he would talk about in terms of politics and his views?

RF:	Well Anna really I can't no. I mean he would not discuss with me, but he would discuss if I was present. I mean he sometimes, I used to go and have a meal with them. Perhaps his brother-in-law was there or something, and he was a communist and they would discuss these things and it was all a bit above my head really.

AH:	Really. Did it influence you in any way?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	Did it influence you in any way subsequently?

RF:	Not really politically, I don't think. As I say, it was only very much later that I was ever at all concerned with [78] thinking about that or thinking about the government or criticising the government or disagreeing with them, or whatever.

AH:	You say he was very left wing. In terms of running the pottery did that have any effect on, you know, I mean, I haven't asked you, how much were you paid in the early days?

RF:	Well, let me say to start with that Michael was desperately poor, and he was married and he had two children, well he had perhaps one when I first came, so I mean he wasn't a bloated capitalist by any means. And I forget really what Sidney had, perhaps about four pounds a week, or something. I don't know what Elijah had, but he only worked four days.

AH:	But four pounds a week was quite a lot?

RF:	Well, it wasn't bad, no. And I had, when [79] I first came, I had ten shillings a week.

AH:	How could one live on ten shillings a week?

RF:	So, well, you know, but then I came from choice. It wasn't as though I was employed exactly, I'd come to learn, you see, and that seemed fair enough to me, and I was certainly subsidised by my mother to some extent, but I, I certainly managed.

AH:	So it wasn't a preoccupation, you know?

RF:	No, no it wasn't.

AH:	You took it on board?

RF:	It wasn't. I hadn't got the feeling of deprivation at all. I was too happy and involved in the work.

AH:	You were really doing what you wanted to do?

RF:	Yes. I felt I was then, you see, and I had this nice cottage and I enjoyed that, and that was alright.

AH:	So what did you enjoy doing most [80] in the pottery, in those early years?

RF:	Well, I certainly, as I improved slightly, I enjoyed throwing, and I enjoyed the firings. It was all a very exciting time really, and I liked that, and I liked the whole range of things which were going on, really.

AH:	And it was varied work?

RF:	Yes, it was.

AH:	This thing that you've just touched on, that a pottery didn't make a lot of money in those days. Michael Cardew was not very well off, were you daunted by that or…?

RF:	I don't think so, cos I suppose I didn't look ahead very much really.

AH:	So you were living in the moment?

RF:	Yes, I don't think I worried about the future.

AH:	Is that part of your character? Is that how you are as a person?

RF:	I think so, on the whole, I may [81] worry a bit about what's going to happen tomorrow.

AH:	Tomorrow, tomorrow, but not…?

RF:	But not too far ahead, no, I don't think so, though I must have done. I mean I certainly was worried enough sometimes when I was, when the pottery was mine and I had the responsibility I was very worried sometimes. But I don't think I was then, it wasn't my responsibility, it wasn't my headache. 

AH:	Yes, so you didn't take that on board, that it was a …?

RF:	No, I don't think so.

AH:	And did Michael communicate that, you know, that it's a hard, difficult life or did he communicate the joy of it?

RF:	Well, I think he did both really, but he certainly, you know, well he told me right at the beginning that it was a hard life, and that you can't expect much [82] financial return out of it. I mean, he was very aware of that, I'm sure.

AH:	So you felt an affinity with the slipware, that whole tradition of the pottery that you were making at that time?

RF:	With what?

AH:	You felt an affinity with that country pottery tradition and the slipware? 

RF:	Yes, yes I did. I liked, I came to like…appreciate the shapes and the simple variety of colours and I certainly admired his decoration and so on  But it wall seemed, looking back, it all seemed very genuine, very honest, you know? And I was pleased to be doing something which satisfied my ambition to be doing something responsible and different from the rest of the world, in a way. I thought I'd found the right place, you see, and I think that's been true.

AH: 	[83] So were you convinced as well by the ideal of the, I suppose, studio pottery thing of making reasonably priced pots, you know, the Leach thing that good quality is accessible, you know, for people to buy?

RF:	Yes, yes I thought that was important. I felt that was the right reason to be doing what we were doing, you see, that pots should be priced so that at least the average sort of middle class person could afford them, could afford to buy them and use them, rather than to buy them and merely keep them as an object, you know? And certainly we produced pots in quite considerable quantities, and we produced them as an object, you know? And certainly we produced pots in quite considerable quantities, and we produced them according to a price list, you see, a list of repetition ware really.

AH:	So that was carefully thought out, was it?

RF:	I think so, yes. I think Michael decided to have a list of things which we produced [84] and we stuck to that, and it's true, he made other things which were outside the normal range, but still, as I say, they were all useful, they all came into the useful range of things.

AH:	So the idea of standard ware came into it, a sort of standard ware?

RF:	Yes. It was very much established in those days. Certain sizes of jugs and mugs and bowls and beakers and casseroles and all that, everything.

AH:	So the ideal of…you were convinced by the ideal behind the whole set up as well?

RF:	Well, I think I was yes. I don't think I fretted to do something different at all. I was quite happy to do what was established and going on.

AH:	So did the way of life suit you, in those early days? You harmonised with it?

RF:	I think so yes, yes I did. I was glad to get away from the slightly suburban background that I had. I think a lot of [85] …I think my mother was a bit shocked about it all. You know, I think she thought I'd taken a step backwards or something. But, you know, she accepted it, but I think she thought I would have been much better to have stayed working at a paper mill and gradually climbing the ladder to being, you know, manager or sales manager or something terrible. But there you are. I mean, she came from…her father was a farmer. I don't think…I mean, I think she must have had values in that direction, you know, a rural direction, though perhaps it had got overlaid by living in towns, I don't know.

AH:	So what outlets did the pottery get sold from Winchcombe.

RF:	Well, we used to sell here. We used to get people coming in, in those days. I mean, not, obviously, so many as we do now.

AH:	[86] Local people?

RF:	Local people to some extent and people used to come from a further distance. And we used to sell to a number of shops.

AH:	What shops, if you remember?

RF:	Well, one or two in London. There was one called 'The Little Gallery' which was run by Muriel Rose, who was a great supporter, and there was one called the 'Three Shields Gallery' and, well I think we sold in…certainly in Gloucester. I don't know whether we sold in Cheltenham, I can't remember. But there were a number of shops that bought the pots. So they were sold at wholesale prices, I think, I'm not quite sure about that. I didn't really have anything to do with that side of things.

AH:	So what sort of prices did the pots sell at in those days?

RF:	Well, somewhere I've got a price list, which I don't know where it is, at the moment, [87] I've got it somewhere.

AH:	Cos you were saying you couldn't afford to buy…we were talking earlier on, and you were saying you couldn't afford to buy the pots that you were making at a certain point.

RF:	Yes…no…well I'm sure I have a few seconds and things you know to use. But I mean the little jugs sold from about one and six perhaps for cream jugs up to perhaps four and six or something for a decent sized three pint jug or something. And mugs and beakers and things in proportion, you know, very, quite low prices, even in those days, though I mean you have to compare it with the cost of food. I mean you'd get eggs for a penny each you see in those days. So you could get eighteen eggs for the cost of a little cream jug. And then Michael's pots tended to be, I mean his sort of more special pots, up to sort of cider jars for sort of five pounds [88] you see or something like that. And bowls and so on, but they'd all be in that range. Possibly, if he sent them to exhibitions they might be a little bit more.

AH:	It's interesting that they were out of your range…you didn't buy…you don't have many pots, you were saying, from that period.

RF:	No, well, I mean we've had pots over the years when we used them and they got broken.

AH:	That's the thing about earthenware isn't it?

RF:	Yes. When I said I couldn't afford to buy pots, I couldn't afford five pounds for a cider jar or something.

AH:	You couldn't afford the big…his particular…

RF:	I would have liked to have done, I really regret I didn't beg, borrow or steal enough money to do so now, but there you are.

AH:	So you haven't got any of his [89] particular, individual pieces?

RF:	Well I've got one or two that I bought later on. I mean I've got one or two Abuja pots you see, and I've got one or two Wenford Bridge pots, but I bought those at exhibitions. But the only two slipware ones I've got I think are those two in there.

AH:	Yes, that's interesting, isn't it?

RF:	I've never really been a collector of pots.

AH:	You haven't? You've got some pretty nice ones around though. I mean you say you're not a collector of pots…

RF:	Well, I'm afraid some of them are mine, but I've got a Leach and a couple of Hamada's. I've got a Lucie Rie, I've got, as I say, some Cardew, Wenford Bridge, and I've got a Harry Davis and I've got a Geoff Whiting.

AH:	That sounds pretty nice.

RF:	But I'm not a collector. I regard myself as a maker not a collector.

AH:	But it's interesting because I think all potters do have pots of each other's.

RF:	They do occasionally collect the odd one yes.

AH:	So was the pottery economically viable in the thirties? Was it making…was it surviving?

RF:	Well it was very, very much on the border line. I don't think Michael ever made any profit really, it was just hand to mouth.

AH:	Mm, that's a bit tough isn't it? It was hard?

RF:	Yes. The market, you see, it was something quite different. The market wasn't there, nobody really discovered it, nobody thought about it. There were only just a few people who were beginning to get interested in this odd way of doing things and that was the trouble. I think, it was finding a market. That, and technical problems.

AH:	Yes, because Cardew mentioned somewhere 'it was all struggle and insecurity'.

RF:	[91] Yes.

AH:	For him?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	So was that partly the reason do you think why he went to Africa? Why he took the job in Africa?

RF:	I think so yes, I'm sure. I think that's originally what he needed to do cos he'd got, you see they'd got three children then, three boys. I think he thought, you know, he was quite taken with the idea of doing it, but I think it must have been quite heavily a reason that he had to produce an income.

AH:	So the ideal didn't meet reality in practical economic terms at times?

RF:	No, well you see, he went off to Wenford Bridge in 1939…

AH:	And how did that come about and why?

RF:	Well, you see, he was a Cornishman and I think he always hankered to get back to Cornwall, and he saw in me [92] a possibility of doing that, you see, he thought…The original idea was that we were going to run both potteries together, I mean as a sort of joint firm, rather loosely attached, you see. And I was going to run Winchcombe and he was going to run Wenford Bridge. Anyway, he went off to Cornwall in 1939 and almost immediately the war started. So he went on for a bit there, but, I mean, he had such a lot to do, he had the kiln to build and he had the workshop to work out and set up and I don't think the local people were very friendly at that stage. It was very, very difficult.

AH:	So what had made it possible for you, from '36 - '39 in three years, Michael felt able to leave the pottery in your hands? That was quite a thing.

RF:	Well, I think it was a mistake, quite honestly.

AH:	Do you?

RF:	[93] Yes. I don't think I had enough experience. It's true I had Sidney to fall back on, and I mean Sidney was pretty experienced in most ways by then, and quite capable of making things and knew how things were done and so on. But even so I think it was much too soon.

AH:	But obviously Cardew felt, you know…

RF:	Yes well maybe he was…what he did say was, you see, the idea was that he if necessary, would come back for short periods and then he'd help with the firing or whatever. But I don't know whether it would have worked, I mean, if we'd gone on like that. Who knows?

AH:	But then the war occurred. So by that time you were able to sort of do your fair share of work in the pottery?

RF:	Well yes I could throw in a sort of way by then, yes, nothing very large or elaborate really, just the usual standard things.

AH:	But did you feel able to be in charge [94] and fire the kiln and everything?

RF:	I think I was a bit worried about it all.

AH:	But you agreed?

RF:	I agreed yes. Well Michael bought this old pub you see in Wenford Bridge. He was obviously very keen to get off and get it set up.

AH:	How did you feel about him going?

RF:	Well, I think I was quite excited at the prospect of being in charge and also, as I say, rather worried about the responsibility. But at that age one doesn't worry too much I suppose, about these things. More confidence than good sense.

AH:	Which is sometimes a good thing, maybe?

RF:	Well, maybe yes.

AH:	Cos you could do it. You took it over and it obviously worked out very well. So, obviously you'd built up a relationship with him at that time, by the time he went, what sort of a relationship was it? How did it sort of develop?

RF:	[95] Well, I'm sure we were on very good terms then, and he obviously thought I was capable of doing it, but I don't think I was really.

AH:	So, would you say that you were friends by that time?

RF:	Oh I think so yes, but…yes as I say there was an awkward sort of gap between us and I…he wasn't a very approachable person really…I mean he did have friends obviously but they were more of his age and so on, so I didn't feel a great sense of friendship with him…

AH:	Closeness, yes.

RF:	No.

AH:	What did you most like about him?

RF:	Um…well I think I liked his sort of complete honesty, and his sort of determination you know to…that he'd established this thing and he'd [96] sort of seen it through to this stage. I certainly admired him a great deal and…I was very grateful to him you know for letting me come here and helping me, I mean teaching me really and getting me to the stage where I was…but there were are I don't know.

AH:	Were there any things that you found exasperating about him?

RF:	Well he was sometimes a difficult person. He was sometimes very withdrawn you know. His health wasn't awfully good at that stage, I think…looking back, I think he had a tendency to have an ulcer or something because some days he would just not appear because he had pains, pains in his stomach and so on. I know that is now because I have that tendency as well [97] and I think that made him a bit, you know, as I say withdrawn but when he was alright you know he was a very sort of cheerful and lively sort of person to be with but obviously it must of…the responsibilities and difficulties must have weighed on him to quite a considerable amount.

AH:	But those weren't discernible to you?

RF:	Well he didn't come out with it, you know he kept it to himself.

AH:	So are there any vivid things about him, what do you remember that stayed with you?

RF:	Well I…he was a very…I mean his personal appearance - he was a very handsome man, a very impressive figure. I mean, even in his old age he was, wasn't he? Did you know him at all?

AH:	I didn't know him, no.

RF:	[98] And he…he must have…you always felt with him you know that he was…that he had a sort of element of greatness about him, you know he was…some people have that don't they? and here was somebody who was really quite an exceptional person, that's certainly my…I remember that. And then…well I always remember him at firings for instance. He would always take…our firings took usually as long as three days and we…Elijah would light up in the morning one day and keep a slow fire with coal all through the day and then Michael would take over at five o'clock and I would…I also would join him, and usually we had another friend who would come to stay the night and help with [99] the kiln and we would make a sort of bed on the wedging table or on a chair - on a wicker chair or something and Marial would bring food for the night to keep us going, and we would sit up all night with the kiln and by…I forget exactly now - but during the evening we would start putting cord wood as well as the coal and then during the night we would eventually go over to cord wood altogether, so four fire boxes had to be stoked at regular intervals, and in the morning at, I think six, Sidney would arrive and Charlie and…and usually two extra men and we would sort of go off and have a break and you know wash and so on…and then very soon we would start faggot stoking, and then it [100] required one man at each fire box, and the faggots were broken open and a piece about that…perhaps a third of a faggot would be put on the fire and pushed on with a metal rake, a metal fork really, a special fork, pushed on to the fire and that just used to go up like whoosh up through the kiln you see, out of the chimney at the top after a while, and we used to have people coming in and saying 'do you know your chimney's on fire?' And anyway that went on and we used to stoke for about forty minutes continuously and then we would have a break and Michael would say 'cool off' you see, well it wasn't really, because we then had to carry out the hot embers which had accumulated [101] in the ash pits and so on, which was even hotter than the stoking almost, and we let the kiln…the temperature in the kiln, rise, as it cooled a bit at the bottom the temperature went up, the problem always with an updraft kiln is getting the top done and the bottom not over done, and then we'd start faggot stoking again and it was a desperately hot job really, especially on a summer day, and we'd go on and Michael would look through the spy hole and see whether the [cones(?) - bad sound quality]  had gone and we used to have little rings to hook out to see whether the glaze had melted and he used to stand up on the top - the pottery was in two storeys you see and the kiln went [102] right up through the pottery, and he'd stand on the bridge and look through the chimney spy hole and he could see the flames coming up from four fire boxes and he used to say 'more on the number one fire' or 'less number three fires' because he used to balance the fires coming up and we used to go on until he'd decided that the kiln was done and then we used to shut all the fire boxes up and clam them up with clay, and we had a sort of thing like a candle snuffer which came down on the top of the chimney up there and then we'd all go off exhausted to have a bath and fall into bed.

AH:	It sounds exhausting, exhausting yes, but satisfying as well?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	[103] Was it satisfying as well as exhausting?…satisfying was it…?

RF:	Oh it was all very exciting. It was a really exciting time because we only used to fire about five times a year you see that big kiln held a lot of pots, so it was a great occasion and certainly one enjoyed it. It was a real thrill somehow to be handling this monster.

AH:	And has that stayed with you?

RF:	The memory's stayed with me yes, I still enjoy firings…

AH:	But I mean with wood it's…

RF:	Yes, well we went to oil for a time and then we came back to wood.

AH:	So staying with Cardew for a little while, he was a very eccentric person wasn't he? He comes across…

RF:	Yes I think he was definitely…yes a great character you know, eccentric [104] in certain ways yes…

[end of side three]

AH:	Can you say that again?

RF:	He only thought of kilns as round. I remember when I first built my wood fire…stoneware kiln he came and, I think he used to come here occasionally, he came and had a look at it, and I had been firing with oil you see and I’d pulled those kilns down and gone back to wood, and he had a look at it and he said 'Hmm…A step in the right direction.' You see the kilns he'd built at Wenford were round and the kiln he'd built at…in, I don't know about Ghana, I expect so, were round and the kiln he built at Baltay was round and the kiln he built at Abuja was round. He wouldn't have anything to do with [105] these rectangular things.

AH:	So the war came, and what, you kept the pottery going during the war years did you?

RF:	The pottery went on yes for a couple of…for a couple of years or more, we just, Sidney got called up, Charlie got called up, I got a deferment for a while and Elijah and I just struggled on a bit.

AH:	Right, so prior to this time we've got…you'd met and married, I believe.

RF:	Yes we married in 1940 and…

AH:	Is your wife a local person?

RF:	Yes, yes well she's local in the sense that she'd lived here most of her life. She actually came from Birmingham originally, she hasn't got a Birmingham accent at all. She came here as a child and in the First World [106] War her father had evacuated her and her mother and sister to Greet just up the road. So she's lived here all her life practically except when she was away at college or something and when she was away teaching, she was a teacher and as I say we got married in 1940.

AH:	Gosh that was quite a time to get married.

RF:	Yes it was really a bit of a…I mean, you know, a lot of these things you jump into without thing about too much. I suppose hmm…

AH:	Yes, so what was it like getting married during the war?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	What was it like getting married during the war?

RF:	Well it was just the same as any other time, I suppose really, [107] except that you couldn't have a wedding breakfast or anything very easily because everything was rationed, but I remember my father-in-law managed to scrounge a quantity of bacon and eggs, well he got the eggs all right because that wasn't difficult, and he gave us a sort of wedding breakfast, you know, because bacon was almost unobtainable, almost straight away. Er you got a small piece each week that was all, so we had a wedding breakfast really. And then we never had a honeymoon, we went to Stratford for the day with our…with my best man who was Dunstan and his wife and we saw 'The Taming of the Shrew'.

AH:	[108] That was rather nice…a rather unusual honeymoon. Did you ever make up your honeymoon subsequently?

RF:	Well we had holidays of course later on after the war, but…yeah.

AH:	So how did getting married, having a family - presumably starting a family, and running the pottery go together, was that easy for you or difficult or how did it go?

RF:	Well it was difficult, yes. I think, of course, it was harder on my wife than it was on me.

AH:	In what way?

RF:	Well because she had a…we had a large family and she had all the responsibilities really.

AH:	She looked after the family?

RF:	You see, I was in the fire service during the war, and, so that I wasn't home very often, and that was pretty badly paid really. But then after the war, we had the struggle of starting the pottery again, and so that she was always hard up [109] for a long time, when the children were young. But she was a good manager, and she coped with it. I'm amazed you know, looking back that she managed so well.

AH:	With the income that you had?

RF:	Yes. I mean, she was exceptionally good with children, I think.

AH:	Because you said she had trained as a teacher?

RF:	She trained as a teacher and I'm sure she was a very good teacher, and I'm sure she was a very good mother.

AH:	But you weren't around for some of that time?

RF:	No.

AH:	You weren't, goodness. So, being involved with the fire service - did you say…?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	…you had to go away from here?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	So where did you go?

RF:	[110] Well, I was stationed in Stroud mostly.

AH:	So did you come back at weekends?

RF:	Well, no, I came back occasionally, when I could get…but not very often.

AH:	So it was the same as for most families that you weren't around for a lot of the time?

RF:	No. 

AH:	Gosh. And, so which of your children were born during the war years?

RF:	Well, the eldest was born and Peter was born. I forget - I think…no, I think Michael was born after the war. But certainly the two of them, yes.

AH:	So how did you experience that time during the war?

RF:	Oh well, I mean, obviously, I was pretty lucky really. But it was a pretty grim time, really.

AH:	Did you…was it a particular difficulty for you to be separated from the pottery? Did you miss it?

RF:	[111] Well, of course I, yes. Of course I just wanted to get back to it, that was all.

AH:	Did you think that you would?

RF:	Oh yes, I was sure I would, yes, I was sure I would. And in fact in 1946, sometime in 1946, both Sidney and I were demobilised and started thinking about starting again. And Sid was all keen to do it and so the two of us sort of, you know, brushed the cobwebs off the wheels and…

AH:	It was like that?

RF:	…and started the thing going again. Michael in this time, you see, had been in Ghana and in the Gold Coast, as it was then, and, you know, had no further interest in Winchcombe and we corresponded , and he agreed to sell me the equipment and the good will, such as it was, and I was going to have the pottery. The pottery didn't belong to us, you see, it belonged to somebody who owned this piece of land, owned this house, in fact.

AH:	[112] Right, who was that?

RF:	It was a Mrs Butler and her husband had been a retired farmer who'd bought this as a little small holding, you see, and after her…and incidentally rented the pottery you see, to Michael in 1926, and we went on renting it.

AH:	Yes, so you didn't own it?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	You didn't own it?

RF:	Didn't own it, no. And after the war, we went on renting [feedback noise - Oh dear, sorry.] we went on renting for some years, and then eventually the old Mrs Butler died and her son wanted to sell the pottery, to sell the whole place, and as these things happen, things do happen fortunately, my wife's aunt had died, previously, and left her a little money, and so we were able to buy the pottery and the house and five acres of ground.

AH:	Goodness! Might I ask how much that [113] cost?

RF:	Four thousand pounds.

AH:	Goodness! That's pretty good.

RF:	Well, I mean, it seemed quite a lot of money to use in those days, but…

AH:	Yes, relatively.

RF:	…but when you think of a little canal house which is worth seventy or eighty thousand now, it doesn't seem very much, but of course money was very much more valuable in those days. Anyway, it worked out and we moved here.

AH:	Was this house here then?

RF:	Yes, this part wasn't…

AH:	You added this?

RF:	…but the other part at the front was, yes, and, of course, it was just right for our family really, lots of children.

AH:	It was big enough?

RF:	Big enough, yes.

AH:	So how did your family fit into the scheme of things after the war, did, you [114] know, you had your family around you, it was all integrated in a way, did your wife also help?

RF:	She never helped in the pottery no. She always had quite enough to do.

AH:	And, conversely, did you ever…were you involved with the family, and helping with the family, or was that separate?

RF:	Well, I don't think I helped an awful lot, quite honestly. I must have done to some extent, but I do think she did most of it.

AH:	So you were mainly involved with running the pottery, that was it?

RF:	Yes, I was involved mostly with the pottery, yes.

AH:	So did you organise and run the pottery differently from the manner that Cardew had done.

RF:	I think I did…more or less on the same sort of lines. Though probably I leant on Sidney more than, you know, than Michael did, in a way. Sidney was my great [115] stand by and helper. And eventually Charlie came back and a man called Ivan Martin came and joined us and eventually we had one or two boys from the village. And so we went on into the fifties, and various people came and went, you know, students and things.

AH:	So did you continue…did you take on that ideal of training people? Was that an important part of the pottery?

RF:	Well, the important thing was to establish a team. I'd always, you see, Michael had always had a team and I'd been brought up on that and I wanted to continue that. I wanted the thing to be a team job. I certainly never at that time thought of myself as an individual potter, and then there was always somebody asking if they could come as a student, and over the years we had numberless students, for a shorter or longer period. Sometimes only perhaps for a month or six weeks in the summer, or sometimes [116] for two or three years. Some of them had stayed for a time as a permanent member of the team, and then eventually gone off and started their own pottery perhaps, and that sort of thing.

AH:	So there are obviously pluses and minuses about that - people coming and going?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	There are obviously pluses and minuses…

RF:	Yes, well, there are, very definitely. The trouble is if you get somebody and train them and then they leave, it makes a vacuum which has to be filled. But we always managed to keep the nucleus of the team going. And Sidney went on and worked here until he was 65, you see, which was over fifty years.

AH:	So all his working life, actually.

RF:	Yes.

AH:	Gosh. And he still lives in this area, I believe?

RF:	Yes, he's still alive, yes.

AH:	[117] Do you see him? Much of him?

RF:	Not very often. He's a bit immobilised now. He used to have a little motorbike and he used to come out quite often. He used to have a garden in the field over there. But he had a slight stroke a couple of years ago and he's had to give up his motorbike. I do go and see him when I can. But he's a bit - about year older than me. But we went on, you see, we went on…we started, as I say with Sidney and me and then Charlie and Ivan, and we went on until we struck a very bad patch in 1953, '52-'53, when we got into a bad seam of clay, and I didn't realise it at the time, and I didn't realise what the problem was, but it was in fact a lot of sulphates in the clay and effect is that it produces, when you're firing, a lot of sulphur dioxide, and that has a devastating effect on the glazes. It makes them all blister - and even makes them dry, [118] you know, it does something to the lead, and I was at my wits end. I thought it was the coal that was different and I tried everything…and we had one or two really desperately bad firings and I just ran out of money. I couldn't afford to pay the wages and very reluctantly I just had to make them redundant you see. As I say, we had about two boys, Charlie and somebody else, that must have been before Ivan came, I think. I tell you who was working here as a student and that was Colin Pearson.

AH:	Oh yes.

RF:	But I think three of them, oh and there was another boy…I think three of them and Colin I had to ask to go, I just couldn't go on.

AH:	It was so difficult, yes?

RF:	And I kept Sidney and one boy, who had just started, I think, and, well we didn't know what to do and so in the [119] end we got an electric kiln, about eight cubic feet, it was an awful come down. And as soon as we started firing in that kiln, the problem disappeared. And we were able to discover what it was, because if you went into the room when the kiln was nearly finished, the whole room was full of blue sulphur dioxide. But firing it very quickly - I mean we were firing it in about ten hours, rather than over 48 hours in the big kiln, it didn't have the same effect.

AH:	Goodness! That's interesting, isn't it?

RF:	Also there was no coal to add to the amount of sulphur. So that's what we did. We got another electric kiln and we went on producing slipware, which was really rather boring in electric kilns. But during that period I'd become very interested in stoneware and in the early fifties I was experimenting with it. I had another kiln, another small kiln, where the present wood [120] kiln is, and we had one or two test firings in that, which were pretty disastrous, but still. One of the people I had with me then was Isius Bosch who was a South African potter, now a sort of top potter in South Africa, I suppose, though he doesn't make pots any more, he makes murals and things. But he was here and he helped me and we had one or two bad firings, but I was still determined to go on with the stoneware. We got over the trouble - it was the clay - too much silica in the clay, and I decided in '59 that I'd change over to stoneware. And we built an oil kiln and we got going, and it went straight away, everything was alright, just as those things happen sometimes.

AH:	Gosh, it must have been such a relief for you. But can I ask, it's interesting because the Leach potteries had difficulties and then after the war they were selling their work really well because there was [121] this demand, suddenly there was a demand. Did you find that?

RF:	Oh yes, the fifties were pretty difficult. Well ever since, you know, the end of the war until the end of the fifties it wasn't easy.

AH:	It wasn't easy?

RF:	No, it wasn't easy. But suddenly in the sixties it started to boom, you see, and you could sell everything without any problem. And for the first time in my life I started to make some money as a potter and not be always having to placate the bank manager, you know, and so on.

AH:	That's difficult, isn't it?

RF:	Yes, but I think everybody found the same thing.

AH:	Yes. So what would you say were the most important factors and aspects of running a successful pottery?

RF:	Well, a certain amount of experience and a lot of good luck, I think really. But you see by then, there was all sorts of [122] information coming out. In the sixties there were books and everything, you know, and potters got to know each other, you know, communication was so much easier and you got to know other potters and you heard their problems and you swapped problems and so on.

AH:	Going back to the fifties and earlier I suppose, did you get to know Leach? Did you have much contact with him?

RF:	Well, I never really knew him, I mean I did meet him a few times. I remember going to a meeting with him in London with Harry Davis about something, I can't remember what it was now, and I went to St Ives, I remember once. Well I went two or three times and I met him then, but I didn't know him, no.

AH:	So, were there potters that you did meet and get to know that you had rapport with, that also, you know, you could discuss things with and…during that [123] time?

RF:	Well, yes, I knew David Leach well. I mean he's more of less contemporary with me, although he's a bit older. I'd known David right from the early days because I remember him coming to a firing once and I've always known him, and, who else did I know particularly in those days? Not so much in the fifties, I think in the sixties I got to know more potters.

AH:	Did you read Leach's potters' book when it came out?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	What did you think? 
RF:	Yes, I had a copy. I got a copy in 1940.

AH:	Right at the beginning?

RF:	Right at the beginning, yes. I've still got it, yes, it's rather tattered now. Because I remember Bernard used to send drafts of the book to Michael to red and I remember at teatime he used to go through them and make comments.

AH:	[124] You mean openly to all of you?

RF:	Yes, and he had a great friend Henry Bergen who used to stay here sometimes and he and Henry used to criticise Bernard's writing and that sort of thing.

AH:	Yes, cos that was actively encouraged wasn't it? Bernard wanted that feedback didn't he?

RF:	Yes, yes and I think that went on for quite a time while he was writing it and, well, it came out in, I think it was 1940 it came out.

AH:	So you had…

RF:	I devoured that, you see, when I was thinking about going over to stoneware, and everything else I could get hold of. And I remember writing to Michael about it in wherever he was, I can't think where he was then, in Ghana I suppose, and getting quite an enthusiastic letter back about various technical things. I wish I'd kept those letters.

AH	[125] You haven't kept them?

RF:	No.

AH:	Cos those were…obviously he had made that leap himself. He had gone over to stoneware as well, so he could identify.

RF:	Yes, but I did it rather gradually, I must say. It took about, well certainly 7 or 8 years I think, well 6 or 7 years. But I did take the plunge and it went very well, I mean technically it went very well. The kiln worked well, I don't say the glazes were very exciting but I think they were alright and they improved. And in fact, in 1960, I was able to give the craftsmen in the potter's shop an exhibition.

AH:	Yes, well that was the first wasn't it?

RF:	It was the first, yes.

AH:	It was the first large, one man exhibition?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	How did you feel about that? It must have been quite a thing.

RF:	[126] Well I was flattered I suppose.

AH:	Were you? Well that's rather wonderful. 

RF:	And I suppose the pots…well I didn't think they were very good really, but anyway, people didn't have such very high standards in those days.

AH:	But did…talking of standards - where were you looking to for evaluating your standards and, you know, the quality of things in those days?

RF:	Well I'm sure I started looking at pots more carefully, you see, and certainly I would go to museums and things a lot.

AH:	You did?

RF:	You know, the V&A and the British Museum and the Percival-Bailey Collection and that sort of thing. And whenever I was away anywhere, I used to deliver pots to Cambridge, the Fitzwilliam, Oxford, and anywhere I went I would always go and look at pots in museums. I don't say it influenced me very directly, but I certainly got [127] something, you know, something important from it. It was something I wanted to refresh what I was doing with, I think.

AH:	So were there any other areas of ceramics that you became excited by during that time?

RF:	Not particularly. I always used to look at Chinese pots mostly, you know.

AH:	Chinese?

RF:	Chinese, Korean. I wasn't interested in Majolica really or Islamic, you know, highly decorated things.

AH:	So again is it a formal thing - form - formal thing, aspect of pottery?

RF:	Yes, that's what I'm very interested in. And, you know, very simple sorts of decoration. Not that I've ever felt I could use a brush. I was never very happy with a brush. So a lot of the Chinese pottery I was more interested in the form than the decoration.

AH:	So what particular period in Chinese ceramics [128] most inspired you?

RF:	Well, very early, you know, sort of Tang and Fung and that sort of period I liked best, and sometimes very sort of Neolithic pottery I found very attractive. Ah, it must be nearly lunch time, is it?

?	[man's voice off camera] Yes, about four minutes.

	[break in tape sound]

RF:	Well, I don't know. I listened to Mr Leach, I don't think I heard Michael's talk, as I say, I was only there for a very short time. I didn't go for the whole conference.

AH:	Right, I forgot to say, we're talking about the Dartington conference in 1952. You went to it, but you sent for part of the week?

RF:	Yes, just the beginning of the conference, and I haven't got any very strong memories of it really, at all.

AH:	You don't?

RF:	No.

AH:	Do you remember particular people there - because it was an international conference [129] wasn't it?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	Did you find that exciting?

RF:	Well, yes, interesting of course, but - and the exhibitions quite interesting too - but I didn't really meet any of the top men, you know. I mean Hamada was thre, I remember watching Hamada throw, which was interesting  because he sat on a table cross-legged and had a kick wheel in front of him and somebody kicked the wheel for him and he sort of …in a very casual sort of way…

AH:	Were you impressed with his throwing, with the way he worked?

RF:	I think so, yes, I was interested in how quick he was really. I can't remember what he made. And they had an interesting slide exhibition and I remember going with Ivan MacMeekin who was at Wenford then, going through it with him and commenting on the pots. But I [130] didn't really meet any of the top brass, you know. I mean people like Hamada and Leach and Artegas was there from Spain and various other ones, I can't remember who now.

AH:	Did you meet Yanagi?

RF:	Who?

AH:	Yanagi.

RF:	No, I didn't meet him.

AH:	And did you hear his talks?

RF:	Um, he must have done, but I can't remember whether I heard it or not, forty years ago.

AH:	So was it an inspiring event for ceramics?

RF:	Well yes, it was very interesting to get all those people together, you know. And it's a lovely place, and it was nice weather as far as I remember.

AH:	So did you met anybody in particular that you had…whatever?

RF:	Um, I remember meeting a Scandinavian potter, there must have been others, but you know, but it's…my memory's gone.

AH:	[131] So did you go to any of the important exhibitions that were put on in the fifties?

RF:	Not very much at that time, I don't think. Not in the fifties, no. I went to one of Michael's exhibitions at that time and he had some Wenford pots he was showing, and I went to one of Leach's exhibitions, I think it was in the fifties, and I bought that bottle of his, very nice, I think for about £8 in those days. I think that's about all I can remember going to.

AH:	You didn't go to the Picasso exhibition?

RF:	No, no.

AH:	The Royal Academy, for instance, did you look at art?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	Did you go to art exhibitions?

RF:	Not very much no, not really.

AH:	They didn't interest you so much?

RF:	I was too preoccupied with my problems here…

AH:	With the pottery, yes.

RF:	[131] …to do very much in that direction.

AH:	So can you talk about how the pottery eventually came to be such a great success? Which it has been, hasn't it?

RF:	I think the biggest contributory cause was the sudden interest in hand made pottery. I think the Craftsman Potter's Shop helped quite a lot, you know.

AH:	Yes, I was going to ask you were you involved with the craft CPA?

RF:	I wasn't involved in the original making of the shop which was in that little place in Barnes Court.

AH:	So you didn't join it from the very beginning, the CPA?

RF:	I didn't what?

AH:	Did you join the CPA from the beginning?

RF:	Yes, I was one of the founder members.

AH:	You were? Right.

RF:	We had a meeting with somebody from the rural industries…

AH:	Yes, Mr Lipton I think.

RF:	Lipton, that's right. And it was proposed [133] there that we started a shop, and it went on from there, and a lot of the London potters who were near by, put in a lot of hard work in getting it ready. And of course notably David Canter, who was the power behind it all. And Mick Casson's sister was of course the first manager and was very enthusiastic, and that went well, and orders kept coming in from there.

AH:	So you had lots of orders through CPA?

RF:	Pam used to send orders nearly every week, not necessarily for a great quantity but orders from customers.

AH:	So would you say that the CPA helped ????? your pottery?

RF:	I think so, yes, I think a great deal. Yes I'm sure it did. It opened the people's eyes to this sort of thing, and of course in those days there were very few sort of individual pots, they were nearly all useful pots and that was a great boost. And people got more mobile and they used to come to the pottery more, and we [134] had a lot of shops too that we supplied.

AH:	Yes, I was going to say, you had an order with Cranks.

RF:	Cranks, yes. Cranks started, I forget exactly when it was.

AH:	The early sixties?

RF:	'59 was it? '60, no it must have been a bit later than that.

AH:	The beginning of the sixties, yes?

RF:	The beginning of the sixties. Yes, we started supplying Cranks and we continued to supply Cranks for…and still do, to some extent. And that of course was a great standby. It was a regular thing. We certainly relied on that quite largely, I think. And as I say, no problems in selling pots in those days.

AH:	The sixties were a boom period, yes.

RF:	In the sixties and early seventies.

AH:	So, what were the sixties like for you apart from, you know, the pottery was beginning to do well? Were you able to relax and take in other things as [135] well, as a result of that? How was that?

RF:	Not very much, I don't think, you know. The pottery was my main consideration outside of the family. I mean those were the two things really. I didn't have any very particular interests outside that.

AH:	You didn't?

RF:	No.

AH:	Because I was going to say did you sort of go to the theatre, cinema? Did you…were there outside cultural interests that you pursued as well, during that time, or was it very much the pottery?

RF:	Um…well it was a very open sort of lively time, but I think I kept pretty outside it, you know.

AH:	Did you? In what way would you say you did?

RF:	Well, I was, as I say, occupied here, and my family was growing up and I don't think I had much time or energy left for anything else.

AH:	[136] Yes, because you were telling me that you've got six children, so presumably you had…did you do quite a lot of things with your sons, for instance, did you give time to them?

RF:	Well yes, we went for holidays together and that sort of thing, and they helped to a certain amount in the pottery, as they were growing…

AH:	They started to?

RF:	You know, they did things like clay washing and odd jobs in the pottery.

AH:	Right, did you pay them?

	[End of side four]

RF:	…as a Catholic and so on. I mean, birth control was very frowned on in those days. I think we really had too many children, though we wouldn't be without any of them now, but I think things are really much more lax now, I don't think there are many Catholics who don't use contraception to some extent, at least, that's my impression. [137] I mean most Catholic families only have two or three children.

AH:	Yes, that's indicative, isn't it?

RF:	In spite of the Pope being pretty much against it still, I doubt whether they manage without it.

AH:	So can we talk a little bit about your Catholic faith? You were telling me that you became a Catholic in the forties.

RF:	Yes, I became a Catholic before we married, both of us were converts, and well…what is there to say, really? It's been a very important part of my life, I suppose, and it is more so as I get older, I think. I don't say I've always been a very good Catholic, but at least I've, on the whole, tried to be.

AH:	Do you go regularly to church for instance?

RF:	Oh yes, we always go. Even my wife still goes. I manage to get her there, it's about her one definite outing a week, and we, suddenly, it's important to us [138] now. And of course the children were all brought up as Catholics, but, unfortunately, only two of them have remained practising Catholics. But, that is very typical I'm afraid nowadays.

AH:	But have all of them retained a sense of religion or spiritual…?

RF:	Well…I think, well two of them, Joe and Anthony, are practising Catholics. Mike isn't, though I think he retains a certain…though I don't think he goes to church at all. Peter certainly doesn't, I don't think it means a lot to him at all. Paul and Marianne, Paul I think goes to the Anglican church, his wife is an Anglican, and Marianne well I don't know, off and on I think.

AH:	So in what way has your faith sustained you, Ray?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	In what way has your faith sustained you, during your life? Has it helped with the pottery, for instance?

RF:	[139] Well, I don't know. I suppose in a way one feels that eventually everything will be alright, you know. It keeps you, I think it keeps you from ultimate despair or depression really. It's something behind you all the time.

AH:	Yes, there's a core of meaning?

RF:	Yes, in other words, one believes that whatever happens, life has meaning, and though one has difficult times and so on, it's never lost you know, it's something there always. And I mean, for so many people nowadays life hasn't really much meaning except to get on in sort of a material sense.

AH:	Yes.

RF:	And you know, if you go wrong, it's something to bring you back, you know. That's what I've experienced.

AH:	So, have you been to Rome?

RF:	No, no I haven't, no. No I haven't travelled very much; Germany, France, Africa quite a lot, because my eldest [140] so was in Africa for many years.

AH:	Yes, I was going to ask you about your visit to Lesotho wasn't it? It was with Joe wasn't it?

RF:	Well, my…I mentioned Isius Bosch who was with me as a student way back in the fifties and he was asked by the Lesotho Development Corporation, I think they called themselves, if he knew somebody who'd start a pottery for them. They were very desperate to give employment there. And he wrote to me and said what about Joe? Joe had, when he left school, come working in the pottery. And Joe thought it would be fine. I mean he hadn't had a great deal of experience, but he'd got on quite well, and so he went out there and he did extremely well, I must say. Probably much better than I should have done!

AH:	So what was the purpose of going out there to work in the pottery?

RF:	[141] Well, the purpose was to get a pottery going and to employ the local Lesotho and he had quite a bit of help from a man out there called Ian Dare who was…who was white Lesotho, he had nationality but he…there were quite a few like that in mostly traders. And he had a small factory which produced, what was it? candles? and he dealt in various other things, and he had this premises which was vacant which they turned into a pottery. And Joe built an oil kiln, there's no wood in Lesotho and he, you know, got wheels and got clay, they had to import the clay from South Africa…

AH:	Goodness.

RF:	And glaze materials - there was nothing like that. And he started making stoneware.

AH:	Was there an indigenous tradition?

RF:	No. The only tradition out there is [142] hand building by women potters.

AH:	Right.

RF:	Not a terribly good tradition. Nothing like the West African pottery, you know. East Africa on the whole is not so good as West Africa…anything like. But I mean, it was there, and they used to get some of the women potters to make some pots and to fire them - stoneware.

AH:	So there was a need for…whatever? craft industries?

RF:	Well yes. He took on about half a dozen local people, women and men, and on the whole the men took to the wheel and the women did the hand building. And they used to make…Trudy, his wife, before they were married, went out there to help him and she taught them to make slab pots, you know, and they made those. I think there were about 6 or 8 working when he finished. But in the end, after about, I think, 3 years, he wanted to come home, he wanted to get married [143] so they had to find somebody else and in the interim I said I’d go out there for 6 months. So in 1970, I think it was, I went out there and took over from Joe and went on, I think it ended up with about twelve working there, local people.

AH:	That's pretty good.

RF:	And it was alright. It went well because the South Africans used to come into Lesotho for holidays, you know, and they were the market, and we used to send pots to Johannesburg and so on. And then I, I mean I couldn't afford to be away from the pottery for too long.

AH:	So how long did you stay out there?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	How long did you stay out there?

RF:	Six months only.

AH:	Right. What was your experience? How did you feel about being out there?

RF:	Well I enjoyed it thoroughly.

AH:	You did?

RF:	A marvellous climate. Sun, lovely [144] sun.

AH:	Not too hot?

RF:	Not too hot. It's about 4,000 feet up, you see.

AH:	Right, yes it is, yes.

RF:	And it's a beautiful country, and lovely mountains and they're a very friendly people, the Lesotho and we got on very well. And, but Michael, I left Michael here, you see, and…no…Joe came back here and he ran the pottery here while I was away, and got married, and then when I came back, Joe wanted to be o n his own and so he went off and started another pottery in Scotland. He's a great man for starting potteries! And then Michael came to help me. Michael had been teaching, he trained as a teacher and he came to help me and Joe went up to Scotland. That was in 1974, '73, '74. And he decided to wood fire because he'd got lots of wood there so I went up and helped him build his kiln.

AH:	[145] That's in Scotland?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	The Appian was it, the Appian was it up in Scotland?

RF:	Yes. Yes, well, that went off alright and I…that was about the time of the oil crisis, you know when the price shot up and I was so pleased with the pots being produced with wood firing that when I came back I decided to build a wood kiln here. And I pulled down the oil kilns and built a wood kiln, and that was in about 1974 and that's about 20 years ago so we'd just got to the stage when it was getting pretty rickety, so we've rebuilt it, just the same.

AH:	Does one have to rebuild the kilns?

RF:	Well, not necessarily, but we'd patched it and patched it, you know, and it had got to the stage when really it was not the way it was…patching more than anything else.

AH:	Quite a daunting thing. So, in terms of [146] the pottery and the lifestyle and everything, what would you say…I know the labels are terrible, in what area would you put yourself? Are you still a country pottery? Are you a studio potter? How do you see yourself and the pottery these days?

RF:	Well, I suppose about 75% a country potter still. A studio potter to some extent in the sense that I do produce more individual pieces than I used to simply because…I mean you're forced into it, to some extent.

AH:	Forced?

RF:	Forced, yes, by the market. People want it, you see.

AH:	So, would you really prefer to make more accessible pots, the country pots I suppose?

RF:	Well I don't know, I mean…

AH:	Or do you like making individual pots?

RF:	You see even Michael, to some extent made sort of individual pots. But I still make them within the orbit of standard pots. [147] I mean I don't make something which is quite different, though I might make occasionally bigger pots, and I might make I mean, larger jugs which are not necessarily very practical…and I make sort of large platters with some decoration, you know, or very big serving dishes ????? dishes and ????? sided jars occasionally and as I say salt glaze which is more individual in the sense that it's not exactly repetition work, because they very rarely come out the same anyway. So that's what I do. I mean, I make other pots as well, I still make some of the standard range.

AH:	So, how do you price your pots? The pots?

RF:	Oh well, it's always very difficult.

AH:	Yes.

RF:	We have a standard price list, prices of standard pots.

AH:	Cos they're very reasonable.

RF:	Well, yes, we still try to keep them reasonable [148], because we want people to use them, and that seems to work because we get people coming back after 20 years and saying they've had pots for 20 years and they want to replace them and that sort of thing. I mean that happens quite frequently, surprisingly frequently, and well, in the more individual pieces I do tend to ask more for. Very much according to whether I think…well, whether I'm pleased with them or not, whether I think they've come out reasonably well or not.

AH:	So what is it about your pots that you most value?

RF:	That I what?

AH:	That you most value? What is it about your pots? If they speak to you what do they say?

RF:	About time you tried to do better!

AH:	No really! What do you get back?

RF:	Well I mean sometimes I feel that they're successful - not all the time by [149] any means. I think the most valuable quality you can have is self-criticism. Not to be too easily satisfied. I think, I mean I sometimes like a pot and sometimes I don't. Sometimes I think they're more successful than others, but…

AH:	So where does the criteria? What is it? What is the essence?

RF:	Well it's impossible to describe really.

AH:	I know that this is the enigma, isn't it?

RF:	You can…I mean you can say when you look at something whether it seems to speak to you or not, whether you've achieved what you were aiming at or something like that, but you see, the whole thing is, I think, Anna, that you can be a very skilful craftsman, you know, technically you can be good, you can be a good thrower, you can put things together well and the lids fit, and the spout pours, and the handles are right and yet still [150] it's not successful. The thing is, I think, that what makes something a work of art, if there is such a thing really in pottery, is something added, something which you're not conscious of, that you sometimes achieve and sometimes don't, and it's very difficult to describe in other terms. It's not something which happens by taking thought, though it depends very much on your basic skills, but on the other hand, not being sort of too conscious of them, it's all very complicated I think. And I don't know whether you can see it yourself - only other people can see it. I can see it in Michael's pots, you see, sometimes - well, fairly often, and I can see it in Leach's pots. I can see it in Hamada's pots, but that doesn't necessarily mean I can see it in my pots, whether they've got it or not.

AH:	Cos you're too close to them maybe?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	[151] Because you're too close to see.

RF:	Yes, because if you don't see a pot for a long time, I mean I went to see a pot a few weeks ago, and there on the wall was one of my bowls, a shallow bowl, and I immediately reacted to that. I thought I like that, you see, well I hadn't seen it for perhaps, I don't know, 20 years. That seemed to me to work, whether I thought so at the time or not, I don't know.

AH:	So what about the creative aspect of it? How has that, does that happen? How have you innovated forms, or developed the range? Do you consciously think about it beforehand or does it happen on the wheel? How does it happen?

RF:	Well, both really. I do think about it and I think about it when I'm doing it. I don't - I very rarely draw pots. I much prefer to do the drawing [152] on the wheel, you know, when it's three dimensional, and it's a question of building on tradition. I mean if you make something like a Winchcombe jug shape, you never really get to the end of the possibilities because they - you see slight alterations make so much difference and, you know, in the fullness and in the length of the neck and in the way the spout's done and how the lip's done and everything, you see. There's a tremendous possibility of slight variation which every time you sit down to make a jug you may consider and I think that applies to nearly all the pots. You see that particularly in the way different people make the same shape. I mean though in fact we have a sort of certain shape for our repetition ware, if one person makes them they're quite different in a way from the way another person makes them, and that's how it [153] is. The personality comes through. I mean you don't have to impose it, it's there inevitably, and you can't get away from it. You don't have to say 'this is me, this is me as an individual', you know, that's unnecessary, it's there all the time, whatever you do. And I mean for instance, Edward who makes a lot of the standard ware now, I mean his coffee mugs always strike me as being - well nearly always strike me as being absolutely right. If I make coffee mugs they're not nearly as good as Edward's, you see. Somehow he's just got it. He must have made hundreds of coffee mugs, though sometimes he's a little bit off and they're not quite as good as they are at other times and so on.

AH:	But what about this - and this is going to be sort of…how will you react to this? A lot of people think that making repetition ware is boring.

RF:	Well it's only boring if you let it be [154] boring.

AH:	So, for you that never happens, does it presumably?

RF:	Well I won't say it never happens, you do have off days, of course. But I don't feel I've got to make something different all the time. What I was saying about jugs, you see, the simplest shape needs thought and it's no good just sitting down at the wheel and banging them out, you see, there's a great danger in that.

AH:	So even though you've got a standard shape which you are innovating it's still…you're very much there consciously thinking about it always, is that what you're saying?

RF:	I think that's true, yes. I mean I don't say, I mean when I'm training somebody you know I try to get them to look at what they're doing, and really try and see it, and I may say, well I don't think that's wide enough [155] at the foot or it's you know, not quite the shape, you haven't quite got the shape somehow, or something like that. But people have got to find out for themselves, and it's true, people don't look at things - don't see them, they look at them, they don't see them.

AH:	Well seeing takes quite a bit of time, doesn't it?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	Learning to see…

RF:	Yes, it does, yes.

AH:	Does everybody learn to see?

RF:	Well I suppose they can if they really want to.

AH:	In your experience, sorry - I mean at the pottery, in the end do all your apprentices get it, you know, sort of get into the flow?

RF:	No, I don't think so.

AH:	They don't?

RF:	I don't think so.

AH:	And presumably they leave and go off [156] and do something else.

RF:	Well, yes. Sometimes I suppose they go and do something entirely different. But some, I mean even if they continue to be potters they do something entirely different.

AH:	Yes.

RF:	I mean for instance Colin Pearson.

AH:	Yes, he didn't, well…

RF:	Well he did make standard pots for a while, and then he got onto these wing things and I don't think he makes standard pots any more.

AH:	What about this lifestyle aspects of the pottery? Has it remained as important an ideal for you as it was at the beginning?

RF:	Well I think so. I mean I think on the whole people who work here, and they've changed of course a great deal over the years, I think they see it as a worthwhile thing to be doing, not all the time necessarily, but generally speaking. It's very difficult to know. Things are [157] very, very different from what they were sixty years ago, and the distractions of the modern world are so much more powerful, aren't they?

AH:	Cos I was going to say, this…what it means to be a country potter in our time, do you sometimes not think, not from my point of view but, it's a bit of an anachronism?

RF:	Well I think it is really, yes.

AH:	In relation to what's going on out there?

RF:	Well yes. But it's extraordinary how the outside world doesn't seem to penetrate too much into the sort of thing we're doing. It does feel as though there's another world out there.

AH:	It does?

RF:	I don't know whether I just imagine it, but I think for most of them that are here, the other world exists quite strongly.

AH:	But it doesn't for you?

RF:	No, I don't think so, not really.

AH:	[158] Yes, could you talk a little bit about that? How do you perceive the world out there? What's going on in it?

RF:	Well, I don't really take part in it very much, you see.

AH:	Has that been going on for a long time?

RF:	Was that a conscious decision?

AH:	Well I mean, I very rarely look at the television for instance. It doesn't mean anything to me now. I look at the news perhaps, but that's all, or the occasional programme that I think I'd like to see. But I'd be quite happy without it. I quite like listening to music when I'm working. I like classical music, but nearly everything else on the media I'm not particularly interested in. I like watching cricket, but I don't bother about other sports at all. Football bores me to tears, but then you see Edward, he's dead keen on football and he's dead keen on [159] racing and he's…I don't know how much he watches television but sport is important to him, particularly horse racing, he's absolutely mad about horse racing. But all those things they don't mean anything to me at all. And I...my life's very restricted now, not that I don't really mind - it's just as well.

AH:	Is that partly because of your wife not being well?

RF:	Well, partly because of my wife really yes. Because I've got to be a carer as well as a house-keeper as well as do the shopping and everything…

AH:	Yes, that's quite limiting.

RF:	So I mean I don't have much time left over, and if, I do a bit of gardening if I can, I keep a few hives of bees, I've got a couple of geese, you know, that's quite enough really. At my age I don't want anything much different.

AH:	So in a way, it's…would you say that [160] you've veered more and more to sort of the ideals of the self-sufficiency thing and the self-sufficiency whatever, that movement, that whatever, that developed apace in the '60s and '70s where people wanted to get away from the whatever…insane things of society?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	Do you still feel in sympathy with that?

RF:	Well I do yes. But of course, I mean the ideal of self-sufficiency is no longer, is now impossible. I always used to try to be self-sufficient in vegetables, but that's all I think and I haven't got time to do it, really now.

AH:	No. Are you into things like whole foods and organic?

RF:	Well yes, up to a point. I did have a period when I was vegetarian, but I gave it up because it was rather a bore for my wife who wasn't, which meant that [161] she had to cook separate meals, so I thought that's not fair, so I gave that up. But I would quite happily go back to it. But Michael is not in any way a vegetarian you see and as he does some of the cooking, I can't expect him to do different things. So that's how it is, so one has to sacrifice things according to one's environment. I mean, one's social environment, one's family environment.

AH:	Sometimes one does, yes.

RF:	But I do think I'd be quite happy not to eat meat anymore and go back to a vegetarian diet. I was friendly with David Canter and I liked his ideas, you know, and Cranks certainly was a revelation in how good food can be if it was vegetarian.

AH:	Yes, absolutely.

RF:	I don't know what it's like now, it changed hands…

AH:	Still pretty good! So your sons became [162] potters and Michael now runs the pottery.

RF:	Yes.

AH:	Can you tell me a little about that and how that's affected your life as well as a potter?

RF:	Well, it doesn't very much. I get on with what I've got to do. I'm very relieved that I don't have to do any more office work, I mean he manages all that so I don't have to worry about it. I don't even have to worry about whether we're making money or losing money, you know.

AH:	That sounds rather good!

RF:	I always assume when the annual return comes round that, if we're not making much, at least we're not losing much.

AH:	But your son is also a musician?

RF:	Yes, well a sort of folk musician, I think.

AH:	So he combines it with his music, which sounds quite unique.

RF:	Yes. Well he does in the evenings, [163] he sings, I don't know, quite often in the evenings I think. He plays the guitar and sings. And it's another source of income for him, so that he doesn't take a large wage at all from the pottery.

AH:	So does he run the pottery very differently from you, or has it continued?

RF:	Well, I would say really that we run it together…

AH:	You run it together? He hasn't taken over?

RF:	Because, I mean obviously I've got more experience than Michael has and when it comes to things like glazes and so on, I've got better insight now, and well, it seems to work anyway.

AH:	Are you pleased that you've got two sons who are potters?

RF:	Well of course, yes. I only wish I'd managed to keep both of them here, [164] then I should have been able to put my feet up. It was a great disappointment to me that Joe decided he wanted to be on his own.

AH:	You would have liked to have had both of them really.

RF:	I would, yes, because Joe is…Joe I think is on the whole better on the making side than Michael, Michael does make pots, but I think Joe is better, he's more…he's got a wider range I think, and he's more interested on the whole. Michael does it, but he doesn't really…he's not quite so committed, that's all.

AH:	Not a hundred percent committed? So you work together?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	And you were saying that he lives nearby and comes in quite a bit and…that's quite interesting.

RF:	Yes, but I mean it's great to have him and I couldn't have managed without [165] him really. Well it would have been very difficult. And he's such a great standby now you know as I say, he does some of the cooking, most of the cooking during the week and helps me in that respect and…he's a good lad.

AH:	Yes. So what would you say is the essential satisfaction of working as a potter? What's the essential thing for you?

RF:	Well, I think it's the same as any responsible job. I mean any responsible creative job.

AH:	So responsible. You put emphasis on responsible?

RF:	Yes, I mean, as Gill used to say 'responsible for what is made'. I mean if you make a good pot or a bad pot, it's your responsibility and no-one else's, unless somebody's made a mistake in the preparation of the clay or something. But it's just both [166] those things. A responsible skill in making. I think that's the real satisfaction. But that would apply to any craft, wouldn't it, I mean whether it was weaving or leather cutting or blacksmithing or whatever?

AH:	But what about the clay? Does that have something really special for you? What is it? Is it the fire? Is it the clay? What is it that has kept you so enticed for so long?

RF:	Well I like clay, I like it as a stuff and I like…I'm interested in all aspects really. I'm interested in glazing and glazes, I'm interested in glazes rather than glazing necessarily. I'm interested in firing and the combination of the two, what can be done, and I'm always interested to see a good kiln unloaded.

AH:	So, would you say you have remained constant to your ideals from the early days? I guess you've answered that - the responsibility thing - the idea of [167] responsibility or whatever. Would you say you have…has that stayed constant?

RF:	I would hope so, yes. I don't think I've sort of wavered very much form the original inspiration. I mean, when I first came to Winchcombe, in a way I was already converted to what was being done here, and I think that it's remained with me. I like the idea of tradition and I like the idea of evolution in these things without abrupt sort of change and I'm happy to see that we're still making shapes which relate to what was being done sixty years ago.

AH:	A sort of constancy and tradition but also gradual evolution as well.

RF:	Well yes, things change inevitably.

AH:	It's interesting because your son Mike was saying, when we were eating, that this idea - the cult of personality and that people when they come to the [168] workshop want to know the pots that have been made by you. How do you feel about that?

RF:	Well I deplore it on the whole.

AH:	Do you still think the team thing is…?

RF:	Well yes.

	[end of side five]

RF:	…it's just unfortunate that we live in times when that is no longer true.

AH:	Cos I was going to sort of ask you about this…

	[break in sound - 15 seconds]

RF:	…I was impressed by the unknown craftsman, I must say.

AH:	The idea of …Yanagi's idea.

RF:	I think that is a very sound philosophy and I wholeheartedly support it really and I feel slightly cross that people have to be told who's made something before they'll like it or not, which seems to me quite wrong.

AH:	Interestingly, David Whiting in an article said that you come nearest to that ideal.

RF:	[169] I'm sorry?

AH:	David Whiting in an article said that you come nearest to that ideal.

RF:	Yes, yes, David's a great friend of mine, I knew his father very well.

AH:	Yes.

RF:	And David's a nice young man and he comes here quite often.

AH:	He does? I assume you, whatever, were in harmony with Geoffrey Whiting's ceramics. Did you like what he did?

RF:	Yes I did, yes very much. I, you know, we were very close in our sort of ideals yes.

AH:	What other potters do you feel close to in terms of ideals and sympathies?

RF:	Well, it is all a bit insidious to say who you like and dislike. I like John Leach's pots, you see, very much. They're good wholesome pots. I don't like his individual pots very much really, you know his black and white ones.

AH:	It's sort of standard ware you like?

RF:	[170] I like his standard ware yes. I like David Lloyd-Jones' pots too, but it's very sad he died so young, comparatively young, though I never saw a great many of them. I like Svend Bayer's magnificent pots. His big jars and things, they're tremendous. Oh, I don't know.

AH:	So what of Leach? Do you feel…what do you think of Leach and his role in sort of I suppose…?

RF:	You mean Bernard Leach?

AH:	Yes, Bernard Leach.

RF:	Well I think yes. I think he's the father of this sort of pottery really, though it's obviously taken different directions, but he must be the start. You see, oddly enough in a practical sense he didn't seem to influence Cardew much, and I suppose it went off in directions, I mean obviously David is very influenced by his father and Geoffrey Whiting was very influenced by Leach I think, though never actually worked for him. And [171] there are others I'm sure that I can't think of at the moment.

AH:	So you do think that he made a major contribution?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	You do think he contributed?

RF:	Oh yes I'm sure he did, yes. Even if it's in the sense of reaction against him.

AH:	So what about the current developments in ceramics? We were talking a little about that before. Could you say a little bit about what you feel about what's happening now and how you relate to it?

RF:	Well, I don't know. I think that, I think it's important as I was saying just now that people don't try and put a sort of individual personality on their pots. In other words, I'm not quite sure how to say this, but, that the pot, the object, is itself and in a sense it must be dissociated from the maker and if it says in loud terms [172]  that this is so and so's work it may be somehow, I don't know, I was going to say destructive, but that's not quite the word I want.

AH:	Distracting maybe?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	Distracting.

RF:	Yes, yes I think that's true. I don't know, it's so easy to get involved in one's personal reaction to things which isn't necessarily good. I mean it…one has to be detached about these things, and to judge something because of one's prejudices is quite wrong in a way.

AH:	Do you think?

RF:	Well, I think so yes. I think one has to be quite open minded about things if you're criticising them.

AH:	Yes.

RF:	And that is very, very difficult.

AH:	So what do you think of the current wave of you know, sort of, well pottery that is totally antithetical [173] really to studio pottery?

RF:	Yes, well I can't say I'm…I try not to be intolerant and I do like some of them, on the other hand some of them I don't like, and it's all tied up with this business I think of whether they're really honest or not. I don't know whether making things, well, in a flippant sort of way or even in a sort of way of, I don't know, it's very, very difficult to put this, I mean obviously potters have done this in the past, they've made jokes and they've made things which were very slight and not necessarily too involved, now there is a danger of being too involved, there's a danger of being you know too…

AH:	Serious?

RF:	Too serious yes, and not enjoying, not having enjoyment in what's going on, and I think that's probably a danger with people like myself, and if somebody wants to have a joke and if somebody [174] wants to pull somebody's leg or outrage somebody, well that's fair enough, I wouldn't be against it, it just isn't me, that's all.

AH:	Yes, there's a great desire for more dramatic…

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	There's a great desire for more dramatic expression in this time perhaps?

RF:	Yes, there is. You can say that going on making pots like this is an anachronism and in a sense I suppose it is, but…

AH:	But is it? There will always be the need for well made, good pottery.

RF:	Well, yes, there's always people who want to use pots and if people want to use handmade pots then there's a place for it, and if people just want to put things on the mantelpiece or in a three cornered cupboard, glass cupboard or something well there must be a place for that too, I suppose.

AH:	[175] But there are, and there are more differentiations aren't there? There is the decorative…

RF:	Yes.

AH:	…there is that classification of decorative ceramics…?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	…and you personally are not interested?

RF:	Well there's always been that you see and you can't put a limit on things, you can't say only useful pots are the things that should be made, that obviously isn't true, and it must be that some potters feel that's what they must do and some potters feel that they must do something different and do it, but I think, you see, that you shouldn't sweep away something because it's just useful, that the potter has been released from the necessity of making anything useful. I don't think that's true and I think it's a great pity if it really was.

AH:	[176] Yes, yes it's not feasible now.

RF:	I mean what I feel is that that's something without a dead end, whereas some of the other things appear to me to have a rather dead end to them. You know, that you can go so far in that sort of way but there comes a point when you can't go any further, you have to retrace your steps and start something different. But that's only just an opinion.

AH:	So, going back to this way of life, do you think it's a privileged way of life?

RF:	Oh yes, very definitely. I think it must be one in a million. I mean you forego a lot of things but even so it's privileged. You can't have smart cars and yachts on the South of France or something and go for expensive holidays and all that sort of thing, but you have something which so very few people have. 

AH:	And what is that something, again for you?

RF:	[177] Beg pardon?

AH:	What is that something for you again?

RF:	Well it's what I've said several times in this talk that you're able to make things and to enjoy making them and feel responsible for what you've done, and you find people who like them on top of it.

AH:	Yes, it sounds pretty good! So, would you say Gill was right?

RF:	Well I think in lots of ways he was, and he saw no way out of the dilemma and it seems even less likely now. The only thing which, I mean it both underlines what he said and also makes the situation slightly different, is that a great many more people are doing it now, in all the crafts, than there were in the thirties. I mean a lot more people are escaping, and it's a good thing to escape. But what's going to happen in the next fifty years I can't imagine, at least I can in a [178] sense, that there's going to be a lot more people with enforced leisure and if they turn their hand to something like this or some other craft, it might be possible that in fifty years' time there'll be a great many more craftsmen. But it will be really something quite different, won't it?

AH:	Yes.

RF:	Whether it's a good sort of world where all the necessities of life are made by machinery, with very little human help, and whether all the enforced leisure people will do something useful and worthwhile is a very different thing, isn't it? Or whether they'll just go to football matches and watch the television I don't know.

AH:	Well, one doesn't want to be bleak. The opposite of that is that without satisfactory outlets, not to be exactly creative but the opposite.

RF:	Yes.

AH:	[179] So what about…you said earlier on that you weren't sort of terribly taken with political things, has that changed over the years?

RF:	To some extent yes. I think I'm not very active of course politically, but I'm not quite sure whether I'm a socialist or a liberal, but I'm certainly not a Conservative Tory and I don't think much of the government we've got now. I think they're doing lots of stupid things, but whether Labour will be any better I don't know.

AH:	So what do you think of the political and social changes that have happened…?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	What do you think of the political and social changes that occurred since, well I suppose the '80s, since the Conservatives took over?

RF:	Well I don't know. One way and another they seem to have muddled on you know. I think they've been in [180] government for too long for one thing and I think Margaret Thatcher on the whole was a very bad Prime Minister. I hope you're not a Tory. I think she…her idea of market forces and all that sort of thing was a very bad idea. She was a pure materialist and…

AH:	Still is, I think!

RF:	What?	

AH:	Still is, I think! 
RF:	…and I deplore some of the things she did really. I mean things like the Falklands War could have been avoided if they'd been a bit brighter, the government, and her messing about with Europe, blowing hot and cold, instead of making a decision, and her boosting of the arms trade to Third World countries which I think is deplorable, and is still going on, and which enables all these wars in these small countries to go on at all, I think Western civilisation has got a lot to answer for. I was a [181] member of CND for a long time, well I still am actually, and I, you know, the idea of keeping our nuclear weapons I think is absolutely stupid and pointless. They can spend billions on these wretched things and yet they're always short of money for other more important things. So that's what I feel politically.

AH:	Yes. So how do you feel about being British at this present moment in time?

RF:	Being British? Oh I don't know.

AH:	Do you feel…?

RF:	I think we behaved pretty badly in some ways, but then I suppose it's pretty general in Western civilisation. I mean the Americans are just as bad aren't they? The amount of crime and one thing and another.

AH:	So do you take a daily paper?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	Do you take a daily paper?

RF:	[182] I used to, I used to read 'The Independent' but I gave it up. I just found I read it but I didn't remember it, you know? One gets a very bad short memory as you get older. You remember things way back but you can't remember immediate things very easily. You know you read something and the next day you've forgotten it. I read 'The Tablet' every week, which I think is quite a good weekly. It's got a certain amount of political new in. But I don't really read much else in that way.

AH:	What about…what books have inspired you since Gill?

RF:	Well, I must admit, I like good crime stories. People like P D James, ever read any of hers?

AH:	Yes.

RF:	Well, she writes well and the plots are good. I occasionally read a science fiction, but only very occasionally. If I want…those are the sort of things one wants for relaxation. But I would [183] read books I've got from the past perhaps. I haven't read anything very much recently. What was the last novel I read? I can't remember now. I like Iris Murdoch, I've read most of hers. I read occasionally slightly theological books, and I like technical books. I like books about pottery of course, so I, Anna, I generally perhaps buy a new one that comes out.

AH:	What has been your most recent acquisition?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	What has been your most recent acquisition in that line?

RF:	Well I borrowed a book from a friend of mine about an American potter…um…you see the name's gone. Warren McKenzie who had a very prestigious book written about him, that's the last thing I read. There was also a prodigious book about Isius Bosch[?] [184] that was given to me. I don't think I've bought one just lately. I've got a fair collection anyway, which I like to refer to occasionally and that sort of thing.

AH:	Can I ask you what are your interests and concerns with things like ecological issues?

RF:	Yes. Well I support things like Green Peace and Friends of the Earth and so on, and I just hope more people would and that governments weren't so much inclined to put their heads in the sand and forget about them because they have these conferences and yet nothing happens, you know, and they get advice from scientists and nothing happens and it does seem to me very short sighted and they've got to do something about it, they've got to stop this pollution and air pollution and sea pollution and chopping down the forests and that sort of thing. And it's all greed and it's so terrible.

AH:	The thing is, that's been going on forever hasn't it? But now it's developing at a [185] pace, isn't it?

RF:	Yes. Well, yes, but I mean it's expotential isn't it? I mean it's just getting out of hand.

AH:	Do you find that potters generally are in sympathy with the Green Movement and with things like that?

RF:	I think they are yes, I think they are. I know we burn wood, but at least it's, you know, it's soft wood and it's off cuts, it's waste really, and I suppose we pollute the atmosphere a little, but not terribly, I mean one can't avoid that, if one was using electricity you'd still be burning coal or something in the power station.

AH:	So do you consider things like that?

RF:	Well, I'm aware of them. It's true we use an electric kiln for biscuit and it's true I put a little salt into the atmosphere, hydrochloric fumes into the atmosphere occasionally, but I mean our local pollution officer came and had a look around and he said, well, it's trivial, and [186] when you consider how much a jumbo jet puts into the atmosphere in five seconds, it is I suppose.

AH:	So what other things deeply concern you, Ray?

RF:	What?

AH:	What other things deeply concern you about this moment in time I suppose or the way things are?

RF:	Well I suppose I must be concerned that we're no longer a Christian society, and that has wide reaching effects of course, I think.

AH:	Yes.

RF:	I mean I know that sounds a bit smug, but, I mean the effect on, you know, young people and so on who are not brought up with any sort of moral sense I suppose and get drawn into all this drug abuse and one thing and another, all these crooks who produce and distribute drugs and all these people who have no sense of what's theirs and what's somebody else's, it's all very worrying, isn't [187] it? All this business of the media and violence on television and violent videos.

AH:	Do you think these things do have an effect on society?

RF:	They must do, you don't get young children watching these things without being affected.

AH:	But the experts are telling us that they're not.

RF:	Well, a lot of damned idiots I think. I mean there wasn't anything like the violence and crime in the '30s. I know people look down on the '30s, but you could go out and leave your house unlocked, we never locked the pottery up.

AH:	And yet it was an economically…

RF:	You wouldn't dare to leave it unlocked any longer.

AH:	You wouldn't?

RF:	No, Michael had a burglary two or three weeks ago. Somebody broke in while he was out, stole his television, video and a few other things a ring he rather [188] prized, they cleared the lot out.

AH:	This is here?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	This is here in Winchcombe? Here in Winchcombe this happened?

RF:	Just up the road.

AH:	Yes, just up the road?

RF:	About a quarter of a mile away.

AH:	Right, that just didn't go on at all…

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	That just didn't happen at all in those days, in the past?

RF:	No. Somebody might have poached a few rabbits or a pheasant or two or something like that, but I don't remember any burglaries, and you could walk about quite safely in Cheltenham at night and you can't now. I wouldn't like to quite honestly.

AH:	So do you think that, and this is a loaded question, do you think there's been progress, or the opposite in the way things have gone in life?

RF:	[189] Well I suppose there must be some things which are better. I suppose, I don't know even whether the health service has got better. It's got more complicated, hasn't it? I mean you have all sorts of really out of the way operations like new hearts and livers and what have you, but I don't know whether you get any better treatment for ordinary complaints, I don't know.

AH:	Do you think people are economically better off?

RF:	Oh, I think so, yes, I think so. Generally speaking, but there's a sort of undertow isn't there of people who are really in the poverty trap. There's quite a lot I'm sure. I mean look…there weren't any homeless living…kids living in London in those days and other big cities. There may have been a few winos and tramps or something who did it from choice, but this housing problem didn't exist at all. I mean you could rent cottages round here for a few [190] shillings a week, and young people could get married and have a home - how difficult is it for them now?

AH:	Yes, it's extremely difficult, isn't it?

RF:	I don't think things are really much better. In a sense I think people are materially better off, but I…

AH:	Qualitatively you think maybe not? So can we talk a little bit about your early life now?

RF:	What?

AH:	Your early life…

RF:	You don't want to hear about my early life.

AH:	Yes! Where were you born then, Ray?

RF:	Where was I born?

AH:	Yes.

RF:	I was born in Streatham, South London, Streatham Common actually.

AH:	Gosh, in that area. So were your parents from London?

RF:	Uh, my mother was from Cumbria. I think I mentioned she, her father was [191] a farmer there and my father was born in London.

AH:	Right. So you were born just prior to the First World War weren't you?

RF:	I was born just before the outbreak of the First World War.

AH:	Yes, that was quite a momentous year I should imagine.

RF:	Yes, though I didn't know much about it of course.

AH:	In a manner of speaking! So what was your early life?…What do you remember of your very early years?

RF:	Well it was a fairly normal childhood I suppose. My father was away for most of the war. I remember a Zeppelin raid over London. That's quite vivid, but I can't have been more than three. I have a sister and I went to various schools.

AH:	So you were brought up in London, you stayed in London?

RF:	Up to the age, I suppose up to the age [192] of about nine or ten I was and then we moved out to near Sutton in Surrey and I lived there for some years. And then we moved out to Beaconsfield.

AH:	Right. So what did your father do for a living? You've told me a little bit about it.

RF:	Yes. Well he was the agent of a Scottish knitwear firm and he had an office in London, and I think most of his work was concerned with the large stores in London. You know, I suppose they were things like Selfridges and what is it Debenham and something or other, they probably existed then. Anyway that's what he did.

AH:	So what did…did you see much of him after the war? Did he do things with you? Did he play with you?

RF:	Well yes he, I mean, I don't know, I think he just worked a five day week and he was home at weekends and we went on holidays and we had a very typical sort of middle class existence.

AH:	Right. So was your father good at [193] making things? Did you ever see him making…?

RF:	No, I don't think so.

AH:	No?

RF:	He was a keen gardener. He was a keen flower gardener. He grew roses and things like that he was very interested in, and, what else did he do? He played tennis, he played golf, fairly normal sort of things.

AH:	So did you get on with him.

RF:	Yes. Yes I got on with him quite well. I got on with both my parents quite well, and I was very, very upset when he died, at quite a young age, he was only in his forties.

AH:	Yes, it must have been a big trauma for you.

RF:	It was yes. I was only in my teens. I can't have been more than sixteen and a half or I should think about between sixteen and seventeen, yes.

AH:	How did you cope?

RF:	Yes I did miss him a lot and it was a [194] great shame really because he would have loved grandchildren and so on. I mean my mother loved them, but he would have been very delighted.

AH:	So was he very into family and children?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	Was he very into family and children?

RF:	Was he a big family?

AH:	Was he into the idea of family? Did he love the idea of family and children?

RF:	Well I suppose so, yes. I don't know.

AH:	You don't know?

RF:	I don't know that I ever discussed it with him.

AH:	You didn't? So did he encourage your interests when you were small?

RF:	I don't know, Anna, really.

AH:	You can't remember that far back?

RF:	I think he tried to teach me to play golf, and I played tennis with him and we went walking together sometimes up in Yorkshire or somewhere like that. I think I remember going on a holiday with [195] him there, and we had seaside holidays together with my sister and myself.

AH:	And what of your mother? What was she like as a person?

RF:	Well, she was a very gentle sort of person. There's nothing really much I can tell you about her. She came of a large family. I think she had about five or six brothers and sisters.

AH:	She had a large family? So what sort of things did she enjoy doing?

RF:	I think she was quite content with being a sort of housewife and mother you know. I don't think she had very much interest outside the house.

AH:	She didn't?

RF:	No, I don't think so. She was quite a keen sort of churchgoer, that sort of thing. She probably had a social life there that I didn't really know much about.

AH:	So did you go to church with your parents?

RF:	I went to church with them, yes I did.

AH:	[196] And what denomination did they…?

RF:	Well, she was Church of England and my father um, not Baptist, I think it was Congregational…

AH:	Congregationalist?

RF:	Yes, one of the…um…

AH:	Nonconformist chapels?

RF:	Yes. I know we went…I don't remember much about when I was quite young, I know I used to go, but when we were in Beaconsfield we went to the church there. She went with him rather than going to the Church of England.

AH:	Right. So were your family prosperous or otherwise?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	Were your family prosperous? Was it a well to do family?

RF:	Well, not particularly. We seemed to own the houses we lived in, and I suppose we sold them as we moved. And we had a car and my wife, not my wife, my mother had a maid, but then it was very common you see for middle class people to have [197] maids in those days, it was just…everybody had one. And now you can't get them at all. You can't get anybody to do any housework.

AH:	Nobody wants to do it. So were there any particular things in your home which were treasured things, and what were they?

RF:	Oh dear Anna I can't remember.

AH:	Those sorts of thing?

RF:	I don't think so particularly, obviously there must have been from their point of view, I suppose.

AH:	Well are there any things that you've inherited that were treasured?

RF:	I don’t think so. Not from my parents, but from my grandparents. I inherited…

AH:	Did they come through your parents?

RF:	They, you see, they outlived him and I, when they died, or when my aunt died who was unmarried, I inherited an old chest from 17 something, a grandfather clock and one or two other things.

AH:	But those weren't…you didn't have those directly in your family?

	[End of side six]

AH:	[198] You were talking about having a painting of Carlisle Cathedral.

RF:	Carlisle Cathedral yes, and I think we had a few sort of watercolours and that sort of thing, but nothing which has remained in my memory very strongly.

AH:	So what did you enjoy playing as a child?

RF:	What did I what?

AH:	What sort of things did you enjoy playing with as a child?

RF:	Oh Anna I don't know!

AH:	Of course you do! Oh please.

RF:	Really what's this got to do with it anyway?

AH:	Well it has. It's to do with your life. I think it's quite important.

RF:	Well, let me see. Well I was fairly keen on active things, I think.

AH:	Active things?

RF:	It was a great thrill to have a bicycle. As a child I really can't remember. I, you know, I think I must have played [199] with just the ordinary sort of things that children play with.

AH:	Did you make things?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	Did you make things? Paint and draw?

RF: 	I don't think so.

AH:	You didn't?

RF:	I don't think so. I may have painted I don't know, I can't remember. It was a bicycle, it was eventually a motorcycle…

AH:	Those sorts of things?

RF:	…and eventually a car, an old banger you know, when I was about eighteen or something and I was quite keen on football - not football - rugby football when I was a teenager, well just before I left school I was, and swimming and fishing and…all rather outdoor things, you know.

AH:	Yes.

RF:	And then I got very keen on cameras [200] and taking photographs.

AH:	And then you went onto film.

RF:	Yes, and then I went onto film!

AH:	So, what did your family do for recreation together?

RF:	Well we all played tennis. I think that was the only thing that we did really. We used to go to neighbours and play tennis together and that sort of thing. And we used to go to the seaside ad I supposed we all bathed and that sort of thing.

AH:	So what sort of an upbringing would you say you had? Was it a disciplined one? Was it…what words come to mind?

RF:	Not very strictly, no. I think you know we had really quite a good upbringing. I don't think there was anything…it was always quite adequate, you know, I mean the mans were always adequate, there was no privation or anything.

AH:	[201] So you felt secure?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	So did you feel secure in that respect?

RF:	Yes I'm sure I did yes, and I don't remember being a particularly naughty child or anything. I was fairly easy going. I don't think I got up to any terrible mischiefs.

AH:	So what sort of values would you say your upbringing gave you?

RF:	I suppose that, you know, family life was good and I must have got perhaps some idea of Christian teaching, though certainly I lapsed really in my teens. It wasn't until later that I came back to it, and I don't think there's anything else really I can put a finger on or put a memory to. I certainly reacted against the sort of suburban attitude, you know the sort of rather middle class, comfortable attitude towards life, but then I [202] think most teenagers do react, and I suppose I reacted in other ways as well but I mean I certainly reacted quite strongly with people like Dunstan and Edward Langstone and got these ideas about communities and…

AH:	Did they come from quite sort of unusual backgrounds?

RF:	No, I think they came from very similar sorts of homes. Certainly Dunstan did, I'm not quite sure about Edward, I never knew his family background, but Dunstan did certainly.

AH:	What did he do for a living?

RF:	Beg pardon?

AH:	Out of interest, what did he do for a living?

RF:	Well, he worked you see at the same paper mill as I did.

AH:	Oh did he?

RF:	That's how I got to know him.

AH:	[203] So, what about role models from your early life?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	Role models, who were your role models and your inspirations?

RF:	Oh, well, apart from Dunstan and Edward and the teachings of Gill and  [Testa? JP transcriber query this should be Chesterton] that I've mentioned, I don't think I had any very strong influences. I had a great friend who was old enough to be my mother, actually, who I got very friendly with and she certainly had a great influence on me. It's quite extraordinary really, I remember her so well.

AH:	What was her name?

RF:	Her name was [Amy/Emmy Lister?] and I think she taught me, you know, that there was another world in a way, there was a world of books and that sort of thing, and she used to listen to my teenage sort of babblings and [204] feelings and so on and that was a great help to me I think, you know I could sort of talk to my parents. But it was quite a strange relationship because as I say she was old enough to be my mother.

AH:	Yes, but it happens doesn't it?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	Well it happens that sometimes older people take an interest.

RF:	She was very, you know, very fond of literature and poetry and all that sort of thing, which as something new to me in a way and I hadn't explored that at all.

AH:	So, what of your education? What were the meaningful important things in your education that you can relate to?

RF:	Well, I went to various sort of prep schools.

AH:	[205] Were you sent away to school?

RF:	I was at boarding school prep school for a while, that wasn't the first school I went to, I went to another small school before that, I think, and then from the prep school I went to a minor public school at Bishopstortfort, Herts and I from about eleven to the time I left I was there.

AH:	So what was the ethos of your minor public school? What was the general…?

RF:	Well, I think as they go I suppose it was alright, you know. It was…there was very little bullying, there was very little unpleasantness in that way and the sort of general feeling was quite good I think, looking back. I don't think I enjoyed it terribly. It was tolerable.

AH:	Was it academically inclined? Was it an academic school?

RF:	[206] Well I think it must have been reasonably good. It got me through what was it, school certificate in those days. I never went on to higher certificate you see, which is the equivalent of A levels.

AH:	Why was that?

RF:	What?

AH:	Why was that?

RF:	Well this was in the early thirties so I suppose I went there when I was…it must have been late twenties, early thirties…

AH:	So it was to do with economic considerations why you didn't continue school?

RF:	Yes that was a reason, that was the main reason I left. It was of course a fee paying school.

AH:	So was it to do with your father?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	Was it to do with your father dying?

RF:	[207] No it was to do with my father losing his job.

AH:	…and you couldn't continue your education. Would you have liked to have continued? Would you have liked to have gone on to university?

RF:	Well, looking back I would probably have said yes, but at the time I didn't want to, that was why I grabbed the opportunity.

AH:	So what sort of values again came out of school? Was there anything really meaningful that has remained with you from that time?

RF:	I don't know. Public schools are run down, but I think they gave you a sense of being a community you know, of being part of a team, you know part of something which was more important than you as an individual in a way. Certainly it did in regard to sporting events and [208] that sort of thing, though I suppose that applies to other schools as well, I don't know, but you know, on the whole the school was important, not the fact that you were just one…you know, just there.

AH:	Yes, as an individual you mean?

RF:	Yes.

AH:	So does that relate to your…do you think, the team, the importance of you feeling part of a group?

RF:	Well it may well do, I don't think of it.

AH:	No, I'm just sort of just saying, yes…so…that's interesting. What subjects were you interested in at school?

RF:	Oh, I think it was all the usual subjects.

AH:	What did you like?

RF:	English, science, French, Latin, geography and I suppose we did religion, I can't remember.

AH:	[209] Were you interested in all of them?

RF:	Well, I don't know. I don't know that I was particularly interested in any particular one. I think I was most inclined to enjoy English.

AH:	Did you have crafts or technical subjects there?

RF:	Nothing like that, at all.

AH:	Nothing. So you didn't have any experience of making or art?

RF:	No.

AH:	No? Gosh that's very interesting! 
RF:	No, they were very bad in that respect. 

AH:	So you came to the time when you had to leave school and you chose to go out to work, but did you have any clear concept of what you wanted outside of that?

RF:	No.

AH:	You didn't?

RF:	No.

AH:	Right. So, did you have any dreams [210] and ideals and any ambitions?

RF:	Well, apart from the fact that I wanted to do something different and I wanted to do a more humane sort of…or have a sort of more humane existence…

AH:	You did have that seed of…

RF:	I wanted something which seemed to have some point…

AH:	From that time?

RF:	Nothing particular really.

AH:	Right, that's interesting. So when you did eventually become a potter what did your mother think…did she…was she convinced eventually?

RF:	Well I don't know. I think she hoped it would be alright, but I don't know. I suppose she…yes I suppose she thought it would be alright.

AH:	Did she live to see you make a success of it?

RF:	Yes, well reasonably so.

AH:	[211] She did?

RF:	She lived into her eighties. She came to live in Cheltenham, she lived in Cheltenham in a flat so she wasn't far away.

AH:	No. So, was she pleased with your success as a potter?

RF:	I suppose so, yes.

AH:	You suppose so?! So getting down to the basics, what would you say have been the really most important things in your life?

RF:	Um, well I suppose, initially the influence of a number of people I've mentioned, becoming a Catholic, of, you know, coming to Winchcombe and the support and so on of my wife and family through the years, through difficult years and better years, that seems to cover it reasonably well.

AH:	Are there any things that you would [212] like to have changed, if you could do it again?

RF:	Oh yes, I'm sure yes. I can think of things I'd rather change, but I won't mention them!

AH:	Really?! But are there any particular high points in your life that you can look back on and say that was marvellous?

RF:	No, it's been fairly hum drum.

AH:	Really? I'm sure not!

RF:	Fairly level.

AH:	And what about happiness and fulfilment?

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	Happiness and fulfilment?

RF:	Well yes, I really feel that I've…I mean I don't feel that I've achieved an awful lot, but I think, I mean I feel that, you know I haven't looked back so to speak. I've always tried to go forward and that I've managed to keep the pottery going [213] through thick and thin and that that's some sort of achievement.

AH:	Yes, I would say. So you received an MBE recently.

RF:	Yes.

AH:	How did you feel?

RF:	Well, I think it's a bit of a…I don't know how these…I do know how these things come about really and I don't know really why, cos it's rather silly. I was mentioned, I mean I was recommended I think, though  I never got absolute confirmation by Victor Margrie, who I knew quite well and who was at the time head of the Crafts Advisory Committee before it became the Crafts Council and I very much suspect that he gave the recommendation and for some reason they let it through, I suppose, and what it was for, I don't know! Just a joke really.

AH:	[214] I think it's a pretty nice way of looking at it. So your sons are potters.

RF:	Sorry?

AH:	Your sons are potters and Mike to a certain extent is sharing running the pottery with you and you were telling me that your granddaughter is also doing ceramics, do you see Winchcombe pottery going on at a pace?

RF:	Well I hope so, yes, I hope so. None of my other grandchildren seem at all interested at the moment, but then Joe and Michael weren't until they got to you know 18 or 19 or 20 or something. So you never know. Well I mean we've just rebuilt this kiln, I'm sure it'll last another 20 years.

AH:	Yes. Well, thank you very much.

	[End of recording]