Galleries
PHÖENIX
The pure white porcelain sculpture with its Kintsugi insert represented re-growth and survival. It was finally purchased by the collector who had long admired it and was delighted with its unique restoration. There was a degree of reluctance to let it go, but the experience was a reminder that Phoenix-like forward motion would nevertheless resume. The extended life of that piece also reminding me that even in the early years of practice, porcelain was the chosen material with which to create items inspired by sea and shore life, palaentology, and skeletal remains. Exploration continues..... and the years of close observation have taught me that when we really look there's always more to discover.
"Creative people do not arrive; they just keep travelling." - Yoshihiro Kurashima
THE LOCKDOWN COLLECTION
Whilst working in isolation at home during the Covid pandemic re-visiting the Nerikomi technique presented a convenient way of making small items on the kitchen table, and also enabled Kintsugi work on behalf of a client; the insertion of gold into a firing fault that had appeared in an otherwise successful porcelain sculpture. My intention had been to feature this item as a "Not for Sale" centre-piece at an event to mark forty years as a Designer-Maker, this to launch in August 2022. However, the enforced cancellation of that celebratory event prompted a re-think; Lockdown items were photographed, set aside, and stored for show later. It was time to re-consider practice development.
NERIKOMI
Nerikomi is a term describing a Japanese technique where layers of different coloured clays are laminated together, then sliced and re-formed, to create very precise two and three dimensional work. Since completing the Arts Council supported Research & Development Project in 2012-13, staining and laminating skills have been incorporated into existing workshop practice, and alongside white porcelain production, now contribute to studio development.
RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT
Returning to full time studio work alongside advisory work and mentoring led eventually to extensive experimentation using stained and laminated porcelain. Items on this page represent the first tentative outcomes from that research, and were the basis from which the body of more formal Nerikomi work finally emerged.
MID CAREER - Continued
This work was created during the period following the return to live and work full time in the UK . Exhibiting and travel continued at home and abroad, despite studio production being temporarily slowed whilst managing and promoting the newly launched European Ceramics Gallery.
MID CAREER
This series was produced during the years spent working between the UK and Central Europe, and in particular during residencies at Burg Coraidelstein with Wendelin Stahl. Reduction firings in the home workshop produced copper blushing on some early forms, whilst the white work was made and fired in Germany, with carving and piercing remaining major features.
EARLY YEARS
Following graduation in the late seventies and setting up the home-based studio in North Yorkshire, these items were amongst the first work to be shown in professional venues in the UK. This led to an invitation to show in Germany, and the first solo show previewed in Hannover in 1983.