Tyas, M. (Ed.), 2015. Emmanuel Cooper: Connections & Contrasts. The Leach Pottery, St Ives.

As editor, researcher, and photographer of its archive images, this book, a publication featuring alongside the ‘Emmanuel Cooper: Connections & Contrasts’ exhibition that I curated for the Leach Pottery, provides a delightful insight into the connections and contrasts between Emmanuel Cooper and Bernard Leach.

It begins with a foreword by Edmund de Waal that provides a sense of the topography relating to the figures of Bernard Leach and Emmanuel Cooper as advocates, writers, and makers. This is followed by Professor Simon Olding’s essay charting some of the connections and contrasts between Bernard and Emmanuel: their careers shared a similar trajectory, but their social backgrounds, and the site and outcomes of their practice, were quite different.

The following chapter discusses the curatorial approach to the exhibition and surveys items from the Emmanuel Cooper Archive, including early drawings and shots of him making, before presenting a range of work from his later years and a photographic portrait of Emmanuel in his absence. This portrait, by Aileen Harvey, shows something of Emmanuel’s seemingly chaotic workspace and practice, untouched since his death.

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