Functional pottery in dark stoneware, thrown for the hands
and the table.
I make functional pottery on the wheel. Mugs, vases, bowls,
teapots, coffee drippers, the kind of work that lives in
your hands and on your table. My pieces are thrown almost
exclusively in dark stoneware, a rich chocolate-brown clay
I’ve grown to love for its character and warmth.
Most are glazed white, and the contrast is something I find
endlessly interesting. The glaze pools thick in carved textures
and thins on edges to reveal the clay beneath, a quiet
conversation between body and surface.
I’m drawn to work that shows the marks of its making: the
thumb ridge in a pulled handle, the finger marks where it meets
the pot, the soft spiralled throwing lines from the wheel.
Figs. 1-4 · Vessels, a mug and a planter in stoneware.
Clay is malleable enough that you can smooth all of that away,
even disguise the material entirely. I’d rather do the
opposite.
One of my favourite ways of building texture happens on the
wheel itself. I throw a tight cylinder, leave the walls thick,
then drag a jagged metal rib or the tines of an old fork down
the outside to cut lines and ridges.
From inside, I belly the form out as the wheel turns, the
texture warps and twists as the walls stretch, capturing that
movement once dry. The result is a surface my white glaze can
talk to: pooling milky in the recesses, thinning over the
ridges, where the dark clay shows through.
Other pieces are quieter. A clean foot, soft throwing rings,
the glaze breaking gently over a rim. I like having both kinds
in the kiln at once, the loud and the quiet, and
seeing which speaks to which person at a market.
I came to clay slowly, the way most people do, and now it has
the run of my weekends and most of my evenings. I throw in a
small studio at home, fire in batches, and sell at markets and
through a handful of stores around Melbourne.
Most of what I make is meant for daily use, and I like knowing
my pots are out there in other people’s kitchens, getting
held and used and loved.
