Michael Crosby-Jones, Briglin Pottery and Gopsall Pottery

"Michael Crosby-Jones has been making pottery for a long time (over 50 years in fact). In 1971 he set up in Gopsall Street in London before relocating to a windmill in Rye in 1978 and then moving to Winchelsea beach."

There’s no room here to do justice to the astonishing lives of Michael Crosby-Jones. If I skim a flat stone over the surface of them I can tell you that he grew up near Cannock Chase in Staffordshire; spent a portion of his youth as a colonial police officer in then-Rhodesia, patrolling the veld and being pursued by lions; became a whaler and headed off to Norway; was shipwrecked and saved by divine intervention; spent a duration working deep within the haunted mines of Spitsbergen; lived on a remote island approachable only by boat; became a successful Scandinavian symbolist novelist (he wrote in Norwegian!); married, divorced, returned to the UK and became a wonderful artisan potter/political radical at the famous, very English, Briglin Pottery.

Eventually he moved to the Windmill (a local landmark) in Rye, then on to what became Gopsall Pottery in Winchelsea Beach (he bought the property from the artist Keith Purser). Winchelsea Beach was (at least when he first arrived there) a cheerful but occasionally beleaguered outpost which – with his ancient, trademark seaman’s cap and gaping overalls, his bristling moustache and giant hands, his sharp tongue and his twinkling blue eyes – Mike has diligently (and successfully) contrived to entertain and personify, exasperate and outrage, charm and inspire, for the past 25-odd years.

I have accepted the reality of Mike’s death, but as I wrote his eulogy – my fingers covering my keyboard effortlessly (shouldn’t it feel harder than this?) – I gradually realised that while I have never actively written about Mike (although his second wife, Margot, an artist, is definitely a muse), everything I have published in the past 15 years has been profoundly informed both by him and by his aesthetic. He was too big a character to contain in fiction, but his world view, his brutality, his exquisite vegetable patches, his Muscovy ducks, his daunting infinity of corrugated iron sheds, his pottery, his small kingdom of pristine filth has become a kind of fiction in which I have lived. And now Mike is gone and the margins on the pages have suddenly disappeared – the paper, the ink – and I’m not quite sure if the steady flow of words (ah, those trusty words; always steady, always flowing) will entirely stick or hold or even properly cohere.

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Nicola Barker’s most recent novel is ‘In the Approaches’ (4th Estate)

Mike, 78, of Gopsall Pottery, has already proved he is up to the challenge by breaking the record in an unofficial attempt last summer.
He managed to throw a magnificent 163 pots in the space of an hour, surpassing the 150 pots produced in the same time by current Guinness record holder Mark ‘Billy’ Byles, from Aylesford Pottery , near Maidstone, held since 2009.
This time Mike plans to make it official and will make his record attempt on Saturday February 2.
Mike , who has potted for 50 years, said: “I am not getting any younger but I feel I can do this. I want to pass the 163 pots that I managed in last year’s attempt.”
Mike went to art school in Norway in 1959 and on his return to the UK in 1966 joined the Briglin Pottery which was based in London’s West End.
In 1971 he set up Gopsall Pottery in Gopsall Street, London before relocating to the windmill in Rye in 1978 for four years and then moving to Winchelsea Beach.
It was whilst at Briglin that Mike found he had the skill to work fast at throwing pots and at Gopsall Pottery he was at one time producing 1,000 items a week for Chelsea Pottery.
On Saturday July 14 last year members of the Potteries of Rye Society congregated at Gopsall Pottery, to witness the attempt on the world record in front of some 14 onlookers .
Mike was helped by two other local potters.
Tim Smith ensured the balls of clay were ready and Steve Russell removed each plank of eight completed pots and stacked them on shelves.
Tim then placed a fresh plank in front of Mike. At the end of the hour Mike had thrown a 163 pots,.
Robin Wilson, from the Potteries of Rye Society, described the feat as “awe-inspiring”.
He commented: “For a man of 78 years of age this was an incredible feat.
His son also videoed the whole hour and uploaded the footage to Youtube.
Robin said: “Mike got up from his wheel without any signs of exhaustion.”
Mike’s official attempt takes place at his Winchelsea Beach workshop on Saturday February 2.
Mike’s pottery can be found for sale in Rye at Country Ways on Strand Quay.