Few visitors to Scilly will not have met John Bourdeaux, one of Scilly’s best loved artists, with 50 years of potting under his belt. His handsome granite barn studio on the outskirts of Old Town, surrounded by daffodil fields, is a must-visit on any tour of St. Mary’s.
But that lustrous career was born of seemingly inauspicious beginnings. At boarding school in Truro, he spent his art classes playing chess, and at 15 he ran away to London (with no qualifications) where he got a job as a buyer in the Christmas department of Harrods. Subsequently forced to move back to St. Mary’s to take over the family shop at the age of 20, he decided to give potting a go – despite being told as a boy that he was hopeless at art.
“If you’d told my parents that one day I’d be an artist they’d have laughed,” he says. But back on St. Mary’s, he “needed a challenge” so began playing with clay.
As random as that spell at Harrods sounds, it demonstrated a skill that John had developed ever since being sent off to boarding school at the age of eight - how to survive by fearlessly reinventing himself. “I’ve always had a go-for-it mentality. When I ran away to London, I wrote to Harrods to ask them for a job, and they offered me an apprenticeship. It took a while to get the hang of it. At first, I got taxis to work as I didn’t know how to use the tube.” John’s knack of self-reinvention would serve him well over the decades ahead.
While minding the family shop (still in Hugh Town today but now under new ownership), he met potter Humphrey Wakefield who taught him to make pots and fired them for him. “Luckily there was no competition between us, he just encouraged me,” says John, who soon bought a wheel and a few years later, restored a ramshackle stone barn in Old Town to use as a studio.
John knew he needed further training so sent himself off to art college in Bournemouth. But the teaching was lacklustre, and instruction in how to sell art non-existent, so he only lasted a term – something for which he’s always been thankful. “If I’d followed the college route my pottery would have been like everyone else’s and I’d never have survived,” he says. “I learned to do things my way rather than listening to others. People can like or dislike my pottery, but they can’t compare it.” Visit John’s studio and you’ll see what he means – colours and shapes are total one-offs. In his words, “I make weird things that are different. There’s nothing standard here.”
Establishing himself as a commercial potter wasn’t easy. John had by now married and the couple, living in rented accommodation, were surviving on fifty pounds a week. John rose at six and started making models of birds, animals and whatever else came to mind. “I knew I had to make it work,” he says. “I had to survive, and sell stuff. I had nowhere to hide.”
Happily, visitors supported him and “came along for the ride.” One day he had strips of clay left over so formed them into totem poles. He gave them “bullshit” topical names such as Oil Strike and Harold Wilson (a local resident and friend). “I told visitors they were fertility symbols and out they flew. One woman even attributed her pregnancy to one of my poles!” Soon John was exporting them worldwide. One, found in a Swindon house clearance, sold at auction for over a grand - more than all the remaining contents.
Drawing on Scilly’s wildlife, John branched into stoneware puffins with vivid orange beaks. “I made one and it sold well, so I made fifty and they all went. For the next 40 years I made a hundred a year. Puffins were followed by cormorants and terns, the latter captioned with tags such as “one good tern deserves another.” He taught himself to make porcelain too.
Visitors flocked to the studio, attracted as much by John’s friendly and self-deprecating personality as by his quirky pottery. For his part, John drew on an important life skill that he’d learned among the Christmas tinsel and baubles at Harrods – how to sell. “I love selling, it’s exhilarating,” he smiles. “But I never force people to buy. The secret of selling is not to mind whether they do or not.”
John also attributes his success to the dreamy location of his pottery. “People love the whole ambiance of Scilly, and the simple way of life here. My pottery fits into that – it’s honest and unpretentious, people appreciate that.”
Visitors became friends. They brought their children and grandchildren, many of whom have been sending John cards for decades. John loved the friendships, but there was a snag: they all owned his signature puffins and totem poles. They needed something new. It was time to reinvent himself again.
By chance, a Christmas carol service in Truro cathedral showed him the way forward. The cathedral was full so John couldn’t attend the service and was forced to wander the streets instead. He stumbled across a craft shop in a side street selling lustreware - pottery that uses a metallic glaze (often gold or platinum) that gives the effect of iridescence. Lustreware would be his next challenge, he decided.
“It was hard, as I didn’t know what I was doing and it needs five or six different firings,” he recalls. “A woman who had worked in the potteries in Stoke on Trent came in to the studio and gave me some tips. Somehow it works and people buy it. They love the vivid colours.”
John may be approaching eighty, but he’s not showing signs of quitting his potter’s wheel any time soon. He may have several reinventions in him still.
Image credit: adjbrown.com
