Linda Gunn-Russell

by **croker** February 18th 2021, 4:45 pm

i purchased this pot about 30 years ago it is unusually salt glaze with raku ,the person i bought it from said it dated from around 1980 approx 14 inches tall. i have always liked the pot but have never managed to get much info on the potter. i believe there was a retrospective in c1980 . any info would be appreciated.

by **dantheman** February 18th 2021, 5:06 pm

it just looks like Raku? I haven't come across salt-glazed raku?

by **philpot** February 18th 2021, 5:21 pm

Its absolutely nothing like the work she is famous for. Thin, bright coloured modernist pieces. When it has come up for auction it has achieved fairly hefty prices.
https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/price-guide?pgSearchTerm=LINDA+GUNN+RUSSELL

by **croker** February 18th 2021, 5:31 pm

I have seen the later coloured constructions but at a slightly earlier period she was producing plainer raku pieces, i refer you to two pieces in the Liliana Epstein collection and I believe there was an exhibition of raku and saltglaze at the british crafts centre in 1980.

by **philpot** February 18th 2021, 5:58 pm

There is an early Raku piece in the V&A collection dated 1980. She would only have been 5 years out of Camberwell School of Art then. Paul Rice only mentions 'some Raku' which possibly suggests she was still finding her voice in Ceramics. It might well be that her later work has been so successful that the earlier work gets somewhat ignored and forgotten. It happens...
The Lilliana Epstein collection indeed. She did have very interesting taste, but she also hoovered up a lot of work! I remember buying up 5 pieces of Derek Davis at that auction for hammer price of £70. 1997?

by **studio-pots** February 18th 2021, 6:02 pm

I got out my old catalogue from back then and the sale was at Christie's South Ken on 27 April 1998.

Here's an image of the 3 Linda Gunn Russell pieces from my catalogue.

by **croker** February 18th 2021, 6:11 pm

yes the lilliana epstein collection was a strange one apart for her love of henderson and baldwin (some shaw influence there i think)it was a very mixed bag.

by **studio-pots** February 18th 2021, 6:12 pm

The pots in my image from the catalogue were between 26 and 30 cm tall and the hammer prices, which I used to write in, were 248 (£650), 249 with hairline crack (£90) and 250 (£280).

The provenance for the pieces were 2 exhibitions. The last of these was at Anatol Orient in 1985 and called "Ten Years in the Making" a Linda Gunn-Russell Retrospective. The first one was at the British Crafts Centre, London in 1980 and that exhibition was entitled, "Raku and Saltglaze". However, it was a mixed exhibition of raku pots and salt-glazed pots and not just pots by Gunn-Russell that were just raku.

by **philpot** February 18th 2021, 6:13 pm

You are Very Well organised Studio. That photo does illustrate the direction she was heading tho.

by **studio-pots** February 18th 2021, 6:16 pm

croker wrote:yes the lilliana epstein collection was a strange one apart for her love of henderson and baldwin (some shaw influence there i think)it was a very mixed bag.

I think she was someone with plenty of money that got interested in pots and could be persuaded to buy anything by the slick operators of the time.

by **croker** February 19th 2021, 4:34 pm

does anybody have access to the catalogue of the bcc exhibition of saltglaze and raku c1980?

by **studio-pots** February 19th 2021, 5:33 pm

The British Crafts Centre, which became the Crafts Council, are very unlikely to have produced a catalogue. Going to their later exhibitions, the best you could hope for would have been a printed price list and they would have been annoyed if you took it away.

by **croker** February 19th 2021, 5:58 pm

hi, thanks for that, incidentally i have always been under the impression that raku can be used with any glaze type.

by **studio-pots** February 20th 2021, 11:05 am

Raku is low temperature fired and quick fired and so some glazes wouldn't work. Likewise it would be very difficult, if not impossible to make sodium chloride vaporise and having sufficient heat for the sodium to react with the silica of the clay body to form sodium silicate, which is responsible for the typical appearance of salt-glazed pottery.

by **NaomiM** February 20th 2021, 2:51 pm

I assume the catalogue was for salt glaze and raku wares, rather than salt glazed raku.

It you put a request in to your local library and say it’s for research then they may be able to get a photocopy of the catalogue if any of the museums, Universities or the British Library has a copy

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