I share the space with my wife and fellow potter Sarah Monk. When we’re not working on our own designs, we entertain thousands of aspiring potters on our short classes and weekend courses.You can do an hour and a half, full day or weekend on the potter’s wheel – we have something for everyone and the rural tranquility of Eastnor makes for the perfect creative break.
Although we are currently closed during lockdown, you can book a Spring or Summer pottery experience online. Just visit our website and click on one of the orange buttons.
I’ve been a professional member of the CPA ever since the start of my career as a maker, but this is the first time I have exhibited in their bi-monthly ‘Rotation’ programme.
Over the years I’ve collaborated with many talented and creative photographers to document my ceramics and social engagement practice. My current go to professional is George Nash AKA Beyond The Beaten Path.
George is communicative, super efficient and fun to work with. Can’t rate his photography and video making highly enough.
Love these ‘artist in the studio’ portraits George took a little while ago.
Whilst experimenting with smoke fired pottery on the BBQ last Spring, I found a lot of my pots developed hair-line cracks and fissures due to the thermal shock of the flames licking the ware. There was only one course of action – make myself some saggers!
Those of you who might not be familiar with the word, a sagger is a protective fire-clay box enclosing ceramic ware while it is being fired.
Traditionally, they were used in the pottery industry to protect the pottery whilst it was fired in huge bottle kilns.
Above are some fine examples of antique saggers, piled high at Gladstone Pottery Museum in Stoke. They’ve obviously seen some action and been in and out of the kiln many many times, protecting their precious contents from the ferocity of the fire. The pitted and roasted surfaces really tell a story – I love the effect!
I used brick clay to make my saggers – x3 crude and rather brutal looking cylinders with lids made on the potter’s wheel and fired to 960 degrees.
Not only do the saggers prevent cracking, but I have produced some really intense blacks by packing combustible materials around the work inside the sagger. The twigs and sawdust inside the sagger smolder in the oxygen deprived atmosphere rather than burst into flame. This produces a lot of smoke which permeates the ceramic surface with great effect.
I’ve had so much fun experimenting with the saggers over the Autumn and Winter, firing them on the BBQ, bonfires and inside the house in the fireplace during the colder months.
Sticks of charcoal produced by the slow burning of hazel sticks inside the sagger
I’ve been developing more rattles and shakers, this time in the shape of bugs and bees. Each little beastie is made entirely from sections created on the potter’s wheel. The separate elements are joined together and smoothed to give the appearance of being whole. (Each bee has been made from x4 separate wheel throw sections.)
The freshly assembled insects above have just been coated in a layer of thick, luscious white slip and I think you’ll agree, they look pretty tasty at this stage.
They do change quite a bit when they emerge from the kiln:
To give you a sense of scale – each bee or bug can sit happily in the palm of one hand. Tiny little ceramics!
In an attempt to add further depth to my ceramic surfaces, I’ve been messing about with fire in the Pottery garden.
I had dabbled with smoke firing once before in my role as an artist in residence at Evesham Nursery School. I have very fond memories of working with the staff and children in their amazing Forest School site on the outskirts of town.
The young artists had great fun painting thick wet slip onto bisque pots they’d created on one of my previous visits to the Nursery.
Once the pots, leaves, staff and children’s faces! had been daubed in slip, we set about building a fire around the pots, watching as the flames and smoke curled around the children’s creations.
When the fire had died down, we carefully extracted the scorching pots using raku tongs and plunged them into a bucket of water, admiring the sizzling, bubbling and frothing as they sunk to the bottom.
As soon as the pots were cool enough to handle, the children set about removing ash and scrubbing away the painted slip to reveal the pale terracotta – a terrific contrast to the blackened, smoked areas of the unmasked surface.
I remember being encouraged and inspired by the children’s results and keen to try out the process for myself. Unfortunately, as with a lot of things, I never seemed to find the time to explore the technique. That is until Lock down!
I have learnt so much from the first firing (thermal shock can be so frustrating!) and am looking forward to trying again using saggars to protect and pattern the work.
The latest incarnation of x30 or so wheel thrown disks.
They made their debut at Fresh Air Sculpture Exhibition a few years back as a purely sculptural piece, stacked one on top of another to form two floor standing totems.
Since then, I’ve been experimenting with the work as an interactive resource in all sorts of settings and environments.
These poor little fellas have been thrown, slipped, cut, stretched and pulled apart on the potter’s wheel!
I’m enjoying seeing how far I can push the material with the aim to capture or preserve the point of disintegration. It’s a tricky balance to strike and I probably loose a third of what I’m making?
Anyway, it’s great fun and very rewarding when you get one that stands up. Each pot is truly individual and I’m considering smoke firing them to add a further layer of randomness!
Something I greatly value about the making process is the emergence of an unexpected outcome.
The potter’s wheel offers lots of potential for a creative ‘surprise’ and I always try to stay alert to the ‘happy accident’. The slightest change in hand position or shift in concentration can lead to a whole new aesthetic or approach. I may not have the time to action the diversion straight away but will photograph, make notes and bank the idea for another day.
More recently, I’ve been getting further and further through the making process before the ‘light bulb’ moment presents itself. The forms above were thrown and assembled bodies of insects designed for a garden sculpture exhibition. There is something very elementary and abstract about the forms at that particular stage in the process that prompted me to take the photo. I then attached legs and wings to achieve the original intention and turned them into something quite different from the legless versions!
This piece below is a slabbed base designed to display a ceramic fish sculpture. A metal rod inserted in the hole to suspend the fish at the other end.
Most of my work starts it’s life on the potter’s wheel so shapes are invariably soft and organic looking. Producing a straight sided, angular object required me to work with another technique. I had so much fun rolling the clay, drying, assembling the slabs and finally smoothing the joins, it got me inspired to do more. Discounting the original function of the piece, I think the leather hard result looks like it could hold it’s own as a stand alone sculptural vessel.
