ANDREW WALFORD (b. 1942)
Untitled
1989
stoneware
size unknown
BIOGRAPHY
Internationally acclaimed potter Andrew Walford has been working in his mountaintop studio overlooking the Shongweni Dam in KwaZulu-Natal and game reserve for nearly 40 years.
In 1947, at the age of five, he arrived in South Africa with his family in a wooden airplane. He studied at Durban Art School from 1957 – 59 and then apprenticed with Walsh Marais and Sammy Liebermann until establishing his own studio in Durban in 1961.
In 1964, he travelled to Europe, where he met Bernard Leach, Lucie Rie and Michael Cardew. He established a studio in Staufen, Germany in 1965 and taught at the Hamburg Academy of Art from 1966 – 68.
Walford returned to South Africa in 1968 and, after travelling in Asia, and meeting with Shoji Hamada, he established a new studio in the hills of Shongweni in 1970.
Inspired by Eastern philosophy, Walford works in the Japanese tradition – both in his meticulous method and in his use of minimalist brush strokes. He has been described as KwaZulu-Natal’s Zen Potter. Other core sources of inspiration include Zulu culture and ubumba (clay) traditions as well as the spectacular indigenous bush and birdlife surrounding his home and workshop.
Walford digs his own stoneware clay high up on a wild windswept ridge in the Drakensberg and carefully prepares it by hand to his own requirements. Water used is from a spring near his home and he works with thick chun glazes sifted by hand from wood ash and burnt native grass, in colours of rich resonant tenmokus, fatty whites and shades of celadon. His enormous oil-burning kiln takes 24 hours to fire and reaches a white heat of 1380 degrees C. It then takes three days to cool before Walford gingerly takes the first brick out of the door to see the results of two months’ work.
Walford’s work has been exhibited worldwide, from Japan to the United States, from South Korea to the United Kingdom and across mainland Europe.
A Potter’s Tale in Africa: The Life and Works of Andrew Walford by Neil Wright was published by Wright Publishing Company in 2009.