Louis Hanssen

Louis Hanssen was a Canadian potter and writer who lived in London. He began his career in ceramics in the early 1960s after being taught by his then-wife, Australian potter Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (1935 – 2013) who had studied under the influential Bernard Leach (1887 – 1979). The two went on to share a pottery studio from 1960 to 1963. Both showed their pieces at the Primavera Gallery— a hub for studio potters to sell their work in London at the time. After their divorce, Hanssen had his own studio in the Hampstead area of London which he worked out of until his early death in 1968. Living in London in the 1960s Hanssen was part of a movement of potters setting up their studios in the city after WWII, as opposed to the countryside which had been standard in England before the war.