Village Squire, 1976-02, Page 15Careful concentration is needed as the Targe pot is moved from the wheel to a shelf for drying. Still to come is
the adding of a handle, if there is to be one, the bisquit drying, decoration and glazing and final drying in the
kiln.
interests. He is. for instance, a qualified machinist from training
he picked up as part of the broad based education,, rogr-ark at his
e ollege He made a living at this after coming to C
�
nada for some
time He c an also weld. He dreads ever having to o baclif to work
in a tau tory, however. He's more interested in th ngs li a making
quality furniture. He'd hate to be typecast into j st being
involved in pottery, he says, because someday he mi ht like to
get into furniture making.
He also has a deep interest in architecture, in fact probably
would have been an architect if it hadn't been for family problems
and the fact it meant about 10 years of schooling.
He loves Canada, he says. While at the Doon school he began
to develop a feel for Canadian tradition, particularly the fine
tradition of Canadian,stoneware that developed a century ago in
such places as Brantford and Nova Scotia. Canadian pottery, he
says, seems to have more German roots than English.
Nevertheless, though he loves Canada, he criticizes some
things about it. He's afraid, he says, that Canada is heading
down the same road as England. In the year he graduated, he
says, 40 per cent of all English college graduates' that year
emmigrated. They just couldn't see, he says, trying to make use
of their skills under the increasing hureacratic entanglement of
English society.
He's c oncerned about such trends in Canada arid upset by the
taxation system for craftsmen. He says that people as potters,
handmade jewellery makers, leather workers, weavers and
furniture makers are being hit hard by the 12 per cent tederal
government manufacturing tax. It's a hidden tax that goes on not
only the manufacture's materials involved, but his time as well. It
puts the craftsperson in a bind because he must worry about
keeping his price within what the buyer can reasonably afford to
spend, and yet has to remember that 12 per cent off the top goes
to the federal government.
Provincial sales tax isn't so bad, he says, because at least the
buyer knows where the money is going.
"As a one man craftsperson," he says, "it is impossible for the
average person to believe that my craft is being taxed at the same
rate as a car made by General Motors."
Still being out on his own allows him to get more out of life.
Being self-employed, he says, lets one put their philosophy into
his or her work. Works is much more meaningful than with a
large organization.
And there's the final glory of opening the kiln door and seeing
the final product. It makes the hours involved in the various
stages, from wedging the clay to making it into a ball and
weighing it carefully to make sure there is just the right amount
tor the item to be made, to throwing it on the wheel, to the biscuit
firing and the final glaze firing all worthwhile.
Hand -thrown pots, he says, aren't perfect. They all have tiny
imperfections that wouldn't be in machine made pottery, but
these only give the piece character and put in on a more natural
level than mass-produced pottery.
It provides satisfaction to the owner and to the craftsman like
Michael Ward The 'kind of satisfaction that makes the
frustrations of running a business worthwhile.
VILLAGE SQUIRE/FEBRUARY 1976, 13