Potter Eileen Lewenstein, an absorbing raconteur

AS a potter, Eileen Lewenstein, the founder and until 1997 co-editor of Ceramic Review who has died aged 80, was an ardent modernist and advocate of the new and challenging, rather than the established and conventional.
She lived in Belsize Lane, Hampstead, for many years and in Camden Town before that. Her two surviving sons, Thomas and Peter, both attended King Alfred’s School in Hampstead.
Known for embracing modernist design, as opposed to more traditional art, she was, until disillusion set in, a committed Communist. She saw her work as part of her political practice.
Born Eileen Mawson in 1925, she knew from a young age she wanted a career in the arts. She studied for the Art Teachers Diploma at the Institute of Education in Bloomsbury and developed a passion for clay.
With a college friend, she set up a pottery in Baker Street. They produced a range of hand-thrown tableware with painted decoration.
She was inspired by architect Walter Gropius, and this response to modernist design led to an interest in contemporary architecture that influenced her ceramics. She was attracted to the idea of producing well-designed objects at reasonable prices. Her company’s pots were stocked by stores such as Heal’s and featured regularly in magazines of contemporary design such as Studio Year Book of Decorative Art.
In 1952 she married Oscar Lewenstein, a fellow Communist who was active in the Unity Theatre. They settled in Hampstead, where she supported Oscar’s theatre and film projects, and worked as a potter and lectured at Hornsey School of Art.
Although a skilled ‘thrower’, she was inspired by the possibilities of hand-built work. A friendship with potter Catherine Yarrow, a fellow Hampstead resident and a maker of totemic forms with idiosyncratic decoration, encouraged Lewenstein to explore sculptural pieces.
She combined hand-building, moulding and throwing. One notable public artwork was an architectural screen for the Convent of Our Lady of Sion in west London. Other pieces included ingenious interlocking eggs and flower-holders.
Her works included dishes with wave-like patterns in soft blues, creams and greens, one of which is in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum.
The Ceramic Review, first published in 1970 with Eileen as co-editor, embraced a wide spectrum of modern work. It was a rewarding partnership as we exchanged ideas about the direction of ceramics, both of us jollying the other along to ever-more ambitious projects that included books such as New Ceramics (1974). She visited Eastern Bloc countries to trade ideas on art and politics, and was appointed MBE in 1999. Quiet and thoughtful, she was a loyal friend. Shrewd in her assessments and an absorbing raconteur, she had a disarming sense of humour that appreciated the ridiculous as well as the serious.

EMMANUEL COOPER
Editor, Ceramics Review