'The lowliest material on the earth — mud — becomes something beautiful, valuable and unique': Will Gompertz on the 'incredible alchemy' of pottery
Little beats the alchemy of pottery, which turns humble mud into a thing of beauty, as Will Gompertz tells Carla Passino.
Pottery fascinates Will Gompertz, the director of the Sir John Soane’s Museum in London. ‘What is so extraordinarily moving about it is that we’re taking the lowliest material on the earth — mud — and, through human ingenuity and creativity and sensitivity, creating something beautiful, valuable and unique. It is the most incredible piece of alchemy, really.’
He paraphrases German philosopher and culture critic Walter Benjamin, who, in his essay on the mechanical reproduction of artworks, suggested that paintings have an intrinsic aura, a uniqueness linked to their cultural context. ‘I never quite believed that about paintings, but I do believe it about pottery, because of the shaping human touch.’
Much like another prominent collector of the art form, Zandra Rhodes, Gompertz finds that it brightens his life. ‘It’s such a joy to have it in the house. You know paintings have wall power, but great pottery — it’s got table power.’ It is all the more amazing because ceramic is not, as he puts it, ‘wildly expensive: as an art form, it’s available and affordable’.
However, his interest is deeper and more personal than ‘just’ artistic appreciation. ‘My “fame to claim” is that I am a distant relative of Lucie Rie, who was born Lucie Gomperz — with no ‘t’, but it is the same family.’ She emigrated from Austria in the 1930s at a time when British ceramics was the domain of Bernard Leach, ‘with whom I don’t think she got on terribly well,’ says Gompertz. ‘Her pottery is just wonderful.’
He recalls watching a documentary about Rie in which she was interviewed by Sir David Attenborough: ‘She wasn’t very big and her kiln was huge: there’s one moment when she’s leaning to get out a piece and is actually just about to disappear into it. I might have made this up, but in my mind’s eye, David Attenborough grabs her by the ankles and stops her from falling in.’ (His memory is not playing a trick: Sir David really did rescue the diminutive ceramicist).
Dame Lucie Rie, pictured in 1988.
Gompertz believes that it’s thanks to people such as Rie, Leach, Hans Coper and, more recently, Edmund de Waal and Sir Grayson Perry that pottery’s standing has changed in the past few decades. ‘There’s no doubt that it has become a more appreciated art form from the doldrums of the early 20th century. I think it’s alive and well and thriving.’
Among the most interesting ‘hands’ of the younger generation, he singles out those of Chloé Rosetta Bell. ‘Her attention to detail, her use of material and her understanding of form all come together and she’s so sincere in her work. She spends a lot of time in Nature, looking specifically at a very small pocket of land and working with that mud to make extraordinary annual collections.’
Gompertz first came across Ms Bell in 2019, when she was still a student at the Royal College of Art (RCA): ‘I was at the end-of-the-year show,’ he recalls. ‘I had actually gone to see some painters, but drifted into her studio area and was bowled over by the materiality and this honesty that she put into her work.’ As she left the RCA and set up on her own, Mr Gompertz began supporting her. He now tries to buy a piece every season, but there is an early one in particular that has a very special place in his heart: an oyster-shell vase, part of a series she made in 2019 in Porthilly, Cornwall.
Artist Chloé Rosetta Bell created a series of works in 2019 inspired by the north Cornwall village of Porthilly, a favourite childhood holiday destination for collector Will Gompertz.
‘Chloé’s brought two important things of my life together through her own creativity,’ he explains: the vase is not only a memento of his long-standing connection with pottery and Rie, but also reminds him of Porthilly, where his parents had taken him on holiday when he was young and where he has since taken his own children.
‘It’s a beautiful part of north Cornwall, on the other side of the Camel estuary from Padstow — it’s so ancient and so beautiful. The light is magnificent and Chloé captures that in this group of works so well. They are grey and green, and they glisten with the oyster shells.’ He stops to marvel once again at the magic of pottery: ‘In the hands of a real artist, such as Chloé, such as Rie, you end up with pieces that have immense inner — as well as exterior — beauty.’
This feature originally appeared in the September 16, 2026, print edition of Country Life. Click here for more information on how to subscribe.
