Alan Caiger-Smith MBE (8 February 1930 – 21 February 2020[1]) was a British ceramicist, studio potter and writer on pottery.
Caiger-Smith was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He studied at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts and read history at King's College, Cambridge (1949-1952). He trained in pottery at the Central School of Art & Design in 1954 under Dora Billington.[2]
According to Grove Art, Alan Caiger-Smith established the Aldermaston Pottery in 1955, "a cooperative workshop of about seven potters making functional domestic ware and tiles, as well as individual commissions and one-off pots. By trial and error he revived and perfected two virtually lost techniques: the use of tin glaze and painted pigments on red earthenware clay, and the firing of lustres on to tin glazes."[3] However, "virtually lost" is questionable: in his Lustre Pottery, Caiger-Smith himself covers relatively recent revivals of lustrewarebyWilliam De Morgan, Vilmos Zsolnay, Clément Massier and Pilkington's Royal Lancastrian Pottery.[4] In particular his researches "reconstructed the medieval Islamic lustreware technique".[5]
He was joined at Aldermaston Pottery by a number of other potters, including Geoffrey Eastop (1921–2014).[6]
Alan Caiger-Smith's book on Tin-Glaze Pottery (1973) covers its history and much of its technique.[7] He co-translated and annotated with R.W. Lightbown a detailed contemporary description of the materials and methods of Renaissance maiolica, Cipriano Piccolpasso's I Tre Libre Dell'Arte Del Vasaio (The Three Books of the Potter’s Art) (1980). His history of lustre ware, Lustre Pottery, was published in 1985.
Caiger-Smith was Chairman of the British Crafts Centre (1973–1978) and was awarded the MBE in 1988.[2] He ceased employing assistants in 1993 to concentrate on personal work and in 2006 announced his decision to sell the Aldermaston Pottery.[8]