Until just lately, probably the greatest British postwar ceramics collections was to be discovered on a council property in east London. “It was a bit like strolling right into a reliquary,” says the ceramicist Annie Turner, an everyday customer to the two-bed flat. “You’d go into a reasonably brutal-looking 1970s constructing and up a boring concrete stairwell and suppose, ‘Am I in the appropriate place?’. Then you definately opened this door, and it was like coming into one other world.”
Behind that very strange entrance door was a treasure trove. Largely British, French or Japanese, round 1,200 ceramic works clustered on cabinets, grouped on tables and desks, and even used as planters on the tiny balcony. Among the many objects had been key items by Lucie Rie and Edmund de Waal, and up to date works by Turner herself, and Sara Flynn – two award-winning artists whose costs have just lately risen sharply.
![How leading UK ceramics collection ended up in London 1 Sara Flynn’s Double Hipped Vessel (2012) from the collection.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/41e97c51ccc3f54e044cff7cb0099eb8d9e73ece/0_0_650_650/master/650.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=495dd0d35641ec579aa4be566fec1f9c)
This assortment belongs to Michael Evans, a former mechanical engineer and native authorities officer, who has been recognized by his Buddhist title Dayabandu since his ordination within the early 2000s. Dayabandu’s curiosity in ceramics began 60 years in the past when he used to go to two maiden aunts after church and admire their Doulton Lambeth stoneware pots. “They mentioned they’d give them to me as quickly as I purchased my very own property,” he informed the i newspaper in one of his only interviews, again in 2004. The aunts stored their promise – although quickly that property was extra the house of the ceramics than Dayabandu. “They permit me to reside with them,” he mentioned. “Folks suppose I reside in a retailer room.”
However most of the items are coming to public sale this month. Dayabandu has suffered from more and more extreme vascular dementia, and the gathering – as an alternative of being a pleasure – has change into a burden.
“He’d began getting involved about it round 10 years in the past, the identical time his behaviour turned extra eccentric,” says his good friend Clive Barnett, a textile designer who lives in Suffolk. “He knew he was changing into unwell. He needed the work to remain collectively, however he couldn’t discover anybody to take it on as an entire.” Certainly varied museums had been pleased to cherry decide; nobody needed the job lot. “He was very educated,” says Barnett, “however we by no means fairly understood why he purchased sure issues.”
Dayabandu’s mates describe him as something from targeted to intense to obsessive. His delight was within the ceramics themselves reasonably than their worth or maker’s popularity. As he mentioned: “I don’t purchase for funding, I solely purchase what I like. I do know individuals who regard their assortment in monetary phrases – for the names on the underside of their pots. For me, that’s not accumulating for the appropriate causes.”
![How leading UK ceramics collection ended up in London 2 Pothead heaven: inside Michael Evans’s two-bed London flat](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/596b8761682088d4e0a81f4ae6dbf070e5ad8238/0_0_3024_3024/master/3024.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=d39aff70f3e8fd908c62597c025e9d32)
As soon as he’d retired from his life in native authorities, the swimsuit and tie was deserted for denims and leather-based jacket. He moved from Leicester to Sandwich in Kent, the place he took a part-time diploma in effective artwork at Canterbury and completed with a primary.
In keeping with Barnett, his Buddhism adopted an opportunity assembly with somebody on Sandwich seashore not lengthy after the ending of an extended relationship. He offered his home and downsized to the flat partly to launch cash to proceed accumulating, and partly to be close to the London Buddhist Centre in Roman Highway. He ate his lunch most days on the Cafe from Disaster in Business Road, the place homeless individuals and ex-offenders are educated in catering. “Not the form of employees you get all over the place – he favored that,” says one other good friend, Martin Pearce, a ceramicist, based mostly close to Battle.
“He by no means did something by halves, as soon as he was he received actually concerned,” continues Pearce. “To be trustworthy, he might be abrasive. He’d come to see me a few times a month in my studio after I was nonetheless working in London, and criticise my work. But when he noticed somebody who was struggling or wanted recommendation, he’d actually take it upon himself to sit down down with them, and spend time speaking all of it via.” Turner, one other beneficiary of his time and curiosity, says she would spend a day at a time at his home. “We’d have inexperienced tea in stunning hand-thrown tea bowls – all the pieces was handmade,” she says. “He’d inform nice tales about all of the work within the flat; he’d by no means purchase something that didn’t ‘converse’ to him.” His desire veered in the direction of the pure, not the ornamental, ceramic custom; one can see the enchantment of Turner’s exquisitely managed and austere work impressed by the pure fragments she collects from the River Deben in Suffolk.
![How leading UK ceramics collection ended up in London 3 Akiko Hirai’s Sake Bottle will be auctioned by MAAK this May.](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/3ca2edf3ef30bdec24a219b8fa6d40d313238867/0_0_4312_4312/master/4312.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=e5f83670cedf3d6adf3f6f3e31c4a340)
As soon as when she was putting in a six-part piece on his kitchen wall, and having hassle doing so, she recollects how he walked previous and stopped within the hall. “He simply mentioned: be sure to’ve received the nails precisely straight. He was an engineer – he might inform what I used to be doing improper. However he simply gave me the recommendation from a distance. It was sort, he didn’t wish to make me really feel silly.” (The piece is within the public sale, with an estimate of £800-£1,200.) Turner recollects the flat as full of massive darkish furnishings. “There was even an enormous four-poster mattress with curtains round it. He simply wasn’t afraid to replenish area,” she says. “And possibly I shouldn’t say this, however there was all the time an enormous spliff, prepared rolled for mattress time. He typically had loads of ache,” she says. Martin Pearce says that “he cherished the austerity of Annie’s work, absolutely the management and the hyperlinks with the River Deben”. Dayabandu went there typically on Buddhist retreats.
After being given his aunts’ Doulton Lambeth pots, he went on to gather Moorcroft – 20th-century British hand-painted pottery with vibrant excessive glazes – after which, having change into more and more enamoured of extra up to date works, he offered the lot. Moorcroft had change into wanted, and it was a helpful solution to finance this new strand of acquisition.
“He favored having the ability to go to the potters, and going to festivals and open studios and speaking to the makers,” says Pearce. “In a means, he was actually curious about individuals.” The gallerist Matthew Corridor, of London ceramic specialists Erskine Hall, agrees, including: “He was all the time in search of the connection to the maker, an entry level to the life behind the work.” Corridor additionally visited the east London flat and remembers wanting on the Buddhist shrine that Dayabandu had created there. “There was one object, a brick from the outside of a Buddhist temple that was a minimum of 1,500 years previous. It had the determine of a robed monk on the entrance,” says Corridor. “However then he picked it up and turned it over and there was the impression of the craftsman’s hand on the again. He put his personal hand in that handprint. It made a lot sense.”
![How leading UK ceramics collection ended up in London 4 ‘They allow me to live with them’ … ceramics on every surface of the east London flat](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/0e6e452ce1d24fc341936e1b994021b06cb09ad5/0_0_3024_3024/master/3024.jpg?width=300&quality=85&auto=format&fit=max&s=8ee4eb19995685f736c931fecf785194)
Marijke Varrell-Jones, the founding father of MAAK, the public sale home organising the Dayabandu sale, says that this received’t be the primary time she has damaged up a group. “They’re transient issues in the long run,” she says. “And it’s important to bear in mind, these items didn’t begin out all being collectively.” MAAK – which specialises in ceramics and has provided a really slick on-line platform because it began in 2009 – shall be providing practically 200 heaps within the public sale Unifying Eye: The Dayabandhu Assortment, together with some by Akiko Hirai, one other rising star. “He got here to my studio loads,” Hirai says. “He was all the time in search of motion, for one thing kinetic and tactile in a chunk of labor.”
Dayabandu was amassing his assortment within the noughties, a time when work by postwar practitioners together with John Maltby, Ewan Henderson, Ian Godfrey and Gordon Baldwin was nonetheless inexpensive. “It’s a reminder that what counts in forming a group is the depth of your eye and enduring curiosity, not the depth of your financial institution steadiness,” says Corridor. “He didn’t spend excessively on a single merchandise.” So he would more than likely be reasonably shocked by the outcomes which are prone to emerge in Might. Works by Lucie Rie have offered for upwards of £150,00zero in the previous couple of years; John Maltby and Ian Godfrey are extremely wanted by youthful collectors together with Jonathan Anderson, the inventive director of Loewe, who has himself discovered a ardour for pots. “We noticed an actual change round 2016,” says Varrell-Jones. “Our shoppers was once {couples} of a sure age, who’d retired with a disposable earnings. Now it’s youthful collectors who wish to reside with handmade objects. And apart from, there’s room on a bookshelf for a pot.” Or for 1,200 of them, for those who occur to be Michael Evans.
Author: ” — www.theguardian.com “