In the late 18C, increasing industrialisation meant people moved away from the countryside into the towns. Here they were able to buy beer from pubs, food from shops, and there was less and less demand for earthenware pots for home brewing, preserving and baking bread. However as factory owners began to make money, people began to take more interest in the countryside again, collecting nature and needing plant pots for their homes. Academics also began to take an interest in these old potteries and wrote books, Solon’s ‘The Art of the Old English Potter’ (pub. 1886) for example.
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However this tide of fortune was killed off by WW1 and in WW2. Men joined the forces, the blackout meant no kiln firing at night and many of the potteries closed down.
In the 1920s Michael Cardew revived many of the old 17C earthenware techniques, digging local clay and firing in a traditional bottle kiln to produce useful and affordable pots at Greet Pottery in Winchcombe, Gloucestershire. Cardew’s experimentation echoed throughout the 20C and 21C inspiring potters educated in art schools to continue to find creative possibilities in the slipware tradition. These potters went on to make pots for use or for expressing their thoughts and ideas about contemporary life. The makers from France, The Netherlands, Ireland and Britain in this exhibition illustrate just some of these exciting possibilities.
A history of earthenware In the second half of the 17C a market system began to develop. Whereas before, potteries had supplied only customers within perhaps a 20 mile radius, merchants now began to carry their pots further afield and potteries found that they were now in direct competition with each other. What happened next was that those potteries with particularly good clay, other raw materials, a good fuel supply, access to roads, canals, rivers and eventually railways, had an enormous advantage. Potters began to develop particular regional styles, to make pots all the year round and invent new lines to tempt their customers, including toys for children such as whistles, marbles and money boxes.
Josie Walter gallerytop was formed in 2004 by artists Gill Wilson and Keith Logan with the aim of promoting work which has quality and integrity – which is grounded in a fundamental respect for materials, processes and techniques. Selected work is exhibited in an environment that is welcoming, communicative and with a focus on promoting makers and their work to customers whose lives are enhanced by it. The gallery is based on the belief that art is important and fundamentally affects people’s lives. It is a transforming process – to the artists themselves but particularly to gallery visitors whose perceptions are enhanced by the unique creativity which artists bring to bear. Since it’s formation, the gallery has worked with over 400 artists and makers. The gallery curates six exhibitions a year ranging from themed mixed exhibitions to focused solo shows. Guest curators bring a depth of focus and understanding to exhibitions and the potter and academic, Josie Walter, was commissioned by the gallery to curate a slipware exhibition. This catalogue reflects the diversity of the work of the eleven potters Josie selected to be part of the Gillexhibition.Wilson & Keith Logan August 2022 © gallerytop Ltd 2022
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Josie Walter
My trajectory into working with clay took a rather roundabout Afterroute…adegree in Anthroplogy at UCL from 1969 to 1972 I spent some time studying engravings in a remote cave called Los Hornos de la Pena in th post e Cantabrian mountains in Spain. On my return I de cided to take a PGCE as a back up to cave studies, followed by teaching in secondary schools for the next four years. In my first I was used a bit like cement on the timetable, filling in where there were gaps. I taught English, Maths, Complimentary Studies and, horror of horrors, one lesson of pottery! I decided my best plan was to join a pottery evening class. It was love at first sight. The evening class was followed by summer schools at Loughborough Art School and the finally a Studio Pottery course at Chesterfield College of Art and Technology from 1976-79 The course was taught by Harry Hibberd, Trevor Nicklin and Geoffrey Fuller. Geoff was to be the most influential in the long term, although I was not aware of this at the time. His playfulness and humour, his love of history, the interaction of slip and soft clay, momentum wheels and once firing has always permeated my approach to making In 1978 I set up The Courtyard in Matlock with fellow student John Gibson and friends from teaching. We opened a fabric shop, a wholefood store, a restaurant and the pottery workshop and a shop run by John’s wife Judy. We left college in June and moved straight into our new premises, but I soon realised I needed more experience. An ad in Ceramic Review for a thrower in France caught my eye. The following April I was with Sue and Nigel Atkins at Le Poterie du Don, in the Auvergne making salt glazed stoneware, learning about pots and food and grappling with my French. It was an extremely instructive time and I came back full of ideas.
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In 1986 I started working part time at Derby College, soon to become University of Derby. I began in the pottery workshop but my love of history soon led me into academic teaching, not only in Ceramics but also into Fashion, Textiles, Illustration and finally Animation. The students were a joy and the different areas a rich area of resources for my work. The University also encouraged research and funded an MA at Staffordshire University in the History of Ceramics which led to my book Pots in the Kitchen, published by Crowood in 2002. A R
Russell Kingston
I work in the Slipware tradition.. Its roots in North Devon are what drew me to its humble origins of the everyday medieval pot to its vibrant place in today's studio pottery. My pots are made for the kitchen, oven and table to celebrate food in everyday life. I make pots with food in mind and get excited buying pots from other potters that make me want to use them and to enrich my life and pottery journey
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Although my work is deeply rooted in the North Devon Slipware traditions, I believe it has a freshness that sits well in modern homes and country cottage alike.. My work marries old techniques with newer ones, using wet on wet slips so they bleed into one another with slip trailers used with force to achieve splashes andfeathered edges. Thrown then altered shapes create outcomes that cannot be achieved on a wheel alone. I've recently been playing with coil throwing and extrusions too I've just designed and built a 130cuft gas kiln which has freed me up to make whatever my heart desires, especially bigger pots The kiln takes two months of production to fill and I’m still learning how to fire it but even after two firings it has moved on my creative practice to places I couldn't have gone without it. I built the kiln after having time to think of my next steps during the pandemic. I love tradition and I believe the best traditions move and progress with time. The goal is to be moving forwards while always looking backwards...
The pots that become part of the kitchen repertoire and get used over and over are the pots that teach us the most and they become like old friends.
Jennifer Hall S I M P L Y S L I P W A R E
I currently have two decorative designs: ’Circles’ is an abstraction of the Honesty seed pods which grew at my garden gate in mid-Wales. I’ve been using this brushed and trailed design for some years now, but it continues to intrigue me and will do so all the while I feel that it is in development. Exhibited in Simply Slipware is the ‘Fish’ decoration, this was a response to moving to the coast in 2018, I wanted my new surroundings to reflect in my work, but however much I sketched my immediate environment nothing came.
It was a trip to The National Museum of Wales the weekend before the first lockdown of 2020, a large tablet of fossilised fish sparked my imagination. The simplicity of their skeletons and their free movement fixed in stone, was achievable with the rapid gestures of sgraffito in soft slip, before firing transformed it to ceramic. The ‘Fish’ created using sgraffito and brushwork is allowing me to incorporate the tropes of tin glazed pottery and explore the use of raw oxides and decorative brushwork, I’m so enthusiastic about its future development. Sitting well in both contemporary and rustic settings, my work has been exhibited in Denmark, Ireland throughout Britain and across Japan, with work in private collections in New Zealand, America and Holland.
I graduated from Cardiff Institute of Higher Education in 1994It was there under the guidance of Mick Casson and Geoff Swindell and the inspiring guest tutors Morgan Hall and Walter Ostrom that I became acquainted with the depth and warmth of earthenware. Graduation was followed by work as a thrower and decorator for Gwili Pottery, a studio pottery specialising in highly decorated slipware in Carmarthen. However, desperate to make my own work I then set up my first pottery in 1997 in Buckin. ghamshire, four years later returning to Wales to establish a studio in Llanwrthwl, Powys. Then in May 2018 my family and I moved to the north coast of Pembrokeshire, where I continue to make slip decorated earthenware pottery from Drawnhome. to earthenware for its warmth of colour and softness of edge, I throw domestic ware in small batches on a geared kick wheel, my pots are then decorated with slips and oxides using a combination of slip trailing, brushwork and sgraffito techniques. My ongoing aim is to develop a comprehensive range of pots that enliven the daily rituals surrounding food & drink, my pots do not challenge but give comfort, they appeal to the eye, sit comfortably in the hand and are gentle on the lips, enriching meal times.
Jennifer Hall
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John Higgins
John Higgins was born near to Stoke on Tre nt, the heart of the pottery industry…He is a member of the International Academy of Ceramics, Fellow of the Craft Potters Association UK, has a BA degree in 3D Design / Ceramics, and a Post Graduate Certificate in Art Education.He has experience of teaching at various levels of education, contributes to events, exhibitions, and workshops in the UK, and Internationally. He is the President of Dacorum and Chiltern Potters Guild and organises their annual Potters Open Day, a day of lectures and demonstrations e.g. Magdalena Odunda, Takeshi Yasuda, Felicity Aylieff, Walter Keeler, Ingrid Murphy to name a few. His own work utilises most ceramic techniques as and when required, and individual pieces will consist of combined techniques to produce the forms. The work is semi functional and uses a range of slips, oxides, and underglaze colours under a transparent glaze. Max. temp. 1150’C copyright Ben Boswell
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Inspiration comes in many guises, in particular place and culture and the work for this show ‘Simply Slipware’ is part of an ongoing theme born out of the poem by John Masefield: Sea Fever.The imagery has its genesis in Australian geology and first nations artwork, evoking the dessert colours, the ancient coastal rocks, and the sea. All these elements continue to challenge and drive him forward. It is the intervention of the spontaneous, the unexpected, and the expressive which is also an on-going challenge requiring careful observation of that which happens along the way.
John Higgins
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Sheila Herring I consider myself primarily a maker and that my creative endeavours have now returned to and rest in ceramics. I spent many years working as a basket maker, building our straw bale timber framed home with my partner and creating a large garden from pasture. Influences from these find their way into the decoration of my pots. There are the suggestions of ladders, flower motifs and abstracted plants, handmade nails and flower stamps indented into the clay. My interest in drawn repetitive patterns stem from my childhood when I spent numerous hours drawing lines of patterns. But there are also elements for me in these drawings of the ever changing rhythm and weaves I used in my willow baskets.
I find it fulfilling and absorbing discovering and extending my individual path into the multi-faceted world of ceramics. Choosing to make functional ceramics gives me boundaries to my explorations, and the purpose of the pot often acts as a starting point. I am excited by how new ideas arise and can be incorporated into what I make. Sometimes there is a long gestation period and may involve learning new skills, making test pieces and planning how an idea can be made to work. If I have even a small glimmer of an idea I write it down, try not to judge it or reflect on it too hastily, rather just let it sit there until I come to do a new batch of making. Then I review whether I want to pursue that particular theme at that time.
I use black earthenware clay fired to 1085°C in an electric kiln. I enjoy working with slip which brings a fluidity to the pot. It offers many options in how it is applied and permits a building up of layers on the surface. I feel it adds spontaneity to the pot making process which I find challenging and rewarding. I gain great satisfaction from making work that delights people and that they can use in their everyday lives. Working in ceramics brings many challenges and encompasses numerous highs and lows. I find potting a reflective process and a good measure of where I am in myself. All this drives me forward in
Sheila Herring
“I make using two very different clays. Slip decorated earthenware fired to 1120 degrees centigrade, and high fired reduced porcelain. (Using apple, chestnut and yew ash ). There is a connected thread between the two … pots for living and daily pleasure. The most interesting aspect about working with both materials is that each material feeds different facets of what I love about clay and one informs something of the other when i am working; enriching both I hope.
These last few years with governmental imposed lockdowns. I found myself surprisingly galvanised in political spirit, something that I had not experienced since my fourteen year old self marched with my CND flag waving. I linked arms with thousands of people around Aldermaston, in protest at the cruise missile situation.
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I also find there is a fine thread that holds my solo flights of thought which when undisturbed can just flow. It feels beyond consciousness or direct apprehension. I move in small steps, but however small, I feel fully stimulated.”
As a single parent the Wobage community was an extremely supportive environment for Patia and her son to live and grow creatively. Patia was made a Fellow of the CPA in 2015, and has exhibited in the UK, Japan and Europe. She has also taught short courses and generously demonstrated in the UK and Europe.
At the age of nineteen Patia embarked on a one year Art Foundation course at Nene College,in Northampton. She then continued her studies at Harrow College of further Education between the years of 1986 – 1988 and subsequently Cardiff from 1998 – 1990. During her time at Harrow and Cardiff she was tutored by Michael Casson, which lead on to an important few weeks summer experience, at the Wobage Pottery during her second year at at Cardiff. After graduation Patia was generously invited by MIck and Sheila Casson to join the team at Wobage in1990. Which is where she continues to work today. Patia has her own workshop where she makes slip decorated earthenware alongside high-fired ash and feldspathic glazed porcelain.
My Earthenware pieces often begin with the clay as the canvas – working slip wet into wet, layer upon layer of pours, drips, trails, feathering, and brush marks with intensity and speed. The joy of being a little more out of control, freer in process has come about in part by using tin cans for trailing slip on both earthenware and porcelain. Ideas are allowed to become something else by the very nature of nature of pouring out the slip through a fine slit, the result being looked at again and thought about afresh; worked on if exciting or cast aside. I’m fascinated by this elusive nature of creativity…. how you sometimes submit either quite loose or preconceived ideas to ceramic process and with free experimentation discover how much more can be gained. I also find there is a fine thread that holds my solo flights of thought which when undisturbed can just flow. It feels beyond consciousness or direct apprehension. I move in small steps, but however small, I feel fully stimulated. With the release of much of my teaching pressures. I found extra space for creative contemplation which was extremely positive… it was like having a mini retirement plan but without any pension security.” I very much enjoyed this experience and freedom… and like many people, I breathed into other areas of my own life’s neglect too. One such pleasure was laying several hundred old blue bricks, wrapping a pathway around my home. This time taught me much about the value of taking time out….time is never wasted. Ideas incubate when placed in a secure warm space. This elusive, and unpredictable hatching of ideas and feelings is just what keeps me moving on with my clay work now.
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Patia Davis
Of equal importance I also got to know and love the work of the colourful French earthenware potters. From Bernard Palissy in the 16th century burning his furniture in order to get his kiln to temperature to contempory potter Marie Pierre Meheust’s wonderful female figures, I was enchanted. There is such a joie de vivre in some of these potters’ work that I do believe the presence of their pots in a house can make a home a happier place.
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Katherine Winfrey Earthenware clay was always there.. I grew up in a village called Castor. . It seemed like every summer, after harvest, the fields between my home and the river Nene were occupied by archaeologists digging up Roman remains. It was quite normal to pick up pieces of pottery in the garden and fields, reminders that the Nene Valley was a centre of Roman pottery production making pots now classified as Castor ware. But it took me a while to find clay. I had always had the urge to make things, whittling wood and wielding a jigsaw, but it wasn’t until I went to Norway as part of a language degree and did a year of craft at a Folkehøgskule that I found my material. Since then I don’t think I’ve gone a month without making something in clay or seeking out the company of another potter. I took my time to become a potter and it’s been an interesting journey. Norway set me on the road; Italy gave me my first workshop experience; La Borne in France fired me up and showed me potters earning a living; Art College in England crushed me; an apprenticeship La Borne saved me and gave me the tools to make a living; production throwing in Australia and Ireland gave me the skills to hit the ground running.
France also gave me my love of earthenware and slipware. All but one of the workshops I have worked or trained in have had stoneware productions but in La Borne we slip-trailed porcelain decoration on to the black local stoneware body and I learnt to draw with rubber poire à lavement from the local pharmacy. I had found a tool that would make me decisive and required bold gestures.
So when it came to setting up my own workshop there was only one clay to choose and one technique to embrace. As much as I see the Katherine Winfrey
She also sometimes applies extra coloured layers using glazes which add translucent softer runnier marks. She also adds textured sprigs and stamps to some pieces using clay stamps made from impressions of plants and berries. Her work is fired in an electric kiln. She enjoys making pots for cooking, serving and eating food but also makes commissions for celebration pieces and tiles for bathrooms and kitchens. She loves to make special bowls, platters or jugs which might become the centrepiece of a table for family gatherings and parties. The decoration on many of her pots is drawn from the plants, flowers and berries in Scottish woodlands and hedgerows. She loves to capture the shapes and colours of the humble but cheery plants which brighten our days and herald the changing of seasons. Some favourites are dandelions, snowdrops, primroses, wild garlic, bluebells, and autumnal hips and haws and berries.
Image copyright Shannon Tofts 2022 Image copyright Shannon Tofts 2022
Michelle Lowe makes lively, illustrated earthenware pots to be used and enjoyed. She has always loved clay and making, but came to a career in ceramics by a round-about route after an MA in Social Anthropology and a decade working for human rights and social justice charities in Scotland and South America. Her passion for clay really took off in 2006, when as part of a sabbatical from her post at Amnesty international, she worked as a summer assistant to Bärbel Dister at Cromarty Pottery in the Scottish Highlands. She returned as an apprentice in 2008-9 and learnt essential craft and practical skills involved in running a busy pottery. She also became captivated by the accessibility, warmth and decorative potential of sip-decorated earthenware. In 2010, she set up her own workshop in Edinburgh, initially at Gorgie City Farm where she taught classes. She continued to learn through workshops, books and short periods working for other experienced potters including Niek Hoogland, Pim van Huisseling, Josie Walter and Maureen Minchin.
Most of Michelle’s work is thrown on a wheel and a few pieces such as her quirky toast racks are hand-built using slabs. When leatherhard her red earthenware pieces are dipped in a cream background slip and then decorated with brushed and trailed coloured slips. She later draws through the coloured slips using sgraffito (lines etched into the clay with a sharp needle tool).
Michelle Lowe S I M P L Y S L I P W A R E
She also makes work with other illustrations including ranges inspired by the simple pleasures of gardening, foraging in woodlands and hedgerows, pot collecting, wild swimming and ridingMichellebikes.now has a beautiful almost-finished new workshop in her garden by the sea in Edinburgh where she lives with her husband and two small children. After having her second baby in the summer of 2020, she is slowly emerging out of the blur of pandemic life combined with the joys and exhaustion of early parenthood and moving house and studio!
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‘Nigel’s slip-decorated wood-fired earthenware has earned him international recognition. His thrown and altered pots combine bold contemporary shapes, with his unique style of decoration and strong sense of Myfunction.’interest in the work of abstract painters, particularly Roger Hilton , Terry Frost, Patrick Heron and other artists from the Cornish peninsula, has influenced and inspired me since I was a student studying at Cornwall College. My work is approached not as a painter, but as a potter. I’ve always been interested in the process of making pots, evidence of the maker being seen in the finished work, not in a forced deliberate way, but with the natural mark that the potter leaves in the throwing and handling of soft clay. This informs how I work. I also draw inspiration from all I do in my daily life; the colours, the textures, the food growing in the garden, how I’m going to cook it, and the way I want the food to look when presented. All these are filtered down I want to pass on the joy and excitement I feel when I’m making my work, through the pots when they are at the table. I see a pot as not quite complete until it is presented at the table filled "I’ve always been interested in the process of making pots, evidence of the maker being seen in the finished work, not in a forced deliberate way, but with the natural marks that the potter leaves in the throwing and handling of soft clay."
Nigel Lambert
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Life in the workshop is a slow steady process, wedging all my clay, and throwing on my Korean/Continental kick wheel hybrid. Slabs for the handbuilt pieces are bashed out on a large concrete bench. Although using traditional materials and processes, I use these in a contemporary way to develop and grow my practice. The work is fired in one of my two wood-fired kilns; a large 80 cuft trolly kiln and a small more versatile pheonix design kiln, which I fire more frequently. I see my work as a linear process, from wedging the clay - through to th rowing, slipping, glazing and firing; stoking the kiln taking on the same rhythm as throwing and decorating. It’s about moving and thinking at the same pace.
An artist is a communicator. A communicator of intellect and spirit.. I grew up in a little village on the river Coine, in Essex. When I was a small boy I found my surroundings to be magical, a kind of enchanted land and all I wanted was to become a painter. Although accepted into art school my mother wouldn’t allow me to go. I went to sea for several years and then spent some time as a Buddhist monk. Through meditation I gained some sense of emptiness, since then I’ve been fascinated by the need we all seem to have to decorate our lives with meaning. I think it was Hegel who described the Great Pyramids as meaningless, meaningful objects.
Ben Fosker A R
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I went on to study textiles and ceramics at Carlisle. Eventually I gained a Foundation Degree in Contemporary Ceramic Practice from Newcastle College. I then went to Cardiff to join the MA Ceramics programme but I found the approach to be pseudo-intellectual. It stifled my creativity, so I left. My present practice is rooted in the English slipware tradition, however it is contemporary. My approach is intertextual and uses many references. People say that what I do makes them smile and I like that. I have quite an irreverent anti-authoritarian approach to life. I think that nonchalance comes across in my work.
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A lot of my work appears to be functional but making functional pottery doesn’t really interest me. It has a different function; I believe that I am interacting with the materials, having a kind of poetic conversation with the clay. I see my responsibility to my audience is to communicate this poetic conversation and give them some sort of pleasure, some sort of meaningfulness. I really enjoy drawing and making these animals, I see them all as portraits. I used to doubt my ability to draw; I was quite worried about it. When we are not confident in drawing it’s stiff and rigid and I didn’t like it. I don’t dream often but one night I had a vivid dream in which William Blake came to me, he had a little wooden bowl containing an elixir and he poured it through my fontanel. This empowered me to draw. I’ve felt confident in my abilities ever since. What drives me to continue making? I think it must be to do with my astrology. My chart says that I’m four times a Gemini. I have hundreds of ideas but I’m not very organised so I don’t get to make even a quarter of these ideas. I live in hope that I will be able to make them all eventually Ben Fosker
Ros was born in Yorkshire in 1959 but by the age of 4 had moved to a remote village in Uganda with her parents who ran a school there. At 11 she returned to boarding school in Bakewell and has remained locally ever since. A career as a Chiropodist ended following a riding accident and a chance meeting whilst selling Goose eggs led to Ceramics. Ros and Geoff Fuller became great friends, and under Geoff and his wife Pat’s guidance and encouragement she began to gradually develop her own creative style. Rosalind's work is hand built in the tradition of early earthenware makers and decorated with her own slips and glazes. Basic forms are thrown on the wheel and then embellished with figures, often telling a story and inspired by the English countryside. Working without the use of casts or moulds makes each piece uniquely different. Ros designs, creates and fires from her studio in a remote part of the Peak District. Each work being individually made means output is limited, but results in wonderfully unique pieces, and the fragility of the making process only enhances their beauty.
Ros Smith
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