Mastermakers: Byron Temple

August 1 - October 25, 2003

Opening reception: Friday, August 8, 2003, 5 – 7:30 p.m.

    KMA+D is proud to present this retrospective of work by renowned ceramist Byron Temple. Temple, a major proponent of functional pottery and internationally recognized for his unpretentious wood-fired and salt-glazed pottery, died April 14, 2002 in Louisville, Ky. He was 68.
   Raised on a farm in Centerville, Indiana, Temple first studied pottery at Indiana's Ball State University. After a tour of duty with the U.S. Army in Germany, Byron returned to pottery at Haystack in Maine, studying under Kenneth Quick. Quick had worked with Bernard Leach in England, and Byron was inspired to study under Leach. He worked as a production potter in St. Ives from 1959 to 1962, and it was here that Byron really learned to throw. A period of working with Colin Pearson at the Quay Pottery Aylesford followed.
   Byron returned to the United States and set up his own pottery in Lambertville, New Jersey, where with the help of a team of potters, he produced a range of reduction-fired standard table wares. To promote and market the ware, Byron made inventive use of well-designed catalogues, posters, and postcards. In the late 80's Byron abandoned large-scale production of table wares in favor of making more individual pots. Byron moved his studio to Louisville, Kentucky in 1989.
   In the last decade of Byron's life he continued to teach both here in the US and abroad. His travels to Japan, New Zealand, Sweden, Finland, Great Britain, Hungary , and the Netherlands gave him an opportunity to both teach and learn, to explore new material, and to develop new techniques.
   Byron Temple influenced generations of potters with classes and workshops at schools ranging from Penland and Haystack to the Pratt Institute and the Philadelphia College of Art, among others. Byron's work was spare with simple lines. It was, as Byron temple said, "a combination of the Bauhaus and Japan." For those who knew Byron Temple and mark his passing with regret there is left behind a body of work that speaks volumes about a man and his contribution to the world of clay.
   Temple’s most recent work, mostly small vessels, jars and boxes, has been described as straight-forward, restrained, inviting, and stripped of details extraneous to function.  Temple’s influences include the Bauhaus movement and Japanese pottery, and he once said, “I wish for purity and precision in objects that extol the virtue of harmony and proportion.”