The gift of simplicity

Probably the most influential and certainly the most appealing aspect of modern interior design is a now acceptable obsession with the old. People have discovered the beauty, individuality, and stark, deceptive simplicity of line inherent in the domestic ware and furniture of an older time. The things one's grandmother threw out are now sought-after. Salvage yards across the country are thriving on original, period cast-iron baths and sinks discarded by a previous generation inexplicably enamoured of fibreglass.

The Irish potter, Nicholas Mosse, whose colourful range of traditional-style domestic spongeware is internationally established, with a major US market, has long been drawn to the appeal of ancient crafts and their methods of production. What those restoring old houses have acquired with time, he was born into.

As a boy, in the family home at Bennettsbridge, Co Kilkenny, Mosse was fascinated by his parents' collection of traditional Irish and Scottish spongeware: "I like the idea of looking at things from the past," he says. "I don't know why it is, but as a family we are all very interested in old, country things, from 18th-century ceramics to forged gates, quorn stones, furniture, architectural detail, quilts, linens - it's the quality of the craftsmanship." Surrounded by beautiful, useful objects, Mosse and his four siblings all inherited a strong visual sense from their Quaker parents. The late Stanley Mosse, though best known as a miller, was a trained sculptor who had studied at the Slade when it was at Oxford. His wife, Elizabeth Pitt, still lives at Bennettsbridge House, an old thatched miller's house which has been home to the Moss family since 1842, where her folk-pottery museum is open to the public.

When the children were young, the Mosses began collecting folk furniture and pottery. At the family home are some pieces Nicholas made when he was 11 - by which time he had already begun throwing pots: he already knew he liked it.

His first pottery mentor was a Canadian potter, John Slade, who lived up the road and had been at college with Mosse's father.

As a boarder at Newtown School in Co Waterford, his interest in pottery continued. When he left there at 13, he went to Leighton Park, in Berkshire. "It was well endowed and certainly attracted the English Quaker Mafia - the Cadburys, the Frys, the Clarkes - as in the shoe family - the Colemans (the mustard manufacturers) . . . I was very happy there. It was a very good school. It had a very human feeling; everyone was treated as an individual and adult.

"I was doing a lot of pottery, just learning as much about technique as I could."

At Leighton he also continued a friendship begun at Newtown with two brothers, Stephen and Simon Pearce. Their father, Philip Pearce, a friend of Stanley Mosse, was another early pottery influence. "I learnt a lot about simplicity from him as well as just how beautiful simple country-ware was."

It was Pearce senior who introduced Mosse to the simple terracotta jugs and basins of Youghal pottery, dating from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. "Very simple and utilitarian and tough," he says, bringing in two fine specimen examples from the porch.

At Leighton Park, Nicholas took two Alevels, in art and english, "I almost did a third in geography but . . . " and he laughs.

He laughs easily. Nick Mosse is a happy man: he is also driven, hardworking and content, though not complacent - and, as he stresses, "very practical". This is no idle dreamer. His romanticism, enthusiasm for beautiful objects, his trend for vernacular romance and his habit of frequenting salvage yards and car boot sales are met in equal measure by common sense.

His explanations are direct, uncluttered and deliberately downplayed. "I enjoy life and I like what I do." His latest venture, an illustrated book on design entitled Irish Country, was fun to do. In part a modified social history, he says "it's really a history of style in Ireland, country style".

The pottery business which he began in 1978 as a one-man operation, after a few years as a journeyman potter, has become a design empire. Now aged 48 - although he dithers "am I 48 or 49?" - he is a highly collectable artist, particularly for his saltglaze spongeware, large, lidded jars, pots, mugs, bowls and jugs bearing his distinctive bird motif and dating from the late 1970s. It has been a long time since he worked in this style. The reason is simple. The kiln exploded.

Casually dressed and driving a Ford Transit van, he is a stocky, pleasant, unpretentious individual, still on the boyish side of fatherly. He seems too casual to be an entrepreneur, but he is one of Ireland's success stories and takes no offence on being described as more an entrepreneur than an artist. "I enjoy it, the variety - creating targets and aims and challenges," he says.

Mosse's pottery is instantly recognisable. Pleased that it is as functional as it is appealing, he mentions the animal designs, and says "these are particularly popular in America". The flower motifs sell well in Europe and at home.

Conscious of his role as a local employer working in his home village, engaged in training local people in a traditional craft, Mosse is pleased at the relaxed but busy atmosphere prevailing within his workshop. Here the policy is towards teamwork and his workers participate in bringing individual pieces through the various stages of handmade pottery. Tasks are changed after a couple of hours.

On completing school, Mosse attended the Harrow School (now College) of Art in North London. There was nothing random or romantic about his decision to be an art student. He enrolled in the ceramic production course. "It is a famous course directed at teaching people the practical business of running a workshop." During the three-year course, which was compressed into two years - and 12-hour days - his technique was further refined. "I knew I wanted to succeed, but," he laughs guardedly, "I just like doing it - but I also like other things like chopping wood, making things, building kilns, planning, seeing how things work." Despite his English education, Mosse has never lost his Irish accent.

Reluctant to be drawn into theorising or making grand statements, he does not speak in abstracts: he allows his work to speak for itself. As the years have passed, it has developed a style which suggests a specific way of life, one inspired by country living. By now it embraces fabrics as well and table glass is among his forthcoming projects; some prototypes have already been completed. They are plain, strong shapes with subtle decoration.

Shape and colour have always been integral to his pottery - now, texture is becoming increasingly important.

Asked about his philosophy, he seems embarrassed. "Efficiency and skill are as important as the aesthetics. It's not about gazing out the window and waiting for the urge," he says. Mosse has no confusion as to whether he is an artist or a craftsman. "I'm a craft worker."

While a student he spent a summer in France at a small production pottery working under an Australian potter "a real perfectionist" specialising in wood-fired salt-glaze. That time in France was very valuable. He worked in high temperature, wood-fired porcelain and stoneware. "A lot of my teapot designs came from there," he says. When speaking of teapots (their shape is not easily adapted to the traditional style of his range), he speaks of practicalities. "A teapot doesn't dribble, it should pour well, keep the tea hot, I've always liked making them because they are complex. There are so many parts - the spout, the handle, the body, the lid."

From France, he moved to a small, studio pottery in the north of England where the work was woodfired terracotta, mainly bowls and plates. "There was a small team of independent workers - no sharing of work. The essence of it was that everyone learned to make a pot from the beginning and finish it. Each item was a solo effort. It's a very English thing: there is, as far as pottery goes, a huge reaction against the Victorian idea of the division of labour."

Aware of there are English potters who would reject the approach he takes in Bennettsbridge, Mosse says: "The pieces are team efforts. The throwing is probably the smallest part of it. It is not a production line, though, it is a division of labour." Part of being successful is the way administration encroaches on his potting - he no longer throws daily and admits to sometimes being a little nervous until he settles at the wheel. "At this stage, I can't claim to make every pot that comes out under my name. But I love doing a specific job."

After England, he worked in Scotland and from 1974, in Japan. "I wanted to see how close it was to Bernard Leach's idea." Leach (1887-1979), regarded as the father of modern English ceramics, introduced Japanese throwing-techniques to England during the early years of this century and popularised English folk pottery. A philosopher as well as a potter, he established a pottery centre at St Ives in Cornwall. Mosse arrived in Hagi and immediately felt at home with the Japanese way of life, the austerity and simplicity of which reminded him of his own Quaker tradition.

In Japan he worked under Yosagi, a master potter Mosse did not like. "But he was regarded as a national treasure. We were involved in making simple tea ware for use in the Japanese tea ceremony." The pieces were fired in a simple kiln and decorated in a very plain layer of rice straw-ash. Mosse admired the Japanese approach to pottery, particularly the simplicity, but was not drawn to it. "I was looking for something warmer, something closer to my own tradition and more functional in the Western context." On return from Japan the following year, he got a loan and started building kilns in Bennettsbridge and met Susan McClelland, a sculptor and art historian from Missouri who was then living in Co Clare. They married in 1976 and have two sons, both now at university in Britain. For more than 20 years, Susan Mosse worked on a voluntary basis for the Butler Gallery in Kilkenny. Throughout his conversation, Mosse refers to her contribution to the Mosse pottery: "She has the art history and literary background to see the relevance of things." She is, above all, a shrewd businesswoman with a flair for anticipating the market.

The Bennettsbridge Mill had been gutted by fire in 1842, shortly after the Mosse family had bought it. More than 130 years later, it was ablaze again - this time, shortly after Nicholas Mosse had purchased it as a pottery. A long sequence of bank loans began. Meanwhile, the Mosses had brought Kilfane Cottage, a woodman's cottage on a large, wooded estate. The work of restoration began there as well. The house, now painted a dramatic red, is reached through two sets of beautiful, original vernacular gates. Today there is a sculpture park including work by David Nash and Bill Woodrow as well as James Turrell's wonderful Air Mass, a contemplative space contained within a large box which the viewer enters in order to gaze at an ever-changing sky. The park is open to the public.

Deeper into the woods is a magical cottage orne, completely restored, and straight out of a fairy tale, complete with 18th-century, man-made waterfall and stream. The Mosses happened upon the ruins of the cottage after examining old maps held at the Royal Society of Antiquarians. Prints of old water-colours helped advance the project. The restoration is remarkable - simple and sophisticated and very comfortable. "It's a bit decadent," says Mosse. It is not. It is a monument to Mosse's imagination and practicality. Visitors to the park can come here for tea.

Back up at the main house, Mosse points to his various collections of European pottery. On the floor resides an impromptu Richard Long sculpture made of unpolished Kilkenny marble. Two facing walls boast two contrasting collections, one of framed calligraphy, one of old sundials. Every corner, each surface in the house expresses the Mosse ability to detect the beauty in the ordinary, and to appreciate the beauty in the extraordinary.

The old Mosse family mill is now his pottery workshop and showroom. The pottery employs 40 people and every piece of pottery is hand thrown and decorated with the traditional technique using sponges dipped in ceramic paint. At present Mosse is working with the American artist James Turrell on their Lapsed Quaker Ware project, a set of more than 70 pieces of pottery with wood furniture made by woodworker Bill Burke, inspired by Wedgewood 19th-century designs. He says the idea was inspired by a visit to Temple Newsome, a great house in Leeds. There, they were shown a collection of Wedgewood's black basalt: the curator told them the work was referred to as "either funeral ware or Quaker ware". The title amused them and a project followed. A member of the tiny ("talk about minorities, this is a real minority") Irish Quaker community, Mosse says, "It's hard to be objective about it. You do have all those funny habits that seem to come through all the time - I'm a chairman of a committee and and I don't want to have a vote: we Quakers like to come to agreement through consensus."

He can remember his grandfather, Ernest Pitt, addressing people as "thee" and "thou".

To a certain extent, he feels Quakers are not "seen as elitist as the Church of Ireland - but then, we don't have as big a community".

"It is quite a lonely life. So small and so difficult to identify, you are not a threat to any one but you are not a friend either. There is always a slight suspicion about being slightly different."

One of the many aspects of Quakerdom he values is the lack of dogma: "I'm proud that I went through a total Quaker lack of education and I don't know much about it." The Quaker doggedness is also something he admires, "but it can be irritating".

"I know I can be self-righteous and I know I can take the high moral ground."

Irish Country is published on Saturday by Ebury Press, price £19.99