The potter Geoffrey Fuller’s workshop was surely unique in Britain, attached as it was to the 18th-century pub in Derbyshire that he ran for about 35 years. The pub, the Three Stags’ Heads, situated in remote Wardlow Mires, in the Peak District, was very much Geoff’s creation. With his wife, Pat, also a fine potter, Geoff regenerated an old and atmospheric establishment, one that was the ideal showcase for his ceramics.
With its warm hospitality, good food and fine ales, it provided the best context for what he held most dear, making work to enhance the domestic space and the dinner table. There must have been drinkers quite unaware that the landlord serving them across the bar was one of the UK’s most remarkable artist-craftsmen. For Geoff, who has died aged 86, was a leading revivalist of native earthenware and slipware, producing low-fired pots and figurative work that drew not only on the vitality of pre-industrial pottery, but on Britain’s rich folk traditions.
