John Piper’s paintings of follies and garden buildings are well-known, but less familiar are his ceramics decorated with architectural features, including a series of ‘curly dishes’ with his wonderful whimsical interpretations of 18th century designs for rustic follies.

In 1982 gallerist Dan Klein extended his space in London’s Belgravia and that October the opening exhibition featured ceramics by Quentin Bell. Bell worked with an assistant and materials provided by the Fulham Pottery, and the aim was to show the result when ‘contemporary artists are invited to turn from canvas to ceramics’. Next in line was John Piper, who had also been invited to exhibit works in this less familiar medium. In the summer of 1982 he created around 200 ceramic pieces at his home at Fawley Bottom, near Henley on Thames. 

Piper had some experience of creating pots, having previously collaborated with the potter Geoffrey Easton, who offered ‘advice and encouragement’ for this new project. But it was the young Jean-paul Landreau, recruited by the Fulham Pottery whilst on his summer break from studying at Harrow College of Art, who helped Piper realise his designs. Quentin Bell saw the work in the studio, and his first thought was ‘heavens how thoroughly John has enjoyed himself’. Piper, then 79 but described as ‘full of youthful vigour and enthusiasm’, enjoyed working in this medium, finding it ‘awfully exciting to put something that looks dull in the kiln & see it come out all shiny hot & beautiful’.

The exhibition ran for just over two weeks in November 1982. ‘Piper’s Pots’ (as the alliteratively inclined Marylebone Mercury titled their account of the show) included ceramic obelisks, candlesticks, platters and dishes in a variety of styles – some abstract, and some figurative. A selection were decorated with architectural views, including a collection of ‘curly dishes’ designed by Piper, and named for the raised lobes which gave the dishes their unusual profile.

Four of the curly dishes featured rustic follies taken from an 18th century pattern-book which went by the snappy title of Grotesque architecture, or rural amusement : consisting of plans, elevations, and sections, for huts, retreats, summer and winter hermitages, terminaries, Chinese, Gothic, and Natural Grottos, Cascades, Baths, Mosques, Moresque Pavillions, Grotesque and Rustic Seats, Green Houses, &c. Many of which may be executed With Flints, Irregular Stones, Rude Branches, and Roots of Trees. The whole containing twenty-eight entire new designs, beautifully engraved on Copper Plates, with Scales to each. to which is added, a full explanation, in letter press, and the true method of executing them. The author was ‘William Wrighte, architect’, a man about whom even the great architectural historian Sir Howard Colvin admitted ‘nothing whatsoever is known’ (although there are at present scholars doing their very best to prove him wrong).

Wrighte’s pattern book contained a series of plates which landowners could peruse before instructing capable builders to erect something similar. The four which inspired Piper were a Winter Hermitage, a Gothic Grotto, a Rustic Seat to Terminate a View and, featured here, a Hermit’s Cell. The accompanying text tells that it was to be built of large stones and trunks of trees, with a thatched roof and a floor of small pebble stones or cockle shells.

This dish, catalogue no. 56 in the 1982 exhibition, was bought at the show by the (clearly very discerning) curator of Barnsley’s fine art collections. It can be seen on display at Cannon Hall Museum, a former country house a few miles from the town.

It’s not known if the then curator of Cannon Hall was aware that the estate had its own summerhouse with rustic tree-trunk columns. Although Cannon Hall and its surrounding gardens and pleasure grounds were sold to Barnsley Council in 1951, the wider estate, including the Deffer Wood summerhouse remained with the family.

The Deffer Wood summerhouse may be the ‘root house’ to which Walter Spencer Stanhope of Cannon Hall ‘retired’ in 1778 to write verses and bring solace to his ‘harassed mind’. It is certainly a very tranquil retreat today.

Sadly the centuries old Fulham Pottery did not survive for long after these excellent exhibitions were held, and all that remains today is a grade II listed bottle kiln just off the New Kings Road. The Dan Klein Gallery operated for only a few years, although Klein (1938-2009) went on to have a distinguished career as a specialist in contemporary ceramics and glass.

Cannon Hall has the double attractions of a great collection (the Piper dish is just one item in an important display of ceramics) and a lovely designed landscape. Until 30 October 2022 you can also see some wonderful family portraits which are being shown in public for the first time – including a depiction of dapper root house retiree Walter Spencer Stanhope.

The Deffer Wood summerhouse is accessible via permissive paths, thanks to Cannon Hall Estates. Its location is not widely publicised (to deter vandals) so it’s advisable to do some research before visiting.

For more on Cannon Hall and the exhibition https://www.cannon-hall.com/spencer_stanhope

Jean-paul Landreau, Piper’s assistant on the project, is still making pots (see the comments below to hear from Jean-paul himself) http://www.jeanpaullandreau.com/english.php

There’s a curly dish featuring a Welsh castle in the collection of the River & Rowing Museum in Henley on Thames. Does anyone know the location of the others?

UPDATE March 2026: at the time of writing the Abbott and Holder Gallery in London has Piper’s working drawing for the ceramics based on Wrighte.

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The Folly Flâneuse is putting her feet up this week, and handing over to her very good friend The Garden Historian. As guest contributor he reveals the history of the lovely, but now lost, timber temple at Exton Park.

In 1953, when Barbara Jones coined the opening words ‘survival is capricious’ for her account of the Bark Temple in Follies & Grottoes, she was probably unaware of how prophetic they were. At the time, she mused whether it was ‘perhaps built as a band stand for dances by the lake’; yet feeling the building’s oppressiveness as it slipped into ruin, added ‘but an innocent purpose for it seems unthinkable.’ She was actually so right on the former, and so wrong on the latter.

There have been many opinions as to when the temple was built – Jones carefully evades that point – with some writers suggesting it dates from the 18th century, probably because it was assumed to be contemporary with nearby Fort Henry, a pretty gothic lakeside pavilion (by William Daniel Legg, 1786–89). More scholarly was Roger White’s assessment that it was ‘probably […] a survival of the late 18th century fashion for primitivism, propagated by the Abbé Laugier and Sir William Chambers and practised by architects such as Soane.’ Somewhere along the way, Thomas Wright’s name has been brought into the melange, and an attribution to John Linnell Bond needs to be abandoned – he died eight years before its appearance. Laugier’s sentiments were first published, in French, in 1753, with an English translation two years later; Chambers, in his 1759 Treatise on Civil Architecture, saw primitive buildings as no more than an evolutionary stage in architectural history. But if such works inspired Exton’s bark temple, there was a wait of almost a hundred years.

It was actually constructed for the wedding celebrations of Andrew Agnew and the Lady Mary Arabella Louisa Noel, eldest daughter of Exton’s owner, the Earl of Gainsborough. The wedding took place on Thursday, 20 August 1846, although festivities started the previous day with a ‘Tenants’ Dinner’ for some 260 persons in a marquee, and a women’s tea in the coach houses at the house, which also accommodated about a hundred labourers on the Thursday morning as well as teas for the schools on the Friday (subject to weather conditions); the wedding breakfast was held in Fort Henry (at half past one for those who just have to know). The Lincolnshire Chronicle for 21 August recorded:

‘… The spot selected for pitching the tent was about two miles distant from the house, and by far the most picturesque site on these delightful grounds, being on an eminence immediately in front of the expansive sheet of water which so delightfully diversifies the scenery in Exton Park, and very near to the fairy temple now in course of erection.’

The last remark is key – it indicates that despite their best efforts, the ‘fairy temple’ was not complete at the time of the wedding, even though from the scant documents that we do have, some seventy four carpenters, masons, and labourers were engaged in these preparations. Unsigned rough drawings hint at the bark temple being designed almost on the spot, and everything done in haste. There was a family tradition of hosting parties by the lake and in Pavilions in Peril Julia Abel-Smith noted a picture at the hall ‘of the lakeside clearing en fête with fireworks breaking over the water’ – it would be nice to think that the temple was ready enough for dancing of an evening, the Exton band serenading the family and their guests as they glided across the wooden floor.

The unknown architect may have been influenced by an 18th century design by William Wrighte, which was advocated ‘to be placed at the head of a grand canal’, with ‘the arcades to be ice or frosted work’, with a length of some 75 feet. At Exton, the lake suffices for the canal, and bark for the frosted work; its length was 75 feet. But the temple’s juxtaposition and axial alignment to Fort Henry are also key: being on rising ground, it terminated a vista for those enjoying a boat trip; for those in the temple, the setting was reversed, with Fort Henry adopting the role of banqueting house (and possibly an ideal setting for the firework displays). Ironically it was Fort Henry, ‘almost beyond preservation’ in the eyes of Barbara Jones, that was rescued, thanks to the work of architect Will Hawkes; but sadly the bark temple succumbed.

As much as it would have been wonderful to see this building saved, viewing this dilemma from the owner’s perspective casts a more pragmatic hue. Its remoteness from the house would have put a restored building at considerable risk from any ne’er do wells; that it was principally of wood construction added to its vulnerability. In 1994, English Heritage commissioned surveys and measured drawings of what then survived of the structure, so at least a record of this unique building exists. But it is the photographs of Neville and Will Hawkes that prove the most evocative and captivating. They show the structure still in reasonable condition – both arcades still standing, and mostly roofed. It died, in the winter of 1997, æt. 150.

Fort Henry survives has been beautifully restored as, rather appropriately, a venue for weddings and events. It can be seen from a public footpath. For Exton Park see https://www.extonpark.co.uk

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