| Activity | Potter. In 1945, established a pottery at Bulmers Brickyard, in Sudbury, Suffolk with husband Sam Haile. When they were looking for more space, Bernard Leach suggested they move to Dartington and revive the Shinners Bridge Pottery, which he had set up before the war but had been closed and was in a bad state. They moved to Shinners Bridge, Dartington in 1947, but in 1948 Sam was killed in a car accident at Poole in Dorset. Marianne was pregnant with their daughter Sarah. However, she carried on and with the help of her sisters the pottery thrived. It was boosted by the International Craft Conference at Dartington in 1952, which she attended and where she saw Lucie Rie's work for the first time and watched Hamada making a teapot and a Japanese fish trap. The business ran until 1980.
In 1958 the pottery burnt down, due to an electrical fault, while she was away. But the Elmhirsts came to her rescue and the Dartington Hall Trust agreed to pay for re-building. In the 1960s she became involved in the Craft Potters Association and was a founder-member of the Devon Guild of Craftsmen. She set up the Dartington Pottery Training Workshop in 1976 which taught many of her apprentices and operated as a commercial enterprise, Dartington Pottery, up to 2005.
Marianne continued to make pots at Dartington into her nineties. 1995 retrospective exhibition High Cross House, Dartington. A retrospective exhibition at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in 2007 was extremely successful. She has been awarded a CBE. There is a collection of her work at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. |