Pre-Blog Blog

Some thoughts and observations on processes and other potters from before my website was set up - these from May 2023.

This is not so much a journal as a personal feedback from the work done to date on the MA Ceramics course and it’s various components.

Written Assignments

The 2 written assignments were useful in concentrating my mind on some priorities, and aspirations for the course outcomes – and the subjects I chose to write about were complimentary.      They also both got me into the habit of looking at and thinking about the work of other makers and creatives – not just what I like or dislike, but what I personally respond to in terms of aesthetics and processes involved in making.      There were also a few moments of revelation, for example discovering that I really do rather like Grayson Perry and that despite his overblown USP he produces some good work and has some useful things to say.    

The primary outcome from the first written assignment was that I am looking for both skill and authenticity in the work of others, that I am hoping to achieve that in my own development.      

This very much fed back to the Likes and Dislikes task, where I found myself reacting in a quite basic way to the work of specifically Gavin Webster and Ben Fosker.      I am sure that neither would expect to be mentioned in the same breath, but I found the energy in their respective works magnetic.    They share the qualities of honesty and humour in their work – and though Gavins explosive pots are apparently unplanned in their final forms, they are obviously the outcomes of a ceramic version of a love-affair with the process and a refined understanding of how the glazes and clays work together and on each other.     And there is no apparent fear of failure for the outcome.      The free-hand quite joyful/playful nature of Bens work gives me the same feeling – a love of the process, an understanding of his materials and an ability to use it’s potential to let his ceramics showcase his personality.    It’s generous work, that’s giving of itself without being all deep, meaningful and pretentious.        His daily Instagram posts for the past couple of weeks show that – posting pictures of his breakfast in his favourite bowls made by other makers.

All of which is rather strange as my own work and objectives at this point in time are, even to my own ears, convoluted and overly intellectualised.       But this is my own process that I need to go through – and I’m going to stick with it because I thinks it’s a bit of a cathartic process - I hope it will lead me to what I have in my other love (apart of course from my Philip ) which is being in my own skin when I’m doing eastern martial arts.   I want to feel in my own skin when I’m making my work, when I’m being creative.    And I want this to show in my work ……………..

So that’s where I was going into the second written assignment and starting the ‘Self Initiated Taster Project' that’s built around the First Learning Agreement.

Taster sessions – pre First Learning Agreement 

The work, tests and outcomes from the work up until February 2023 are documented in my workbooks.

The forms and tiles done at this stage have been used for glaze and oxide tests, and so are serving a dual purpose for assessment purposes.

Additionally I began properly looking at and following various makers for various reasons.      It’s become obvious that my love of coiling and slab building are here to stay, as is my love of form and the clay itself, rather than specifically applied glazing and decoration.      

The use of oxides separately and together with a limited glaze palette started in the taster sessions, and has carried on to date – specifically the use of oxides to create metallic effects and the use of celadon glazes.       I will probably move on to develop/test how oribe/shino glazes could work for me.

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Oxides: until the start of this course I routinely fell back on manganese and chromium oxides for emphasis and colour, which was boring even to myself – not to mention not particularly healthy !

But I do like the look and feel of cooked clay, and the play of basic oxides and basic glazes on it.      It’s not just some ‘less is more’ vibe, more a love of the material.   

I’m sure that’s why I’m so drawn to Jim Malone – he just loves his clay and makes it sing for him.    That’s what makes his ‘little brown pots’ (a nasty pejorative phrase in my opinion) so special and makes me buy them with money I haven’t got ………

The pot I bought from Jim Malone when I went to interview him for the second assignment – and expensive trip ! but worth it.

The Pot I nearly bought instead.     Everything is minimal but purposeful and balanced.    The decoration stands by itself but also enhances the form.   The whole smacks of intuitive, practiced ability.

And this from my husband – who is not a potter:-

-          He lets them speak for themselves

-          They are honest and not pretentious

-          He uses the clay and the glaze together, not using the pot to drape glazes off (he didn’t mean this in a complimentary way)

Jim’s ultimate ‘little brown pot’ - how can such understatement be so profound.    I’m sure it comes down to love and self-effacement in his practice.      It’s no wonder that the skilful eye of Bill Ismay picked him out all those years ago, and such a damned shame that he feels hounded out of the market because he’s not “innovative enough”. 

So – looking at this work more closely my takeaways are:-

-          The skill

-          The balance between clay and decoration

-          The glazes used, I love the subtle creamy whites and greenish hues that are reminiscent of celadon and shino

-          The lack of “I love me, who do you love” in the pots.     It’s leaving room for me to love the pots and hopefully understand the potter just a little bit more

-          I can live with these, and when the latest fashions and fads have passed, I’ll still be loving and living with them

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Back to basics! And oxides and glazes.

The oxide tests in the first term were interesting, and though not new to me I approached them differently than before.     I want to move away from getting the darkish look I like from plain old toxic manganese , with splashes of greens or plummy pinks from even more toxic chromium, which I have tended to apply just as stand alone elements (either under, over or without glaze).            I’ve always liked metallic glazes so decided to use the oxide tests to overload some of the tiles to see how they would burn out at different temperatures – interesting results from cobalt carbonate and copper carbonate in particular.   Interestingly the copper oxide was much less responsive – just lay on the tile like an oxidy bully …. I also decided to  lightly load manganese to look at its subtler brown colours – and then to see how it would play out with celadon as well as white or clear glazes.

oxide	Earthenware	Stoneware	Comment
D : Copper Oxide Oxide heavily loaded as I wanted to see how it metalized			E/W breaking to green under both glazes. S/W – no colour breakthrough, but texture changes to smooth on the edge of clear glazed area. Both = Satisfying metallic result: smooth/polished at E/W but course and very matt at S/W
F: Copper Carbonate Oxide heavily loaded as I wanted to see how it metalized			At high concentrations much the same result as Copper oxide – possibly more matt at S/W.     Overall smoother for metallic effect using oxide than carbonate ?? Need lower concentration tests, also test with oxide on top of glazes.
G: Cobalt Carbonate Again oxide was quite heavily loaded to see its performance at concentration.			Pretty much as expected – -          both temps = vivid blue under clear glaze -          unglazed E/W = matt but fluxed to smooth dark grey at S/W -          Under white E/W – muted blue, but under S/W white changes to green.

So then the next thing to do was to make up a mixture of the oxides based on these tests to see if I could develop a nuanced metallic response and how it would play out on different clays and at different temperatures.

This was the motivation behind the decorative decisions in the Box of Secrets – ‘Box of Things’ and the ‘Chinese Vase – part 1’,  ‘Zig-Zag’ and ‘Chaos’.   I repeated it with the coiled womans lines to see how it would play out on bog-standard clay, low fired under a lightly applied tin glaze, and painted on using Linseed Oil as the application medium rather than water.

Processes:  I made up a mixture of 3 oxides : 2 parts cobalt carbonate, 2 parts copper carbonate, 1 part magnesium.        AND YES I KNOW THAT THESE SHOULD BE CAREFULLY WEIGHED TO MAKE IT ALL REPEATABLE AND PROPERLY REPORTABLE.    This will be the next step as I go on to develop the idea in the next practice.

Results:-

Box of Secrets, Filial and banded decoration onto a heavily grogged and iron-laden red earthenware.    Thickly applied all round.   All covered in painted on clear glaze.

Nice shine on the filial, nicely run down to leave it very shiny at the bottom with nuanced matt effect at the top, but not bringing out the copper/cobalt hints.

Chinese Vase (and Son of Vase): The oxide was applied to Son of Vase first, and reduction fired.   The process was repeated on Chinese Vase but fired to Stoneware.    

Son of Vase :  on Uclan polluted clay, heavily applied, with clear glaze pained over.    Not particularly interesting, but with a few nice breakouts around the rim – though I think these are more to do with the internal celadon glaze – need to follow this up, i.e. the 2/2/1 oxide applied over and under celadon and reduction fired.

Chinese Vase : much better results – on iron rich grogged stoneware (P860) and fired to stoneware rather than reduction (though this was mainly because I didn’t want to have the form warp in the vagaries of the gas kiln – the result was much better than I anticipated it would be.   Happy Bunny time! )

The textured top is 2/2/1 oxide mixture heavily applied.   The top coiled detail and the thumbed detail are both painted on then wiped back before celadon glaze was painted over the top – deliberately light application.

Much more subtle, and I like the runs in the coiled/glazed parts compared to the harshness of the top.

As far as Chaos is concerned I painted 2/2/1 on the rims of the form, over the top of the dipped celadon body, to see if it would be stable or bleed into the body of the work – it did to a small degree.   The oxide was painted on much more thinly than the Box of Secrets, and then reduction fired.         In parts the celadon under glaze has bled through into the oxide detail and given quite a pleasing effect. 

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Glazy MacGlaze-Face : not my favourite process but one that I must get into more if I want to realise my overall objective.

So – starting point:

I like making, I like form, I like clay in its raw and cooked states.   I like the spaces between objects and the thought that it’s possible to tap into this elemental energy.        This is where my ceramic and martial arts roots come into co-existence – except that the martial arts is internalised and I am hoping through ceramic to externalise my reality.  

I don’t like (as a generality) glary raku bling, raku crackle glazes where the crackle IS the pot, glazes pretending to be something they aren’t e.g. “I’ve dripped this glaze down the side of a form in order to show I’m at one with nature” where the form and the glaze have no planned nor coherent need to be together.   If the glaze and the form are obviously either symbiotic or deliberately juxtaposed then this can be very effective.

A few examples of pro’s and con’s

Anna Lambert -  I liked but wasn’t a great fan of Anna Lamberts earlier figurative work, and I think Dave Binns did her a great favour in telling her to “lose the birds” because it opened her up to much more intuitive work where the process and the decoration are complimentary.   It’s difficult to imagine the pot without the decoration, or vice versa.    It is, quite literally, a work in the round.     In this pot, as you could turn it around you would be immersed in the sense of place and the walk in the winter hills and woods.  

The functionality of this set of dishes/vessels doesn’t detract from the way the series builds up layers of the place – walk over the hills to the top where the twiggy trees wait to scoop out the insides of the top most rise.      I can see the journey through the fields, over the gates and up the hills.     But it isn’t too literal, neither is it too abstracted.       If I knew the area that inspired this I would use the pots regularly.     It makes me want to go out and find the place – or to create my own journey through my own experienced landscapes.     

In fact  it makes me wonder if I could create my own internal landscape in a similar functional way – a thought for future development.

On the other hand:

A very much up and coming potter is Chloe Rosetta Bell.    She is excellent at presenting herself and making her work accessible.     I like in her work, and I wouldn’t mind owning and using a bowl or container, if only it was not sold as being so utterly of sense and place.       Her latest ‘collection’ was hyped to the rafter pre-sale/release, and is – apparently – firmly rooted in Anglesey and the Menai Straits.    Proof was presented in carefully curated pictures of materials and processes, but I just don’t get it ……….    As a lifelong and prolonged visitor the Twyn Hir and Llanfwrog the links seem somewhat tenuous.     I don't so much see a love of place, more a commercial selling point.     All the more power to her elbow that she is able to click into this on-line and ‘experience by default’ vibe but I think it detracts from her work, which is well able to stand on its own merits.      I would like to look at it and ask something other than “how much does this cost and who else has one?”.

Chloe Rosetta Bell – Sea Salt Collection

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My own work : as a result of the second written assignment I realised the extent that I’m drawn to celadon and shino/oribe glazes – particularly the fluidity and variability that can be achieved with celadon glazes through use of different clay bodies and firing temperatures/methods.      All bar one of my selected interviewees work is based around a Chinese, Korean or Japanese aesthetic – and to a lesser extent process.

This also ties in with my objective of exploring the eastern ideas of flow, space and energy.