BUT IS IT ART? BUT IS IT COPYRIGHT?

A small argument has broken out on Wikipedia about whether a photo of a soup bowl can be included. The bowl (above) was one of the St Ives Pottery’s range of standard wares, introduced in the 1940s by Bernard Leach and his son David to provide an income stream for the business. Making standard ware was how generations of potters learned their trade in the much-coveted Leach pottery apprenticeships. Someone on Wikipedia said that the photo was a breach of copyright and that it had to be removed. Like all artists, I’m concerned to protect my intellectual property but I don’t know much about copyright law, and the law as it applies here is complex.

The Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (section 62) says that an artist has copyright in a work of “artistic craftsmanship” and that such work can’t be copied and that a photo of it taken without the artist’s consent is a breach of copyright. An exemption is made for works of artistic craftsmanship displayed in public places, but the pot in this this photo is in the photographer’s private collection, not in a public place, and, odd as it may seem, that means that the exemption in section 62 doesn’t apply, and so, it is argued, the photo breaches the copyright of the artist. There is another exemption for “fair dealing” where copying is done for the purposes of private study, non-commercial research, criticism, review or comment on current events. Whether this covers Wikipedia or not is a question I leave to the copyright lawyers, but Wikipedia errs on the side of caution and removes anything doubtful.

A more important question, however, is whether the bowl is a work of artistic craftsmanship. These bowls were made in large quantities and over the years thousands of identical objects were produced. It is an example of mass production by hand in which the distinction between “craft” and “manufacture” is blurred. In the Wikipedia discussion, someone said it was not mass production but “limited repeat production by hand”, which implies that work made by hand cannot be mass production, but that is doubtful. The place where hand production ends and machine production begins is hard to define, and so is the place where a tool becomes a machine. Bernard Leach wanted to avoid machine production in his pottery and used foot-driven potter’s wheel, but it’s arguable that a kick-wheel is a machine and not a tool even if it is not steam-driven or electrically-driven. The argument that mass production is not possible without steam-driven or electrically-driven machinery, as opposed to human-driven machinery is also hard to sustain. Although such machinery facilitates mass production and turns out more than can be made by hand, hand workers are also capable of mass production. Country potters working on kick wheels could make hundreds of flower pots in a day and the Delft tile makers, who worked without machines of any kind, are estimated to have made eight hundred million tiles in two hundred years. Where does mass production begin? With a hundred pots a day, five hundred or five thousand? There is certainly a case to be made that the Leach pottery apprentices were engaged in small-scale mass production.

Bernard Leach admired country potters and tried to reproduce some of the conditions of their workshops at St Ives. His apprentices practiced repetition throwing and were given shapes to make in large quantities, and the lidded bowl in question was almost certainly made in that way. It is a work of craftsmanship, but in what sense can it be said to be a work of artistic craftmanship, which connotes inventiveness, creativity and originality – the qualities of the individual, one-off pieces made in the St Ives Pottery by Bernard Leach and Shoji Hamada and impressed with their personal marks? There is a certain degree of inventiveness and creativity in the design, but not a great deal of originality, but the output of the employees and apprentices of the pottery show none of those qualities.

The law protects intellectual property in artistic crafts, but not in crafts as such – so not, for example, a thatched roof.  In artistic craftsmanship there has to be

• A conscious intention to produce a work of art
• A real artistic or aesthetic quality
• A sufficient degree of craftsmanship and artistry (existing simultaneously)

Considering the conditions of production in the St Ives Pottery under which this bowl was made, it is arguable that there was no intention to produce a work of art even if it has real artistic quality and a high degree of craftsmanship. As I said, I don’t know much about copyright law and lawyers might argue differently, but in my opinion the bowl is just a bowl and anyone can take a photo of it.