A Potter's Book By Bernard Leach. Jack Doherty, potter

"I was 19, very unfocused and in my first year as a ceramics student in Belfast, and this was a recommended text; in fact, at the time it was the potter's bible.

"Frankly, I loathed the book. I couldn't identify with the voice or ideas of this dogmatic Edwardian Englishman. His writing on standards of beauty was based on his passion for Korean, Japanese and Sung Dynasty Chinese ceramics – not particularly sexy concepts for a young art student whose head was full of Andy Warhol and Francis Bacon!

"I needed to see work that had roots nearer to home. I met the great Austrian potter Lucie Rie and discovered that, despite great differences in philosophy and approach, she and Bernard Leach had been friends for many years. Seeing Leach pieces in the modernist setting of Rie's London apartment opened my eyes to the potential of ceramics as an art form that can communicate with people in their everyday lives.

"While I still feel prickly and irritated by the single-minded attention given to oriental ceramics in 'A Potter's Book', I recognise it as being the first work that described a model for a contemporary potter's life. And I now find myself as lead potter at the Leach Pottery in St Ives, Cornwall. Now, how could that have happened?"

Jack Doherty's solo exhibition of soda-fired porcelain is at the National Craft Gallery in Kilkenny until 27 October

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