Definitely my friend Tony Reardon, I found him on the side of the road gathering clay and we struck a beautiful friendship, a very rare find. He introduced me to the volcanic and wood ashes he fires with. These were a completely different palette to my own and we have learnt a lot from each other. The blue chüns I am now experimenting with come from a roadside cutting remnants of the Taupo eruptions. There is also a white glaze I’m loving, this one rock has opened up the possibility to achieve many more colours.

Definitely my friend Tony Reardon, I found him on the side of the road gathering clay and we struck a beautiful friendship, a very rare find. He introduced me to the volcanic and wood ashes he fires with. These were a completely different palette to my own and we have learnt a lot from each other. The blue chüns I am now experimenting with come from a roadside cutting remnants of the Taupo eruptions. There is also a white glaze I’m loving, this one rock has opened up the possibility to achieve many more colours.

Well I’m loving the ash / rock combinations. Wood ash is essentially the remnant minerals that a tree consumed in its lifetime. Depending on its environment and which minerals were available in the soil, each ash has a different melt in the kiln. This mineral lineage is unique to tree and place, and therefore each glaze. The plate in the images I provided was found in a London sewer in 1661. It reads “You and I are Earth”. The device you are reading this on is essentially minerals, earth mined, somebody's displaced home and land, perhaps a small creature or human…but those minerals supported life and we need to be reminded of this.

I wake up pretty excited to get down to the studio, pottery has many steps over many days so there is usually a flow through from previous days and the pots dictate my schedule. Mugs thrown one day need handles the next and if I have fifty mugs to handle I need to start early. If I'm throwing I usually set myself a daily target and work toward it, this works well for me. I love the rhythm of potting as it always calls you back day after day.

Historically, woman would sing and tell stories as they crafted. Industrialisation and the use of machinery in the workplace drowned out these conversations. I believe handmade objects are more beautiful because they embody the moments that are woven into them. Podcasts and books are always playing in my studio and I feel I absorb so much more information while I'm making. Recent books embodied into my pots have been Educated, Traces and Braiding sweetgrass. I also consume hours of podcasts; Radiolab, 99% Invisible and Intelligence Squared are regular listens but there are so many. Sometimes I pick up a pot and remember the exact words that I listened to as I made it.