Sidney Tustin

Sidney Tustin (8 September 1913 – 9 November 2005) was a potter born in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire.^[1] Tustin began working aged 13, with Michael Cardew at Winchcombe Pottery in 1927. After a four-year apprenticeship he became a skilled thrower, specialising in smaller items of earthenware tableware and remaining there until his retirement in 1978.^[1] His brother Charlie Tustin joined the pottery as an apprentice in 1935.^[2] Tustin enlisted with the Dorset Regiment on the outbreak of the Second World War.^[1]

In 1939 Cardew left for Wenford Bridge, Cornwall, and Tustin, on his return from war service worked alongside Ray Finch, who purchased the pottery in 1946.^[3] It has been estimated that Tustin personally threw a million pots during his career at Winchcombe.^[4]

Muriel Rose a collector of modern craft and design, wrote of Tustin as Cardew's first pottery boy, ”His jugs in particular have a lightness and balance of form which distinguishes them”. from her book Artist Potters in England (1955).^[3]

Under Finch, Tustin changed from making earthenware to stoneware in the 1960s.^[5] Tustin's work is held in the ceramic collection of Aberystwyth University,^[6] a slip decorated bowl from 1953 is held in the collection of National Museum of Scotland^[7] and there is an earthenware jug with black slip-trailed decoration in the permanent collection of Aberdeen Art Gallery.^[8] A dish with a stylised resist motif of a dog is held in the Potteries Museum & Art Gallery Stoke on Trent.^[9]

Tustin married Marie Smith in 1935 they had one son and two daughters, he died at Winchcombe on 9 November 2005.^[1]