It was some sixty years ago that I first noticed those hands as they began to put some shape into a cold chunk of alabaster. Sculpture at Bryanston was taught in a wooden shed some way beyond the kitchens in those days, and a new schoolboy, searching for form somewhere in the complicated system, easily found his way there during the evening hobby period; the whole idea of carving was quite attractive. Perhaps we were started on a lump of that sort of stone as the least malleable, and as insusceptible to creative strokes as it was to irrevocable damage. A slow and painstaking shaping of the lump was the essence of the process, and the distance of concept from completion was discouraging to the schoolboy beginner. It was here that the helping hand came, twofold, and this stocky figure, with the long mane of hair, and the quiet smile, chipped away at the alabaster, cupped and cradled it, then chipped again, until I could feel some form as he shaped it, just a little. He did not initiate a great contributor to the world of art, but he had made his mark, and I remembered how he taught with those creative hands.
It was across the passageway, in another shed, that I first heard of Eric Gill, for the Printing Club was housed there, and I spent many an hour compositing with the Gill Sans Serif font which we used for School programmes, progressing from Apprentice, through Journeyman, to Master Printer. Gill became better known to me when I saw the Christ figure on the east end of what was then the striking new cathedral at Guildford which I visited during that extraoordinary hiatus between the Higher Certificate and the end of term, during which we were allowed to make a trip of our own devising - I opted to hitch-hike around the country studying cathedrals. We knew of Don Potter's association with this great Master Craftsman, and after leaving Bryanston, I often thought of him.
My own hands were turned to a different craft as I, too, served my apprenticeship - in surgery. While privileged to develop many techniques working with living tissue, I retained always the aspiration to craftsmanship, and the endeavour to use my hands well.
In the church at Mells, in Somerset, where the artists and Catholic converts had gathered around the Horners, among contributions by Burne-Jones, William Morris, Lutyens, and Munnings, I came to know well the beautiful memorial carved in the wall of the west tower by Gill, and I also paid my devotions to the Stations of the Cross, carved in semi-relief, and placed in a great series round the walls of Westminster Cathedral. I retained the memory of Don Potter very clearly, and often thought of him as one of Gill's craftsmen, working away at Bryanston, not only in the hands-on teaching of generations of future sculptors and potters, but in the creation of those masterpieces of special commemoration which adorn the school grounds.
On one visit to the school, when many staff held open house to old pupils, I sought out the Potters in Bryanston village, to find Don in his studio working at a towering structure of entwined figures which he had suspended from the roof beams, and surrounded with scaffolding. Moreover, not only was he thus applying his agile but by no means young figure to this massive work, but he also was himself knapping the flints he was using with those very same hands of his. I was reminded of the great churches of East Anglia with their flinted walls made by our medieval craftrsmen, and I wondered at this man. He joined his wife to give us warm hospitality before the blazing log fire in his home. When the tall composition was eventually placed where it now stands on display to Bryanstonians and the visitng world, I thought it was very much about the creativity of craftsmanship.
Don Potter also carved in wood, and was said to keep his eye on any fallen timber around the Braynston estate, for some woods carve better than others.
Not so long ago the ultimate replacement of those old sheds arose in the form of the Don Potter Arts Centre, and we were privileged to see this fine expression of Bryanston's commitment to the teaching of visual arts opened by the ninety-year-old artist himself, still in quietly robust form. Among his own works on sale that day was the pair of working hands carved, semi-relief, in wood, which I coveted sufficiently to come away with, and have pictured at the top of these reflections. The hands have that refinement of form, composition, and technique passed from Master, through pupil, to next Master; I look at them and reflect that, on 21 April 2002, Potter's Hands will be a hundred years old.
© Badgerwood 2002.