Phil Rogers was a near neighbour. Very soon after we bought our place in Radnorshire we drove the fifteen miles to Rhayader and met him and Lynne, hit it off, and invited them for lunch the next day. I hadn’t much to show as a potter, other than the stuff we were eating off, my wheels and bench in the old dairy, a pile of bricks in the pole barn and some drawings for a kiln. Phil cast his eye over these and suggested significant simplifications - a good thing; I’d probably still be building the three chamber one today!
I’d known Phil’s work since very soon after I’d started potting. We’d followed the same route of fine art at art college, then teaching. That was when I had to learn to pot. I believe he’d been enthused shortly before he went into a classroom. He stuck with teaching for five years, I for thirty-five.
Our inspirations were pretty much the same - the “Leach School”, especially Richard Batterham, country pottery, pots in museums. We must also have been admiring the work of our contemporaries who were coming out of the studio pottery course run by Mick Casson at Harrow and whose work was being featured in “Ceramic Review”. Within a couple of years of my starting to pot, Phil himself joined the list of my inspirations.
He was very soon grouped with Mike Dodd and Jim Malone as the “Anglo-Oriental School”. While they were great admirers of Japanese and Korean pottery, I think they all felt the language they developed is sufficiently strong for us to stop stressing the role of an outside influence. Nonetheless the “yunomis”, “guinomis” and “chawans” are pretty much inconceivable without it and Phil Rogers’ standing in Japan (as also in the USA) is immense.
He was a fine teacher, as attested by those who came on his summer courses in the early days at Rhayader. He taught master classes abroad and his books are further evidence of a great communicator.
He could be famously grumpy, and didn’t do “small talk”. He liked to get things done and, although he played an important role on various forums over his career, he really didn’t think of himself as a “committee man”.
Articulate, honest and clear thinking, with a sure eye for quality and an assured sense of form, it was good to be around pots with him. He was also supportive at a personal level. We had cause to be grateful for his friendship and that of Lynne and Hajeong.