Ceramics
There are two strands to my ceramics: domestic ware, which seeks to enhance the pleasure in everyday rituals, and one-off decorative and sculptural vessels, which I use as conceptual vehicles for exploring the ideas that underpin my practice.
My hand-thrown pieces are the product of an ongoing exploration of the relationship between form and surface, and function and detailing to enrich everyday occasions. Through these vessels I‘m looking to create objects that draw the user in to look closer and savour a given moment. I tend to use a restricted palette of materials, allowing them to be at the forefront of each piece, and often celebrating the contrast between raw clay and the fluidity of glazed surfaces. Although striving for consistency, I value the variation that hand-crafting produces, which I see as helping to connect the user with the maker.
Stockists:
Thrown Contemporary
Direct – online shop and exhibitions
Kettle’s Yard
I make a collection of hand-thrown stoneware for the Kettle’s Yard shop. The range is inspired by my frequent visits to Jim Ede’s beautiful home, and references some of its familiar motifs and hidden treasures. Some pieces are one-offs while others are repeated with subtle variations.
Lemon: references the fresh lemon on the pewter platter in the dining room, which itself echoes the yellow dot in Joan Miró’s Tic Tic painting nearby.
Vein: inspired by some of the pebbles which Jim so carefully selected and arranged.
Collage: utilises a torn paper technique employed by a number of artists on display.
Black: takes it colour from Gaudier-Brzeska’s dog and other bronzes in the house.
Yellow: cues taken from the sitting room lemon and the daffodils of Christopher Wood’s Flowers painting.
Radar: responds to Ovidiu Maitec’s Radar II, displayed in the extension, and the gridded holes of the weathered broomhead Jim Ede placed in his sitting room.
David Parr House
I make a series of ceramics in response to the wonderful David Parr House, Cambridge.
David Parr was a working-class decorative artist living in Cambridge from 1886. He was employed by F R Leach & Sons and worked all over the country on painted schemes in houses and churches by George Frederick Bodley and William Morris, amongst others. Over 40 years, in his spare time he painstakingly decorated the interior of his own terraced home, covering walls and ceilings with intricate hand-painted patterns in the arts and crafts style of the time.
Pieces available from the David Parr House shop (184-186 Gwydir St, Cambridge CB1 2LW) and online.
