One of the most distinctive and unique voices in the British ceramic scene of the past century, James Tower has been seen by many as more sculptor than potter. Whereas today the lines are blurred between ceramics and the so called ‘fine’ arts, with makers such as Edmund de Waal and Grayson Perry crossing into both fields, this blurring of the lines was not commonplace in the 1950s. Teaching at the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham, Tower rubbed shoulders with some of the leading painters and sculptors of the period, including Howard Hodgkin, Peter Lanyon and Kenneth Armitage. In London he was shown at the leading gallery for contemporary ‘cool’, Gimpel Fils, and alongside artists such as Barbara Hepworth, Bernard Meadows and Robert Adams, stood his ground.
