WILD CLAY
For the last few years, I have been experimenting with throwing with hand dug
Dartmoor and Devon clays, and working with ‘wild’ clay slips made from these samples.
Here in this corner of Dartmoor, friends and neighbours were surprised that there was any clay to discover, and were then intrigued when little wheel thrown vessels began to emerge made from this very local material. I have to thank my rescue dog Douglas and his failure to retrieve his dog toy from a stream for my first ever local clay discovery!​​​​​​​​​​​​​​
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In using these materials, there has been a necessary evolution in the style of my work, away from crafting precise hand decorated high fired stoneware and porcelain, and towards incised and inlayed decoration of vessels made with local clays. The resulting pieces are what I hope will be enduring ‘contemporary artefacts’. I intend for these to have a timeless quality about them - rooted in ancient history but hand crafted in the present. The decorative techniques used have been and remain unconscious, dictated by the material itself. This work is precious to me; it is in my heart and is where my main focus now lies.​​​​​​​​​​​​​
I hope that people will treasure these little vessels, made from a range of Dartmoor and Devon hand dug clays. The small collections are unique and limited, partly because I don’t want to take more than minimum amounts from the earth, whether or not the clay has been sourced by me, or donated to me.
Some vessels are glazed and others unglazed but sealed to render them impervious to water; a few are high fired but most are fired to lower temperature. They are objects to be gazed at...
With a background in Anthropology and undergraduate studies in cultural anthropology, I feel my
work is finally putting me back in touch with my roots. Having said this, one of the first ever
comments about my wheel-thrown vessels many years ago, was that my forms resembled
beaker-form pottery, which both then and now I took as such a big compliment. A more recent
review of one of my larger ‘wild’ clay pieces was that it looked as though it had just been
unearthed ‘straight from the ground’, music to my ears!
The value of the human hand from start to finish, avoiding long-distance transport of materials
and a sometimes unethical extraction of raw ingredients, transitioning to mainly lower temperature
firings, are in equal measure important to me. As I try to be more environmentally conscious, this
new body of work feels like an evolution in the right direction