Biography
Victor Robert Margrie CBE (b. Highbury, London 1929 - d. Dorset, UK 2022) studied at Hornsey School of Art (1946-52), he specialised in exhibition display and ceramics. He went on to teach in small art schools in and around London. In 1954 Margrie started his own ceramics workshop making stoneware, by the late 1960s turning to exquisite carved porcelain bowls. In 1956 he became head of the ceramics department at Harrow School of Art, married the artist Janet Smithers, and in 1963, with fellow potter Michael Casson, he set up a two-year diploma in studio pottery there. He involved himself with the Society for Education Through Art, the Council for Industrial Design (later the Design Council), the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society (now the Society of Designer Craftsmen) and the Crafts Centre of Great Britain (now Contemporary Applied Arts) and later held a reserch professorship at the Royal College of Art. In December 1971 he was appointed as Secretary to a new body, the Crafts Advisory Committee (CAC) which became the Crafts Council in 1979 and Margrie was its founding first director, a post he held until 1984.