I remember my first development trip to Stoke. I drove up the M40. Repeatedly listening to the same CD, I’d achieved a meditative high of anticipation and excitement, when the phone rang. It was a Stoke-on-Trent number. ‘Hello duck’ said an unfamiliar voice. ‘Snow is forecast. Best get here early.’ It was the landlady from [...]
Now and then I am going to look at a single piece of work, and explain the thought process behind its making. This week I am going to talk about my project Made in England. It is the first of five posts. I often explain to students that their work is likely to be most [...]
The clay end is the area in a potbank or pottery where the clay is worked. Nothing at the clay end has been fired in a kiln. Men traditionally work in this section, and their work is often heavy and laborious. This is the name we chose to give to the mosaic element of the [...]
My 5 am start didn’t get me to York particularly early. There were a number of accidents on the A1, resulting in a diversion and a series of traffic jams . Miki Slingsby, my photographer, who is incidentally very congenial company and a man of infinite patience, set out considerably later and encountered no problems [...]
Fascinating series on Radio 4 this week. Whatever Happened To The Teapots by Roger Law, of Spitting Image. Apparently he went first to Stoke-on-Trent (the birthplace of the English ceramic industry) in the 80s to have a Thatcher tea pot produced by Moorland Pottery — still a thriving small potbank. (Moorland features in my project [...]
Have been working on a mosaic for South London Botanical Institute in Tulse Hill. The SLBI is wonderful, and undeservedly little known. It was set up a hundred years ago, by Allan Octavian Hume — a keen botanist, who wanted to make the study of plants accessible not only to the rich, but also to [...]