Obituary: Robert Washington

Robert Johnson Washington, potter and educator: born London 2 May 1913; married 1939 Marjorie Terry (died 1996; one son), 1996 Su Lapesco (one daughter); died Little Baddow, Essex 17 November 1997.

Robert Washington was as inventive and creative in his teaching as he was in his ceramics.

Ambitious but sensitive, he often felt himself to be in competition with his artist father William, a skilled etcher, draughtsman and silversmith (and later head of Hammersmith School of Art), and this was one of the reasons that led him to take up pottery at the Royal College of Art, for it was one of the few things his father had never done.

Born in south-east London, Bob Washington showed early promise as an artist, entering Goldsmiths' College in 1930 to study painting before moving on to the RCA. After three years in the painting school he went to the pottery department, initially lured by the attractions of Marjorie Terry, who was then acting as social secretary.

The department was headed by William Staite Murray, one of the leading potters in Britain, an influential and charismatic if sporadic teacher. Murray had firm views about the status of pots, distancing himself from their craft associations and arguing that pots should be seen as fine art, an attitude which seemed entirely right to Washington, one of the liveliest students.

Teaching at Derby College of Art was interrupted by war service, when he studied hydraulics and became an instructor to the builders of aircraft, a task which called on his understanding of modern engineering as well as his ability to pass on information with clarity and imagination. In 1939 he married Marjorie Terry, then a highly successful textile designer, who in 1944 gave birth to their son, John.

After the war, Washington resumed teaching ceramics at Derby, making an impression on the students as a conscientious and dedicated lecturer, going on to become principal first of Dewsbury and then Margate schools of art. He maintained his own studio too, producing pots under the clear influence of Murray, but with his own idiosyncratic interpretation of the figure; and exhibited in the Festival of Britain.

After a nomadic life moving his family round the country, he was appointed Art Inspector for Essex, settling permanently in the county. Supporting teachers, building up art and pottery departments and developing education schemes took much of his creative drive and few pots were made. His energy, however, seemed inexhaustible and he became involved with a variety of ambitious schemes such as planting Christmas trees, setting up a 45,000- bird chicken farm and growing fruit. Although all were well organised, they met with only moderate success.

Retirement in 1979 brought fresh opportunities and a renaissance in his work with clay. He was ever alert to new developments within ceramics. At this time he was best known for his impressive tall, thrown bottle forms with a strong anthropomorphic element, an impression heightened by his use of spiky painted decoration depicting female figures which seemed to be engaging with the pot, giving the work the added edge of surrealism. Despite his continuing doubts about his skills as a draughtsman, these pieces, monumental and commanding, remain some of his most effective forms.

Contact was re-established with galleries and in a solo exhibition at Anatol Orient gallery in London in 1988 he made a comeback with a series of new work consisting of large platters which were inventive in both their imagery and surface treatment. Work was also shown at Paul Rice, London.

A new relationship with a young ceramic student, Su Lapesco, stimulated his experimental approach to clay, leading him to investigate cratered and textured glazes and to integrate such effects into his cereamics. Much to his delight, four years ago he and Su had a daughter, Olivia, and following Marjorie's death they were married last year.

One of Washington's major contributions to ceramics was to continue the fight for its recognition as fine art and it would have been interesting to see how he would have developed his talents had he devoted his life to ceramics. With a great deal of enthusiasm, creativity and imagination sidetracked into education, much of his work has often been seen as over- influenced by Murray. But the similarity is superficial for Washington's forms are imbued with their own powerful personality which is both sculpturally aware and assertive of the character of their maker.