"The Young & Beautiful": Michael Cardew, Modern Pots, and the Counterculture in North America 1967-1981

In this talk, sponsored by LACMA's Decorative Arts and Design Council, independent design historian Tanya Harrod discusses the work of Michael Cardew (1901–83), one of the most remarkable craftsmen of the twentieth century. A man of paradox, Cardew was a modernist who disliked modernity, a Brit who despised the British Empire, and a champion of the disaffected whose work came to be valued by the elite art establishment. Harrod covers Cardew's sojourn from a life making majestic slipware in Gloucestershire and then on an African subcontinent rich in local clays and artistic traditions, and then to his founding of a countercultural pottery concern in Cornwall, and finally to his lengthy stays in the Echo Park neighborhood of Los Angeles. This talk coincides with the publication of Harrod's latest work, The Last Sane Man: Michael Cardew, Modern Pots, Colonialism and the Counterculture (Yale University Press).

Brown Auditorium | Tickets available through December 4 | $20 general admission; $15 members; free for DADC members and students with ID | Tickets: 323 857-6528 or decartscouncil@lacma.org

Decorative Arts and Design Council Lecture Series made possible by the Elsie de Wolfe Foundation.
Image: By kind permission of Noel Osheroff