Leading British potter and writer who became a gay rights activist in the 70s
Emmanuel Cooper, who has died of cancer aged 73, was a leading British potter, who also became widely known as a writer, editor, critic, biographer, teacher, broadcaster, curator and campaigner for gay rights. His wide cultural and artistic interests and activities were pursued with a relentless energy and great entrepreneurial skill which made him a powerful advocate for the crafts and visual arts.
Pottery was Emmanuel's first and enduring passion. In the 1960s he quickly established a reputation not only as a craftsman in his own right, but also as an effective mover and shaker in the ceramics world. He trained with two leading potters, Gwyn Hanssen Pigott and Bryan Newman. He set up his own pottery in 1965, in Westbourne Grove, and had his first solo exhibition in 1968. He established the Fonthill Pottery in Finsbury Park in 1973, and moved it to Primrose Hill in 1976, where it remained. A shop front provided an interface between the private dedication of the studio and the need to sell the pots to a wider public – like his father, a village butcher, he was a small businessman at heart – and it became a familiar local feature, a profusion of elegant pots in vivid multicolour glazes side by side with tools of the trade and Emmanuel's motorbike.
His early work was tableware and utility was a key aspect of his philosophy. "I see myself as making objects that relate both directly and indirectly to function," he said in a late interview, and although deeply rooted in the traditions of his craft, he came to see his jugs as forms rather than purely functional objects. Emmanuel became increasingly interested in more abstract work, producing conical forms he said were inspired by dramatic new buildings, such as the Gherkin in the City of London. He was technically highly proficient, and became best known for his heavy glazings, at their simplest reminiscent of the work of Lucie Rie, but at their most extravagant bursting into bright, vivacious colours that evoke the postmodern enthusiasms of a later generation of potters. His book on glazes, first published in 1978, which went through many editions and titles, was the best-selling of some 28 he wrote.
His work is represented in a number of national and international collections, including those of the V&A, the National Museum of Scotland and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
However, Emmanuel was too restless, ambitious and enterprising to remain content with the quiet life of a full-time potter, however much he relished the physical creativity. He was soon involved in what became the Craft Potters Association, and served for many years as a council member, chair, and eventually a fellow. His most critical initiative was the founding, with Eileen Lewenstein, of Ceramic Review in 1970. He was co-editor and publisher with Lewenstein until 1997, and sole editor thereafter until a couple of years before his death. He helped build this up from what was essentially a CPA newsletter into a wide-ranging ceramics journal, with an international reputation. It also became profitable, helping to subsidise the CPA shop.
His many books on pottery, from A Handbook of Pottery (1970) and A History of Pottery (1972) to Ten Thousand Years of Pottery (2000) provided a vast and ever-growing store of information, in many frequently revised, updated and expanded editions. He published a number of short studies of fellow potters, and wrote two major biographies of key influences on his own work, Bernard Leach: Life & Work (2003) and Rie, which will be published later this year. He seemed to have his hands in all the clay of the ceramics world.
In the early 1970s, Emmanuel got involved in the gay movement, helping to found the Gay Left Collective, which published an influential journal of sexual politics. After it dissolved he set up a gay artists group and a gay history group, and contributed widely to the gay press, increasingly on the arts and cultural issues.
From the early 1980s, he began researching and writing on gay art, producing several widely read studies – The Sexual Perspective (1986), on homosexuality and art; and Fully Exposed: The Male Nude in Photography (1990) – and shorter studies of, among others, the photographer Baron Wilhelm Von Gloeden and the artist Henry Scott Tuke. He also spent a considerable part of the late 1980s working on a labour of love, an exploration of working-class art from the 1760s. The research was funded by the Gulkbenkian Foundation, and was published as People's Art in 1994. This also provided the basis for his PhD from Middlesex University, awarded in 1996.
Emmanuel was born in the Derbyshire mining village of Pilsley, the fourth of five children of Kate (nee Cook) and Fred Cooper. He was educated at local schools and at Tupton Hall grammar school. He trained as a teacher at Dudley College and Bournemouth School of Art, but London attracted him above all, and this became his base for the rest of his life. The metropolis was where he could practise as a potter, meet other creative people, express his sexuality and engage in the political and cultural tumults of the 60s and 70s. Here he could also carve out a freelance career. He taught ceramics in various colleges, including Camberwell School of Art and Middlesex University, and from 1999 was visiting professor of ceramics and glass at the Royal College of Art.
He juggled his various commitments with quiet efficiency and seemed never to turn down an invitation to review an exhibition, write a book review, sit on a panel or meet and encourage a promising new potter or writer. He was art critic of the Morning Star (1987-92), Gay News (1980-90) and Tribune from 1992, for which he received little pay. Even as his health declined he continued to work. After a major operation in mid-2011, he quickly returned to picture research for his book on Rie. The proofs of this book were on his desk as he died.
He worked closely with the Crafts Council and sat on the council of Arts Council England. He received honorary degrees from the University of the Creative Arts and the University of Derby, and was a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. In 2002 he was appointed OBE for his contribution to the arts.
His personality was a paradox to some. They saw an intensely private person, often diffident at social gatherings where he knew few people. But he also had a touch of flamboyance, turning up at opening nights in his black bikers' leathers. He remained to the end a strikingly handsome person. He had an extraordinarily wide range of friends, and was a gregarious and generous host at home, above the pottery, cooking swiftly and apparently effortlessly while catching up with the latest gossip or political controversy. His 30-year partnership with the television producer David Horbury was the core of his emotional stability. They celebrated their civil partnership in 2006. David survives him.
• Emmanuel Cooper, potter, born 12 December 1938; died 21 January 2012