Academic, former board member, and friend of The Stradling Collection, Oliver Kent contextualises the importance of Sam Haile’s life and work…
Conscious Clay, the current show at the Stradling Gallery in Bristol, is a rare opportunity to see a large group of Sam Haile’s ceramics and drawings together. For many Haile is a relatively unknown name now, but in the late 1930s and 1940s he was seen as a significant young artist in Britain and in the USA. He was a fresh and dynamic painter and potter whose career began at the Royal College of Art in 1931 and came to an early end in a car crash in Dorset in 1948.
Haile won a scholarship to study painting at the Royal College of Art in 1931. Dissatisfied with the teaching he later transferred to ceramics where he was taught by William Staite Murray. Murray saw pottery as an artist’s medium and given that freedom Haile was able to begin to evolve a fresh way of working, a broad exploration, drawing together drawing, sculpture and pottery. He continued to see himself primarily as a painter but it is for the work in clay that he achieved success in his lifetime and has continued to be remembered.
There are two voices at the extremities of Haile’s work. His surrealist paintings are rooted in dark corners of the unconscious, exploring pain, suffering, sexuality and anxiety
There is no doubt that the political turmoil of the period is a factor in them too. The pots were used as a vehicle for drawing and the relationship between the image and the vessel form is crucial. Sometime the imagery follows that of the paintings but the main strand is concerned with classical and British mythologies. Choices of ceramic process were also driven by an interest in British traditions especially the slipwares that so excited Hamada Shoji and Michael Cardew. Working in slip provides a very immediate means of drawing directly onto the fresh clay, uninterrupted by drying and biscuit-firing. Cardew admired his work and encourage him to exhibit. A big show at the Brygos Gallery in London in 1937 was a success and marked Haile out as an artist to watch. Pots sold to major collectors and to museums in the UK and abroad.
Woman Holding a Child is an intriguing piece that demonstrates how fresh and inventive Haile was. There is no doubt he was influenced by Picasso and you might assume this a direct response to Picasso’s bottle-figures from the late 1940s. It is important to remember that Picasso did not begin working in clay at Vallauris until mid 1947 and Haile died in March 1948. Haile had been mixing pottery, painting and sculpture for more than a decade by them. Picasso had dabbled with ceramics in the 1930s but produced nothing like this. It is more the case that there was significant common ground between them in exploring the relationship between drawing and three dimensions but intaking the form and adapting it to the requirements of the drawing like this Haile is way ahead. In clay, Haile was well ahead.
Unhappy at the idea of being drawn into the developing crisis in Europe, Haile and his wife Marianne de Trey left for New York in 1939. The effect was to force a break in Haile’s career and result in a fresh start. After various jobs including working at Ford’s Porcelain Works in New Jersey as a decorator, he was spotted by Rena Rosenthal; a show in her Madison Avenue gallery in 1940 went down with similar success to the Brygos Gallery one and led to a job on the prestigious ceramics course at Alfred University. Here he flourished and is regarded as a significant influence on American studio pottery during that period.
The 1940s were not the best time to build a career and reputation as an artist and in 1943 he was recruited into the US Army as a non-combatant. He was able to transfer to the British Army and return to England where he was assigned to the Education Corps. His mental health may always have been an issue but now depression affected him badly and although once released from the forces, he and Marianne were able to set up making pottery at the Bulmer Brick and Tile Works in Essex, getting going again was difficult. Nonetheless, Paul Rice has argued that he made of his best work during this time (Rice et al 1993, 45). He returned to New York briefly and was able to sell his remaining work there, but despite an offer of work at Rhode Island School of Design, he chose to return to England. In 1947 Bernard Leach offered Sam and Marianne the chance to take over his pottery at Dartington Hall in Devon and it was there that things began to look up. A part-time job with the Rural Industries Board and getting the studio up and running took up a lot of time but new works began to appear. The series of pieces in the Stradling Collection that were inspired by Spinsters’ Rock, a prehistoric dolmen near Dartington date from this time.
In March 1948, driving back from an engagement for the RIB, and with pots pack in the back of his ex-army jeep, Sam collided with a bus. He must have been visiting a potential gallery too and various pieces including one of the Spinster’s Rock bowls were in the back. Marianne glued it back together and kept it.
A short career with few shows and a relatively small number of works has meant that Haile is much less well known than the innovative nature and quality of his work might suggest. There have been few major shows since his death and little published.
The exhibition is on at the Stradling Gallery, 48 Park Row, Bristol BS1 5LH until 30 June 2025. From 15 May it will include works responding to Sam Haile by ceramic artists Emilie Taylor. For more information, you can see opening times here and read more about the current exhibition Conscious Clay here.
Bibliography/references
Cooper, R., 1947. The Modern Potter. A Review of Current Ceramic Ware in Gt. Britain. London: Tiranti
De Trey, M., 1987. ‘Sam Haile – Painter and Potter.’ Ceramic Review, 107, 29-31.
McCully, M., 1998. Picasso, painter and sculptor in clay. London, Royal Academy of Arts
Remy, M. and Haile, M., 1987. Sam Haile. London: Birch and Conran
Rice, P., Haile M., Margrie, V. and Dana, E., 1993. Sam Haile, Potter and Painter. London: Bellew Publishing/Cleveland County Council.
Wingfield Digby, G., 1952. The Work of the Modern Potter in England. London: John Murray.
