Introduction. A context, Clay.

In this series of blogs I am hoping to explore more deeply what I like to do as a potter and why I do those things.

I thought that I would start at the beginning, with the clay itself. People have been digging into the ground for many thousands of years, using what they found there to improve their lives. Human curiosity and creativity is insatiable. Somewhere, someone, 10,000 years or so ago¹, realised that clay when placed in a fire creates a different material and ceramics was born.

My pots are merely a tiny step in this long lineage, connecting the distant past with life in the 21st century. Like so many UK potters my work is partly informed by Japanese and Korean ceramics. There is a rich history of the transfer of ideas…