Gordon Baldwin (born 1932)
Although the ceramics world has been very keen to embrace Perry, he does not consider himself a potter but an artist working in clay. Gordon Baldwin provides an interesting precursor to this point of view. He came to pottery from the field of sculpture which he studied at the Lincoln School of Art along with the traditional subjects of life drawing, painting from nature and anatomy. Baldwin progressed to London's Central School of Art (1950-54) where he studied industrial pottery (pottery produced by industrial techniques) rather than his chosen subject of painting. The Central School of Art proved a liberal environment for study and boasted such luminaries as William Turnbull, Victor Pasmore, Richard Hamilton, Eduardo Paolozzi and Dora Billington on its staff. Baldwin was also heavily influenced by a contem-porary exhibition of Paul Klee's Surrealist works.

Figure 16. Three porcelain vases by Geoffrey Swindell showing probably the complete contrast in scale from his smallest (2in.) to his tallest (4½in.) vessels.

Dora Billington, in charge of the Pottery Department, was more interested in glazes and form than the 'correct' historical techniques of throwing. She encouraged experimentation and modern creative thought rather than the Leach tradition. However, Baldwin emerged from this training equipped with all the traditional potter's arts of coiling, slabbing, modelling and moulding which he practises in his ceramics. He has never used an assistant in producing a series of works that challenge the division between art and craft.
Baldwin marries his technical craftsmanship with artistic experimentation and exploration. His works usually carry titles which are not a description of the creation, but a reflection on the work. The forms are often on a large scale and can be related to other works and are often created in series over a period of time. These forms, after an initial development, can metamorphose through drawings and sketches and thoughts to a new form.
Baldwin's work also breaks from tradition in its influences and inspiration which are from other forms of contemporary art rather than ceramics. Early forms from the 1950s show the influence of Henry Moore's standing figures and also the surrealist sculpture of Alberto Giacometti, HansArp and Pablo Picasso. Many of these early forms have a surface decoration applied, worked or painted. Between 1967 and 1974 Baldwin reduced his glaze experiments to a simple black or metallic glaze and forms were often totemic. Music, too, provided inspiration, with work by Bartok, Cage and Stockhausen cited as an influence on pieces such as 'Slow Move'.
The 1970S saw a continued interest in the Surrealist movement with a series of boxes, such as 'Box for Hans Arp' (1974). These pieces are hollow but sealed in construction (boxes for a brief moment) and for the first time include the words as part of the decoration - a parrellel to the cut and joined constructions produced by artist Joe Tilson at this time. 'Five Seconds in the Rain' (1974) was made by exposing the biscuit fired piece to the falling rain for five seconds creating a natural and random surface decoration; where the raindrops fell, holes were pierced that create a solar system of stars on a white sky ground. With these pieces, Baldwin returned to a white palette, using a slip he developed which is thinly and painstakingly built up over many layers.
Towards the end of the 1970s, Baldwin turned his attention to the bottle and bowl form, exploding its appearance. These works are still sculptural, but a stronger architectural resonance is emerging. The bowls are generally still recognisable in their form, but the vases are often deconstructed with tube necks bent around forming a 'rim', or bent through the middle, concealed by larger planes of earthenware flanges. Through this period, both the black and white colour-ways are used, whilst Baldwin also experimented using a blue and a vivid yellow colour base.
Gordon Baldwin has produced a large body of varied work which is influenced more by other fields of art than the ceramic tradition and it almost demands to be viewed in the context of contemporary art as much as pottery.