A Potter's Moll: An Encounter With Mr Melvyn Bragg
Liz Robison is the wife of Jim Robison, a potter of international renown who is based in Holmfirth, Yorkshire.
Liz, who will be writing regularly for Open Writing, calls herself a Potter's Moll - and the first to hear that soubriquet was Melvyn Bragg, the novelist and TV personality.
Here is Liz's sparkling self-introductory column. And do please visit Jim Robison's Web site http://www.jimrobison.co.uk/
I would like to introduce myself as a self-styled Potter’s Moll. My husband, Jim, is a potter/sculptor of thirty-odd years’ standing and the description of myself as his Moll first popped into my head when we attended an exhibition many years ago to celebrate the opening of an extension of Leeds Art Gallery. Jim’s work formed part of the exhibition, which was opened by Melvyn Bragg. In his speech Melvyn made a superb defence of the importance of the arts in the then climate of Thatcherite cuts.
Afterwards he and his wife were walking round the show and no one seemed to be talking to them, so my friend and I decided to take the plunge. He could not have been nicer: friendly, interested, chatty. Then he asked me: ‘Are you a potter?’ ‘Oh no,’ I replied, ‘I’m just a Potter’s Moll.’
So what does the role entail? Meeting and greeting, retailing, catering, entertaining, mailing: you name it, I do it. People sometimes say: ‘Don’t you do any clay work yourself?’ (A question I feel one would not ask a brain surgeon’s wife!) When I first knew Jim I did go to a couple of night school pottery classes, so I have some hands on experience, but I knew then that there would never be any competition between us. On the way to the second lesson I said to my friend: ‘I wonder how my Grecian urn looks this week?’ When the teacher did a critique of the class’s work, he picked up my piece and said: ‘Whose is the gnome’s cap?’
In the past few months my role has included catering lunch and evening meal for eight students on a course in the studio, accompanying Jim on a trip to Holland to do a two-day seminar for Dutch potters, and providing mulled wine and home-made mince pies for visitors to our annual Christmas exhibition in our Gallery. The trip to Holland was a bonus: often when Jim goes off to do demonstrations and seminars, I am left to hold the fort at home. On one occasion when our children were little he was away for a weekend doing a demonstration for potters in Devon. A woman came up to him afterwards and said: ‘Tell your wife she’s a very lucky woman.’ He thought for a moment and said: ‘I don’t think I’ll tell her that tonight!’
The run-up to Christmas is always a pleasant time here – new work on display, seasonal decorations and the return visits of many customers who have become friends over the thirty plus years we have been here.
More from me in a fortnight – that’s a nice old-fashioned word. No name-dropping next time.
