Alan Caiger-Smith

Alan Caiger-Smith MBE (8 February 1930 – 21 February 2020^[1]) was a British ceramicist, studio potter and writer on pottery.

Caiger-Smith was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He studied at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and read history at King's College, Cambridge (1949-1952). He trained in pottery at the Central School of Art & Design in 1954 under Dora Billington.^[2]

According to Grove Art, Alan Caiger-Smith established the Aldermaston Pottery in 1955, "a cooperative workshop of about seven potters making functional domestic ware and tiles, as well as individual commissions and one-off pots. By trial and error he revived and perfected two virtually lost techniques: the use of tin glaze and painted pigments on red earthenware clay, and the firing of lustres on to tin glazes."^[3] However, "virtually lost" is questionable: in his Lustre Pottery, Caiger-Smith himself covers relatively recent revivals of lustreware by William De Morgan, Vilmos Zsolnay, Clément Massier and Pilkington's Royal Lancastrian Pottery.^[4] In particular his researches "reconstructed the medieval Islamic lustreware technique".^[5]

He was joined at Aldermaston Pottery by a number of other potters, including Geoffrey Eastop (1921–2014).^[6]

Alan Caiger-Smith's book on Tin-Glaze Pottery (1973) covers its history and much of its technique.^[7] He co-translated and annotated with R.W. Lightbown a detailed contemporary description of the materials and methods of Renaissance maiolica, Cipriano Piccolpasso's I Tre Libre Dell'Arte Del Vasaio (The Three Books of the Potter’s Art) (1980). His history of lustre ware, Lustre Pottery, was published in 1985.

Caiger-Smith was Chairman of the British Crafts Centre (1973–1978) and was awarded the MBE in 1988.^[2] He ceased employing assistants in 1993 to concentrate on personal work and in 2006 announced his decision to sell the Aldermaston Pottery.^[8]

• Caiger-Smith, Alan, Tin-Glaze Pottery in Europe and the Islamic World: The Tradition of 1000 Years in Maiolica, Faience and Delftware (Faber and Faber, 1973). ISBN 0-571-09349-3.
• Caiger-Smith, Alan, Lustre Pottery: Technique, Tradition and Innovation in Islam and the Western World(Faber and Faber, 1985). ISBN 0-571-13507-2.
• Caiger-Smith, Alan, Pottery, People and Time: A Workshop in Action (Shepton Beauchamp: Richard Dennis, 1995). ISBN 0-903685-39-6.
• Piccolpasso, Cipriano, The Three Books of the Potter's Art (I Tre Libri del Arte Vasaiao) (trans. A. Caiger-Smith and R. Lightbown) (Scolar Press, 1980). ISBN 0-85967-452-5.
• Caiger-Smith, Alan, Said el Sadr 1909-1986. Potter, Painter, Sculptor, Teacher. (ACS Shalford Publications, 2010). ISBN 0956416608
• Caiger-Smith, Alan, Times and Seasons (I Tempi e le Stagioni) (Published 2012 in English and Italian). ISBN 9788897738244
• Caiger-Smith, Alan, English Medieval Mural Paintings (Oxford University Press, 1963).
• Wettlaufer, George and Nancy Wettlaufer. “England’s Alan Caiger-Smith.” 'Ceramics Monthly' 28, no. 1 (January 1980).
• White Jane, Alan Caiger-Smith and the Legacy of Aldermaston Pottery', Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2018 EAN 9781910807255

• Tin-glazed pottery
• Primavera Gallery in Cambridge
• Reading Museum has a large collection of Caiger-Smith's pottery^[9]

• National Electronic and Video Archive of the Crafts