Harriet Ferris

from Jan - March 2023 Emerging Potters magazine

by Paul Bailey

Kate Lyons Miller

In her own words…

It’s been over 25 years since l left my jewellery studio in Soho, London to live by the sea in Whitstable, Kent.

After graduating from Central St Martins in the late 80’s with a degree in Jewellery Design, I worked at the contemporary jewellery gallery Jess James, before going on to join an artist studio in Beak Street, Soho to launch my solo career. The studio was an incredibly vibrant and exciting place to work. London offered up so many different opportunities. Along with designing and making my own jewellery collections I had the pleasure of working with Tom McEwan, Danny Hall, Eric Van Peterson and Stüssy where I was invited to make a piece for the De Beers Trilogy Collection. I even worked for a toy company carving the masters for the dolls and animals for Polly Pocket.

Business-wise it was tough to move away from London as I no longer had the regular visits from clients, and it became harder to keep in touch while my attention was pulled towards my family.

Then in October 2019 I was given an evening course in ceramics for a birthday present and that was it, I was hooked! From the beginning it was all about touch. I delight in the handling of the material, to be able to manipulate and explore form so freely has captivated me and I cannot quite believe it’s taken me this long to find clay. Having this new resource at my fingertips, at this stage of my life, has given me time to indulge and for the first time in years I am hungry to create.

Three small vases – Black stoneware, torn, pinched and slab built Ella- Raku fired large lidded bottle

My life has been full of wonderful experiences all of which I feed from. My early childhood was spent riding in the wide open spaces of Salisbury Plain, and around the monumental stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury. I have been lucky enough to travel the world extensively spending many months in Europe, Asia, Australia and South America, experiences that have informed me, and play a part in shaping my ideas. But my most immediate spring board is the local environment, whether it’s the marine structures of sea forts, coastal landscapes, or a simple stone picked up from the beach, living by the sea has had an everlasting effect on me.

I work from home and have a small electric kiln given to me by a friend. I still attend a two and a half hour weekly ceramic session mainly for the company, encouragement and advice, but also to try out different techniques that I cannot do at home such as Raku and smoke firing.

My work is hand built using a combination of slab, pinched and coiled clay. With an eye on detail and an understanding of three dimensional form, my jewellery training has certainly helped as my sculpting skills translate quite effortlessly into this wonderfully versatile material. I love the process of slowly piecing together, adding or taking away, forever altering until the form appears and apart from scale is not dissimilar to carving into wax to create a piece of jewellery to be cast in metal.

My timing was not great to launch a new career, pretty much as soon as I got started Covid hit. Saying that, it did give me time to create a website and I found Instagram which gave me an instant online connection to the world beyond my four walls. I began to enter open calls and competitions, with several failures and a few successes along the way. This period gave me time to experiment and gain confidence.

In recent months I have been selected to take part in the Oxford Ceramics Fair 2022 in October and the ING Discerning Eye Exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London in November.

As well as these two exciting events I have been curating and taking part in a show at the Whitstable Museum Gallery along side a group of incredibly talented local ceramic artists. It showcased the diversity of techniques and the depth of creativity that is on tap in Whitstable and the surrounding area.

Sea Wall Whitstable

Soul Seeker- Stoneware sculpture reduction fired

I love the idea of the ‘Emerging Potter‘ as I feel I fit the bill completely! Now that my last child has left for University I feel I am emerging from the all consuming, but delightful, experience of motherhood to the beginning of what I hope to be a life long journey of creativity and discovery.

Now that I have a better understanding of the properties of clay I am finding the need to push myself, explore new techniques and test my sculpting skills. Armed with this newly found confidence I feel able to explore more intricate forms and what better subject to start with than the human head.