This film was made as a joint effort by photographer John Anderson and Robert Fournier, a founder member of the Craftsmen Potters Association.  The two of them made several other pottery films, now with a pottery museum in Devon, with the original of this film deposited with the YFA.  John recalls the story of making the film in detail in Ceramic Review and in the RPS Journal (References).  Robert’s wife Sheila set the ball rolling by introducing John to Isaac Button in 1960, who he then...

This film was made as a joint effort by photographer John Anderson and Robert Fournier, a founder member of the Craftsmen Potters Association.  The two of them made several other pottery films, now with a pottery museum in Devon, with the original of this film deposited with the YFA.  John recalls the story of making the film in detail in Ceramic Review and in the RPS Journal (References).  Robert’s wife Sheila set the ball rolling by introducing John to Isaac Button in 1960, who he then photographed the following year. Then in the summer 1962 the two of them started filming, using a rather ancient Bell and Howell ‘Filmo’ which he had bought second hand in 1953.   Robert, being something of a cineaste, wrote the script. This resulted in a ten minute film the following year which they hired out.


But on learning of the imminent retirement of Isaac Button they began work on making a longer film in the summer of 1964, made over a period of 4 or 5 weekends, and competed in 1965 on a budget of £200. Robert’s wife Sheila made the captions in Letraset. In his article Philip Stanbridge gives John as the cameraman and Robert as the director, but given John’s photographic expertise this doesn’t seem likely (References).


Over a period of 15 years about 40 copies were made, and later on, around 1982, this was followed up by some 80 VHS copies.  It got seen around the world via the British Council.  John also set up a postal video business, ‘Films for Potters’, which he ran until 2008 that sold and hired films. A collection of Anderson and Fournier films is held with the British Film Institute, and some with the Leach Pottery Studios and Museum in St Ives.
The film has been acclaimed by many, including, at the time, the magazine Film User which gave it an enthusiastic review. The art and craft historian, Tanya Harrod, has written that: “Anderson’s masterpiece was Isaac Button . . . an elegiac black and white film which in turn has been influenced by inter-war British documentaries, like John Grierson’s Industrial Britain with its splendid dramatic shots of steel workers, potters and glass blowers caught close up in concentration and its serried ranks of dramatically lit pots.” (References, 1999).  The Craft Potters Association, formed in 1956/7, published a booklet in 1970, Films on Craft Ceramics, listing films available at that time.


Robert Fournier was also an interesting character: a lifelong pacifist he was imprisoned during the Second World War for refusing to enlist and as bombs fell on London, he helped produce the prisoners' magazine. He taught pottery as well as making his own highly inventive ceramics, producing many illustrated books. The Sound Archive at the British Library has a recording of an interview with Robert from 2005 where he talks at length about Isaac Button and his work – remarking on him taking Isaac to the opera – and describing the making of this film.  He went on to write several novels in retirement.


Evidence of pottery going back to preo-Roman times has been found in East Yorkshire and in groups of mainly rural potters at locations such as Crambeck near York.  Wheel-made pottery took over during the Roman occupation, and then there seems to have been a break in pottery making after the Romans left until it took off again after the Norman invasion, when the practice of wheel-made pottery-making returned to Britain, introduced from Europe.  In the medieval and post-medieval periods potteries became widespread in Yorkshire, especially in the vicinity of Ripon, notably medieval works at Winksley, Fountains and Sawley, and seventeenth-century works at Yearsley near Coxwold. There is also plenty of evidence for their existence in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries on meadow lands at Thorpe and Bondgate in Ripon (see the article by Richard Carlton, References). 


But by 1900 there were only about 100 traditional potteries surviving, dwindling to less than a dozen by the end of the Second World War. Isaac Button was therefore one of a dying breed. The pottery he worked at Soil Hill, an exposed windswept hillside by the Halifax-Denholme road at Ogden, north of Halifax, had existed since the 1760’s. It had originally been started by the Catherall family. His grandfather, a brick maker (also an Isaac), bought the pottery in 1897 and re-built to a design, unusually a downdraft design for the kiln. Before the war it employed 13 men, and in 1943 it passed into the hands of Isaac and his brother, Arthur. However, the brothers fell out (John Anderson has this as 1954, although another source has it earlier) – after an argument they don’t speak to each other – and Isaac, being unable to find anyone willing to become an apprentice, worked it alone for the last 18 years (the story seems to have a biblical flavour).  Recently an online blogger, who goes by the name of ‘soubriquet’, revisited the site and talked to two old men in the pub opposite who had known Isaac. He reports that: “Apparently, despite what John Windsor said, he lived there with his brother [Arthur], and they worked together, but following some argument, years ago they would not speak to each other. They'd talk volubly with others, but if asked anything that referred to the other, they'd say "Tha'll 'ave ter ask 'im, Ah dooant know".”


This was truly a herculean task, given all the work that was required: digging the clay from the local hillside himself (he used a ton a day); firing up the 500 cubic foot kiln, which had to be stoked with two and half tons of coal at six fire mouths; this had to be kept him up for 48 hours or more at a time, during which, according to John Windsor, “he would climb on to the hot kiln roof, even in gales, to pull out test firings”.   Despite all this he still managed to turn out, and deliver, 120 pots a day; and this using dangerous substances such the country glaze was galena toxic – lead sulphide (now illegal) – which could give potters "bellyache" if pulverised when dry. Yet, with his pipe, he looks so laid back in the film.  Possibly the best account of Isaac’s work is that given by John Anderson in his book Making Pottery, but Philip Stanbridge also provides a good description (see References).   For a more poetic description of Isaac at work see the collection of poems by Graham Mort, A Halifax Cider Jar, inspired by this film and which won an international poetry prize (References).

Mary Sara, one of the illustrators for A Halifax Cider Jar, along with many others, has remarked that in the 1950s and 1960s most people were buying modern made from plastic and metal and earthenware was out of fashion, only to return again later when the rustic look became popular again. But this renewed interest was due in part to people like Isaac Button. Also in his article, in the Independent from 1995, None of that fancy stuff, John Windsor states that: “The founders of British 20th century studio pottery - Bernard Leach, Michael Cardew and the Japanese Shoji Hamada - sought out the few remaining English country potters and copied their techniques. But their debt to them is often overlooked and English country pottery remains largely undiscovered.” But these later artist potters are not in the business of providing cheap wares for everyday use: a cider pot made by Michael Cardew is worth considerably more than the 28 shillings Isaac would get for his 28lb cider jars.


In his appreciation of Isaac Button (Introduction to Mort, 1987), Barry Sheridan states that Button, “was the very last surviving local craftsman producing earthenware pottery in the domestic manner, and, when he retired in 1965, the industry died with him.” But this may not be quite right, as Richard Carlton claims that Littlethorpe, just outside Ripon, “is now the only surviving example of a British country pottery where production has been unbroken and whose working practices and technical appliances have remained essentially unchanged since the nineteenth century.”


The pottery at Soil Hill was bought by Donald Greenwood in 1968 – possibly sold to him unwittingly by Isaac Button (see John Windsor) – who rented it to potter Peter Strong (later of Wetheriggs), who re-opened it for a while in the 1970s, with his wife Cynthia and Bob Hammond; but problems with the lease meant that this only lasted a couple of years (the YFA has a letter from Peter Strong to John Anderson, dated December 1976, detailing the restoration work on the buildings he was doing at that time). In 1980 the kiln, drying shed and chimney at Soil Hill Pottery, were Grade II listed. Later on in the 1980s the Friends of Soil Hill was set up by, among others, Rob Walker. This wanted to rebuild and rework the pottery incorporating a museum and educational facilities. To this end an auction of contemporary ceramics was held at Bonhams in London in 1988 which raised £15,0000. It isn’t clear at this time what has happened to this project. Today the buildings stand derelict and dilapidated.


After such a hard life, it might not be surprising that Isaac lived for only a few years, until 1969, after retiring in 1965, just six weeks after the completion of this film.  But this didn’t mean that Isaac was always working: according to John Windsor he maintained that, “he never left a pub on the same day that he entered it.”

References

(John Anderson’s widow has kindly donated a large collection of material relating to the film, including many of John’s photographs)
John Anderson, ‘Isaac Button’, RPS Journal, Vol. 145, No. 2, March 2005.
John Anderson, Making Pottery, Smith Settle, Otley, 1998.
John Anderson, ‘Master Maker of Baking Bowls’, in The Ridings, Vol. 2 No. 6, Dec. 1965 – Jan. 1966, pp 7-9.
Graham Mort, A Halifax Cider Jar,  (illustrated by various artists: limited edition with an appreciation of the potter, Isaac Button, by Barry L. Sheridan), Yorkshire Arts Circus, 1987
Graham and Maggie Mort (eds), Giant Steps, No 1, Spring 1983, Ingleborough Press, Clapham.
Mary Sara, ‘Hard Graft and True Craft’, Yorkshire Journal, Number 4, Winter 1993, pp 99-109.
Philip Stanbridge, ‘Isaac Button, English Country Potter’, Ceramics Monthly, Volume: 39, Issue 7, September 1991.
John Windsor, the Independent (1995), None of that fancy stuff 
The National Electronic & Video Archive of the Crafts - NEVAC
Grit in the gears
Richard Carlton, in Interpreting Ceramics (Issue 4),   The Origins and Survival of Littlethorpe Potteries in the Context of British Country Pottery-Making
Obituary of Robert Fournier in the Independent (12 March 2008)
Littlethorpe Potteries   

 

Further Information

Andrew McGarva, Country Pottery: Traditional Earthenware of Britain: The Traditional Earthenware of Britain, A & C Black Publishers, 2000. (has a chapter on Soil Hill)