Arts groups fight to preserve famed Leach pottery

The transvestite potter Grayson Perry may have given ceramics a renewed cachet with his Turner Prize-winning work. But in Cornwall, moves are afoot to remind the public of the talent of Bernard Leach, the artist once regarded as Britain's most famous potter.

A coalition of museums, Cornish councils and experts is attempting to rescue Leach's pottery from ruin and establish a permanent exhibition of his influential work.

Business plans are being prepared to bid for lottery cash and grants from Europe to raise the estimated £1m needed to buy and restore the site in St Ives.

Lady Carol Holland, a St Ives resident who is chairing the new steering group, said a Leach centre would attract visitors from overseas as well as from the UK. She said: "It would be part of the visitor experience to St Ives. We're all anxious to see that they mesh together to make a united whole."

Leach was born and brought up in the Far East but educated in England. After further study and marriage in Japan, he returned to the UK in 1920 and established his pottery in St Ives, years before the arrival of the artists Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth.

His experimental glazes and the influential A Potter's Book in 1940 won him international recognition. He was made a Companion of Honour and feted with an exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. He died in 1979 aged 92.

His third wife, Janet, lived and worked in the cottage and pottery until her death in 1997 when the site was on the verge of being sold in two parts. But Alan Gillam, a local businessman, and his wife, Sally, bought the entire site. Mr Gillam said: "We were great fans and bought it to prevent it being broken up."

Since, they have stemmed the heavy losses on the pottery but did not have the resources for a full restoration. It needs a new roof and work on Leach's three-chamber kiln, of traditional Japanese design.

The steering group includes representatives from the National Trust, the Victoria & Albert, Tate St Ives and the Japan Society.

Harry Isaacs, the mayor of St Ives and a former student with Leach, said: "It's so important to the world of ceramics. The Leach pottery was a really vibrant place where people ate, lived and slept that environment of pots. It was just a magical time."