At the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art the current exhibit seems to invite the comparison between the gardener and the potter. The exhibit's 120 objects on display are like flowers in a garden, beautiful to look at, often delicate in shape, delightful in colour and sometimes breathtaking in their conception of idea and execution. The artists chosen for this exhibit seem to proclaim with vivid imagination their love for the "soil", its tactile feeling between their fingers.

Two artists, Hans Coper and Lucie Rie, are the spark for this exhibit. Both are no longer among the living, but their legacy to potters around the world is immeasurable. Their works remind us that clay shards and objects, found around the world at archeological sites, are often the only proof that humans have been around for a very long time. These found clay objects are the only legacy that humans from prehistory have passed on to us. Coper and Rie are two individuals, who gave new meaning to our own times through the vision they had of what clay can be turned into to symbolize the contemporary world. Were we all to vanish without a written record, their work and that of those who followed their example around the world, would mark a definite period in the unwritten history of mankind for those unearthing them in centuries to follow.

The two artists, one a German, the other an Austrian, met in England in 1946, where both had sought refuge just before WWII to escape from Hitler's madness. By that time Rie, who had gained international recognition before she fled her native Austria, had reestablished herself firmly in her Albion Mews, London, studio. Into this studio came Coper, who soon learned the art of throwing clay both from Rie and in classes outside the studio. The two took different approaches to their work (Rie's work is frequently delicate, but never insipid, Coper's is bold, almost forceful), but one can combine their works because they both bucked the then prevailing trends. They created a new aesthetic for clay work based on Modernist principles of design. They sowed the seeds, like diligent gardeners, and today's clay artists have reaped the fruits from those seeds.

This year is the centenary of Rie's birth. The Viennese ended up a Dame of the British Empire, an honour bestowed on her only a few years before her death on May 26, 1995. Coper, born in 1920 —  in an unstated German town  — was an aspiring engineer when he fled to England because he had a Jewish father and a Christian mother. He ended up in a POW camp in Sherbrooke, Que., but eventually returned to England when he joined the Pioneer Corps of the British Army in 1941. Unfortunately, his career as a potter was a short one because he contracted ALS in the ''70s, which made it difficult for him to work. He died on June 16, 1981.

What the Gardiner Museum has put together is an extraordinary collection of international artists to celebrate the influence of these two artists. They hail not only from the U.K., but Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, Russia, South Korea, Spain, and USA. To single out even one would seem unfair, although some objects appeal more than others.

Piet Stockmans, a Belgian, happened to be in attendance at the opening of the exhibit. His two works greet the visitor at the entrance of the exhibition. They are not vessels in the usual sense, instead one could call them clay paintings. Just why is best described by the pictures that are shown below. SORRY NO PICTURES ARE AVAILABE IN THE ARCHIVES!

This is a very important exhibit, because it shows the direction that clay art has taken over the past century. While Rie and Coper's influence can be called European, it soon becomes evident that clay art today is universal in its approach, feeling, texture. One cannot now say "this is Canadian, this is French, this is Belgian." One can only say that each artist has a personal signature identifying the creator, but the nationality is now unimportant. The global village has arrived through clay art, even if it has failed to materialize in other ways.

Coper and Rie took an attitude that broke prevailing customs of creating clay objects, the boundary between the craft of pottery and the art of pottery was not just blurred, but virtually eliminated. A craftsman is someone who repeats the designs of the past, whether this be in clay, wood or on a quilt. Today, few of us will think of potters as being craftsmen; today we call them unhesitatingly artists because those whom we meet in places like the Gardiner Museum are constantly thriving to broaden the scope of what we and they view as pottery. One can only marvel at the beauty of some of the works, and the audacity of others.