Denise Wren

Denise Wren (née Tuckfield; 7 January 1891 – 1979) was an Australian-born British studio potter and craftsperson. Wren was one of the first female studio potters in Britain.[1] She studied and taught with the Kingston School of Art, Knox Guild and Camberwell College of Arts. Wren and her family subsequently set up the Oxshott Pottery and wrote on the subjects of ceramics, textiles and making.[2]

Denise Wren
Wren demonstrating throwing on the wheel in Kingston Museum Art Gallery c. 1920
Born
Denise Tuckfield

(1891-01-07)7 January 1891
Lake View, Albany, Western Australia
Died1979
Devon
EducationKingston School of Art, Guildford School of Art, Camberwell College of Arts, Royal College of Art
Known forStudio pottery, Textiles
MovementArts and crafts
SpouseHenry Wren

Biography

Denise Tuckfield was born in Lake View, Albany, Western Australia on 7 January 1891.[3] Her family, including her sister Winnifred and two brothers, moved to East Molesey, Surrey, England in 1900.[4] In 1915, Denise Tuckfield married Henry Wren (d. 1947). Their daughter, Rosemary Wren (b. 1922) also worked in ceramics.[2] Wren kept and bred budgerigars and parakeets as well as bees at the Oxshott family home.[5] Wren moved to Hittisleigh, Devon in 1978 and died there in 1979.[2][6]

Ceramic art career

Kingston School of Art and the Knox Guild

From 1907 to 1912 Tuckfield attended Kingston School of Art where she studied under Archibald Knox. Here, she learned to throw pots on the wheel from Mr. Mercer, an employee at the local Norbiton Potteries and Brickworks. He also fired her ceramics in his kiln,[1] including a tile with a flying fish motif featured in a 1909 issue of fine and decorative arts magazine The Studio.[7]

In 1912, following criticism of his teaching methods, Archibald Knox quit Kingston School of Art.[8] Together with other students from their design class, sisters Denise and Winifred Broun-Morrison joined Knox in protest to co-found the Knox Guild of Design and Craft.[9]

The Oxshott Pottery at Potter's Croft

After her marriage to Henry Wren in 1915, the couple built their own house to Denise Wren's design: Potter's Croft, a workspace and home at Oxshott in Surrey. Here, they set up the Oxshott Pottery which produced brightly glazed functional earthenware products such as bowls, dishes and vases which they sold at agricultural and horticultural shows during the interwar period. They taught a summer school and wrote books on pottery. Wren also taught evening classes at Teddington School of Art.[10][11][12] Wren pioneered designs for small scale kilns, which she sold by mail order to aspiring amateur potters, both in the UK and abroad.[3]

The Oxshott Pottery participated in the British Empire Exhibition of 1924–25 and in the Artist Craftsman Exhibitions organised annually from 1923 to 1938 by Henry Wren at the Central Hall, Westminster.[3]

Other institutions

Wren studied further with Henry Hopkins at Camberwell School of Art in 1920.[2] She returned to study from 1945 to 1947 at the Guildford School of Art with Helen Pincombe and continued to the Royal College of Art from 1947 to 1950.[10]

Elephant figure made from thickly extruded clay.
Elephant figure made from thickly extruded clay. Made in 1978. From the W.A. Ismay Studio Ceramics Collection at York Art Gallery

Later career

Henry Wren died in 1947 and the Wren's daughter Rosemary, a potter also known for her animal figures, joined the running of Oxshott Pottery with her mother. During the 1950s, Wren and Rosemary Wren experimented at Oxshott with a technique called salt glazing. The Wrens developed a new kiln to fire salt-glazed stoneware. Denise and Rosemary Wren became known for their revival of salt glazed stoneware. They were founder members of the Craft Potters Association in 1958 and used it, and various London galleries to sell their work through the 1950s and 1960s.[5] Towards the end of her life, Wren was known for her handbuilt elephant figures.[2] ‘[T]he variety, vitality and starkness of these creations' were apparent in even a small group when displayed.[13] The pottery moved to Hittisleigh, Devon in 1978, a year before Wren's death.[6]

Ethos and style

During the early 20th-century, British pottery production was a large scale industry and pottery was not taught in art schools. This began to change in 1920 when Bernard Leach established the Leach Pottery at St. Ives in Cornwall and in 1925 William Staite Murray became pottery tutor at the Royal College of Art. In contrast to Leach and his followers, who mainly made wheel-thrown pots, Wren used a wide variety of techniques such as building with slabs or coils of clay and making tiles and figurines in moulds: partly inspired by her lessons from Archibald Knox. Denise Wren's early pots were often incised with Celtic designs inspired by Archibald Knox.[14] Wren also used commercially produced glazes, though often in an experimental way.[1] Ceramicists like Denise Wren were part of a new aesthetic movement that began to emerge after the First World War. 'British Studio Potters' -men and women working alone or in small workshops designing and making pots and figurines.[14] Wren's technical understanding of ceramic work was demonstrated at a meeting of the Craft Potters Association in 1960 where she produced a detailed scheme of categories against which a pot's quality could be judged. Each category was in turn, comprehensive: one contained 87 questions. Michael Casson referred to it as 'a brilliant piece of planning'.[15]

Textile designs

From the late 1930s, Denise Wren began to design textiles to compensate for dwindling sales of pottery at Oxshott. Under the name of the Knox Guild, she took a stand at the British Industries Fair in 1937. This enabled her to make contact with some Manchester based textile printers like Grafton's, Simpson and Godlee, Tootals and Whitworth and Mitchell. Wren also became a member of the National Register of Industrial Art Designers.[10] Kingston Museum’s archive holds records of over 160 pattern designs she sold between the mid 1940s and 1951 to manufacturers like these.[1]

Legacy

Wren's work is in several regional and national collections:

In 1975, Wren was made an honorary life member of the Craft Potters Association.[2]

Publications and exhibitions

Books
  • Wren, Denise; Wren, Henry (1924). Oxshott hand-made pottery[16]
  • Wren, Denise; Wren, Henry (1930). Handcraft pottery, for workshop and school. London: s.n.[17]
  • Wren, Denise; Wren, Henry (1932). Pottery, the finger-built methodes. London: s.n.[18]
  • Wren, Denise; Wren, Rosemary (1952). Pottery making; making pots and building and firing small kilns,. London: Pitman.[19]

Solo exhibitions

Group exhibitions

With the Knox Guild:

Other exhibitions:

References
  1. "Inside the archive of pioneering studio potter and designer Denise Wren – Museum Crush". museumcrush.org. Retrieved 1 June 2019.
  2. "Denise Wren | Ceramic Collection and Archive". Ceramics Collection and Archive, Aberystwyth University. Retrieved 2 June 2019.
  3. Coatts, Margot (1984). 'The Oxshott Pottery. Denise and Henry Wren', p. 33. Crafts Study Centre, Bath. ISBN 0861970446
  4. "HAND EYE FOOT BRAIN: DENISE WREN AND THE KNOX GUILD". HAND EYE FOOT BRAIN. 16 February 2018. Retrieved 3 June 2019.
  5. Vincentelli, Moira (2000). Women and Ceramics: Gendered Vessels. Manchester University Press. ISBN 9780719038402.
  6. "Pioneers and their practice - Visual Arts Data Service: the online resource for visual arts". vads.ac.uk. Retrieved 3 June 2019.
  7. "Studio: international art (47.1909)". digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de (in German). Retrieved 1 June 2019.
  8. Knifton, Robert and Lloyd, Fran (2015). 'Kingston School of Art: 140 Years. 1875-2015', Kingston University, London. ISBN 9781907684289
  9. Tilbrook, Adrian J. (1976). The designs of Archibald Knox for Liberty & Co. Ornament Press. ISBN 9780905464008.
  10. "Oxshott Pottery archive - Archives Hub". archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk. Retrieved 2 June 2019.
  11. Wren, Henry and Denise (1928). 'Handcraft Pottery For Workshop and School' Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., London
  12. Wren, Henry and Denise (1932). 'Pottery: Finger-built Methods' Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, Ltd., London
  13. Barker, Janine (2015). Henry Rothschild and Primavera: The retail, exhibition and collection of craft in post-war Britain, 1945-1980 (PDF). Newcastle: Northumbria University. p. 184.
  14. Harrod, Tanya (1999). The Crafts in Britain in the 20th Century. US: Yale University Press. p. 32. ISBN 0-300-07780-7.
  15. Timms, Peter (2004). What's Wrong with Contemporary Art?. UNSW Press. ISBN 9780868404073.
  16. Wren, Denise; Wren, Henry (1924). Oxshott hand-made pottery. Place of publication not identified. OCLC 44734520.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  17. Wren, Denise; Wren, Henry (1930). Handcraft pottery, for workshop and school. London: s.n. OCLC 472217911.
  18. Wren, Denise; Wren, Henry (1932). Pottery, the finger-built methodes. London: s.n. OCLC 472217918.
  19. Wren, Denise (1952). Pottery making; making pots and building and firing small kilns. London: Pitman. OCLC 1464183.
  20. Limited, Takka Productions. "Hope For Beauty: Denise Wren Exhibition". www.decorativeartssociety.org.uk. Retrieved 3 June 2019.
  21. Brown, Christie; Stair, Julian; Twomey, Clare (17 June 2016). Contemporary Clay and Museum Culture. Routledge. ISBN 9781317160878.
  22. "Pioneering women in craft who made successful businesses during the two World Wars". Creative Boom. 8 March 2019. Retrieved 2 June 2019.
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