Alan Caiger-Smith has been named winner of the Potterycrafts Lifetime Achievement Award at this year’s International Ceramics Festival in Aberystwyth.
Born in Buenos Aires in 1930, the Cambridge University graduate founded the former Aldermaston Pottery in Hampshire with Geoffrey Eastop in Berkshire in 1955 and has written extensively on the history of ceramics, tin-glaze pottery and lustre decoration.
The Lifetime Achievement award is presented to a potter or ceramicist who has done much to promote the ceramic arts during their life, with the recipient selected from proposals made by guests and visitors at the 2013 festival.
The 85-year-old trained at the Central School of Art & Design under Dora Billington and Kenneth Clark and during Friday night’s Opening Ceremony at Aberystwyth Arts Centre, was presented with a ceramic piece made by British studio potter Walter Keeler, recipient of the last award in 2013.
Alan is the author of a number of important and scholarly texts on the history of ceramics and has concentrated his efforts on perfecting the use of tin glaze and painted pigments on red earthenware clay, and the firing of lustres onto tin glazes. The Mick Casson Lecture at the festival tomorrow afternoon (Sat) will provide a snapshot of Alan’s life and work.
Other previous Lifetime Achievement Award winners include Emmanuel Cooper (UK), who won in 2011 and Americans Don Reitz and Ruth Duckworth, who won in 2009 and 2007 respectively.