David Leach and John Maltby, JM or TM mark

I assume the LD is for David Leach but what is the other mark?

Yes, the LD is for David Leach. I haven't come across the other mark before. Looks like JM. I wonder if he was ever at Muchelney.
Helps to have a photo of the whole pot to match clay and style to another pottery

Thanks.  Here is the pot.

Lovely pot

With Jeremy at Muchelney?

That " J" bends the wrong way; maybe it isn't a J, or is characteristic of someone else. Jeremy Leach's marks shown on BISPM all bend the correct way

The M reminds me of John Maltby's mark. He was of course apprenticed to David Leach for two years from 1962. Lovely pot, but nothing like Maltby's Stonehill work of course.

I have seen hundreds, if not thousands, of David's pots over the years and never seen a press mould bottle by him like this that is reminiscent of his father and Hamada.

It would suggest to me that it perhaps dates from 1950s or 1960s - an image of the base might help but I have the feeling from the side view that it could be more recent than that.

What part of the country did you find the bottle, Potsdl?

It was left to me by a friend but I’m sure I remember being told it was bought at ‘the pottery’ and I’ve always thought this meant Cornwall. I will post a picture of the whole base in a while.

Any suggestions as to how I can definitively date and attribute it?

Edited to add, on second thoughts it looks like a TM rather than a JM monogram

Nigel Dutt on Facebook has a huge collection of John Maltby pottery. Maybe he'd know if it's one of his marks. However, this is the mark I have for Maltby when he was at Lowerdown

https://www.20thcenturyforum.com/t6955p250-john-maltby#226423

Similar to the stamp David Leach was using at Loughborough College in the 1960s, so possibly a collaboration then

Here is the base of the pot

Did David every pot in Japan on a visit? Looks like a Hamada shape.

Mystery mark IDed on another site as John Maltby
John Maltby, A Life of Creativity, page 6 -

Do it say who was responsible for which part of the making i.e. one made the bottle and the other decorated, for example?

No it does not. But there is a photo of John Maltby and David Leach together both throwing a pot on separate wheels.
I was right my first suggestion tho.

I would expect L+ and JM to be made and glazed by John. But LD and JM suggests that they collaborated on the making at the pre bisqued stage. Who glazed it would probably be down to the style of glaze decoration. John was the trainee at this stage and probably hadn't developed the unique style of glaze decoration of his later years.

Good find Naomi!

It looks like David Leach's decoration so I'm guessing John Maltby made it

NaomiM wrote:It looks like David Leach's decoration so I'm guessing John Maltby made it

A reply from Nigel Dutt, a studio pottery collector, who I have known for many years................

"I took the above photos of the brown Lowerdown + Maltby bottle. It was at John’s house and was almost certainly made when he was an apprentice at David Leach’s Lowerdown pottery in the early 60's. He actually had it sitting next to a BL bottle and a Shoji Hamada pot so it was obviously special to him. According to Tim Andrews, another apprentice of David’s, that bottle used one of David’s standard glazes, and he used to charge his students one third of the potential retail price for making their own pots. So it looks like this brown one was all John’s, made at Lowerdown, while the one in the original post was a joint piece. Tim's opinion is that the bottle was made from a mould of David's, which is very similar to ones that Bernard made at St Ives, and the decoration is John's. The JM stamp is exactly the same on the two bottles".

Great info

John and David throwing pots at Lowerdown, circa 1962.

Happy Christmas Everyone!

Best regards Pugmill