Gilbert Harding-Green

Gilbert Harding-Green was the head of Ceramics at the Central School from 1956-1971. His philosophy was not to train potters, but to educate his students and to draw from them their best and individual qualities and to teach them in areas beyond the immediate realm of ceramics. He has been remembered as having an advanced cosmopolitan and international outlook of his time, which came across fully in his teaching to students from all across the world.

Born in London in 1906, he spent only a few early years there before leaving to live in Brazil in the early 1920s, travelling the Amazon and learning Portuguese, then on to Italy. His education in England involved studying modelling with John Skeaping and Frank Dobson at Central St Martin’s and Chelsea School of Art. The present work is a study that existing alongside his main practice of ceramics.