M.V.So, okay.
L.G.Okay.
M.V. So Lenny if you start.
L.G. By saying what my name is?
M.V. Yes
L.G. Lenny, well Leonard, I am called Lenny as a nickname. Leonard Goldenberg.
I was born in Montreal in 1937, which makes me sixty two years old.
L.G. I
went to night-school, to learn how to make wine crocks and that’s what
I did. So I enrolled in night-school and it took me two years to make
this wine crock because it’s hard to make a big wine crock. I just got
into making pottery and that’s how it sort of started. I had two teachers.
I had one at the art school who was a Dutch man and I had a teacher, and
I went to the university and I was to take some course and he was a Canadian.
He had been working with Bernard Leach, so he had this sort of
Japanese Leach tradition, so I was divided between these two schools.
Where the Dutch is more of a cold approach or cool approach. It’s
like Danish pottery.
M.V. More like industrial design?
L.G. Yes, yes. More like design yes, whereas the Japanese tradition,
Leach is something like you don’t…, …the eye shouldn’t see what
the hand is making sort of thing. So after I finished school, I wanted
to work for a year in a pottery somewhere but I didn’t want to work in
England. I wanted to try and get away from this Leach tradition,
so I went to Denmark.
M.V. When? What year was this?
L.G. It was in 1962. That’s when I went to Denmark.
M.V. And did you feel as if you needed to get away from the Leach
tradition?
L.G. Yah, yah.
M.V. And you went to Denmark because it was more of the other tradition?
L.G. Yes. The funny thing is, when I first got to Denmark I didn’t like
the pottery there. It took me a long time to get to appreciate it.
M.V. What was wrong with it?
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