Biography
Sam Haile (b. London, UK 1909 - d. Dartington, Devon, UK 1948) first went to evening classes at Clapham School of Art, winning a scholarship to Royal College of Art, 1931–5, initially concentrating on painting, then on pottery under the potter William Staite Murray. During the late 1930s Haile showed with Surrealist Group and AIA. From 1939–44 he lived in New York, where Haile, whose politics were left-wing and convictions pacifist, went to escape what he considered a capitalist struggle. In England he had taught at Leicester College of Art and in the London area and in America, as well as exhibiting and selling works to public collections, he taught at the New York State College of Ceramics, Alfred University, and at the College of Architecture, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was drafted into the American Army as a non-combatant and became an instructor in the Education Corps of the British Army, being released in late 1945 after concussion in a motor-cycle accident. In 1946 he joined the Rural Industries Bureau as its pottery consultant, but was killed in a motoring accident two years later. In 1947 he had moved to Shinner’s Bridge, Dartington, Devon, to a house and workshop lately vacated by the potter Bernard Leach. Haile’s pictures mixed strong themes, including concern at the threat of Fascism, sexuality and violence. Retrospective exhibitions of his work were held at Crafts Centre in 1951, Birch and Conran, 1987, and Holburne Museum, Bath, 1993.
