Janet Leach : Potter

Janet Darnell’s childhood in Texas during the Roaring Twenties and the Depression imbued her with resilience and practical skills, largely acquired on her grandparents’ farm.Aged 19 she took a bus to New York City where she found work as a sculptor’s assistant.During the Second World War she worked on Staten Island welding the hulls and bows of ten US Navy destroyers.After discovering pottery she met Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada at a Black Mountain College seminar where her love of pottery was sealed.She then spent two years potting in Japan where she met Bernard again and he proposed marriage.They planned to build a pottery near Kyoto but two years absence from the Leach Pottery obliged Bernard to return to Cornwall and a year later, in 1956, Janet reluctantly left Japan, persuaded to join him in St.Ives, a place unknown to her, in a country she had never visited.There she stayed for over 40 years, as manager of the world-famous Leach Pottery, while also making her own remarkable pots.