The Spectacle of Tradition

摘要

Combine the words pottery and tradition and the image of a potter at a wheel immediately comes to mind. As Bonnie Kemske's editorial in CR262 (July/August 2013) says, the pottery wheel connects makers with an embodied tradition stretching from Bernard Leach to our Neolithic ancestors. Yet the public throwing demonstration - where potters demonstrate their skills in front of an inexpert audience - is a recent phenomenon, proliferating in the context of early twentieth-century craft exhibitions. Rooted in the modern culture of spectacle, the temptation is to marginalise the throwing demonstration as an entertaining aside, but this overlooks its deeper importance.