The craftsman’s passion
Almost a decade ago I began my journey in ceramics after a dream I had of an elderly potter living in my childhood home village. Pottery quickly became a pursuit, a love and a passion for story telling, which this craft offers. I found a way to collect wood from single specie trees which I then make into tree ash glazes. I’ve studied and explored ancient traditions and techniques, working with some of the UK’s leading contemporary ceramicists and institutions. I was driven simply by obsession, not knowing where it would lead me.
I have worked alongside potters, anthropologists, archaeologists as well as artists at the Oxford Anagama Kilns, Cornwall and Devon, England and across Egypt in projects assisting and leading wood firings, teaching courses, lecturing within university institutions and as a consultant in research programmes, such as with the ancient Egyptian pigment.
I operate currently in Oxfordshire with a salt kiln that I have built, which offers the studio a diverse and potentially inexhaustible approach to decorating the form. I am making utilitarian work for retailers and restaurants and teaching courses as well as evolving my own body of work both with salt glazing and wood firing.
All the while I am learning and with love and reverence for this timeless craft.
My real passion lies in the ecology and mineralogy of our planet. I obtain wood from single species of trees which I process to obtain the mineral composition of trees in the form of wood ash.
Within the wood ash lie the metals which I use as the colorants for my glazes, avoiding mined minerals so as to produce colour organically by manipulating prisms and refracting light,
The other side of my work is the firing process by using wood kilns and salt kilns. This produces a purely spontaneous aesthetic onto unglazed clay forms through the firing process.
All my ceramics are hand made using a potter’s wheel and some forms are manipulated after the throwing with the use of engraving, inlaying and slip.