I have spent the first forty years of my working life as a professional photographer for magazines book publishing and advertising. Much of that time was I shooting food be it recipes for a cookbook or magazine article or images for product packaging. During this period I was sourcing a lot of my own props and the fashion for artisan hand made pottery was becoming popular. I decided to have a go and see if I could make some of my own. Raku was a cheap and easy way of getting into the art form. It was the perfect method, quick to produce and the reduction effects were exactly what I was looking for, and it was an addictive introduction to trying new processes. My family were growing up rapidly and moving on from education and into their own careers, my wife June and I had both talked about the possibility of changing career paths.
So we sold up out west London home and studio and moved to Kent. Whitstable on the north Kent coast was our destination, and we found the perfect house in the small village of Tyler Hill a few miles from the coast near Canterbury, where by chance we stumbled upon a location with a Medieval history of slipware Pottery. I had previously been using stoneware clay but while researching the slipware process something clicked and found a medium I was totally at home with……
An abundance of clay and wood for fuel helped make Tyler hill a centre of Medieval pottery and tile industry. At its peak ( c1300 ) it had a virtual monopoly over east Kent, producing everything from bowls to chimney pots. Tyler Hill ware has been identified as far afield as northern France and Germany.
While digging in the garden I found a seam of sticky red clay , it had hardly any stones so I picked out what there were and threw this bottle. There are still many impurities in it but I love this rough sharp stone texture. Unfortunately sourcing large enough quantities if this would be too labour intensive to use but this discovery sparked my interest in using terracotta in my work.
I use a combination of throwing for mugs, cups and bottles and moulded slab work for my plates and bowls. most of my work is decorated with strong coloured slip using combinations of pouring , marbling, and slip trailing.
