Marianne De TREY

Dates: B.1913

Of Swiss parentage she trained at the Royal College of Art in textiles and had little formal training in ceramics. In 1947 she and her husband Sam Haile established a pottery at Shinners' Bridge, Dartington, Devon, in a pottery originally designed for Bernard Leach and where he wrote his influential text, A Potter's Book.  Sam Haile tragically died in 1948 in a car accident but Marianne de Trey continued to run the pottery until her retirement in 1985. She was one of the first people after the war to set up a well-organised workshop with an effective apprenticeship system.  Later she was a founding director of the Dartington Pottery Training Workshop established in 1975. She has been active in the British pottery world throughout her career. Marianne de Trey first worked in slip decorated and tin glazed earthenware and then in stoneware making domestic pottery and tableware. In later years she has concentrated on more personal work using porcelain with lustre and celadon glazes