The work of an English ceramist living in Tuscany
"I am a studio potter specialising in stoneware, settling into a gentle balance between the functional, the abstract, and the classical form.
My training began in the late 1970s, when I followed a studio apprenticeship in the Leach tradition. At eighteen years old I was throwing 50 cups per hour, and enjoying every minute. The discipline was hard, but I have brought with me the skills that I learned in those early years and they have served me every day of my working life.
My transformation from production thrower to studio potter took many years and many journeys; my “journeyman” travels took me around the world, starting in the French wood-firing potters’ village La Borne, to Australia, New Zealand, South East Asia, Japan, and South America, and finally to Italy, where I eventually settled down among the gentle hills of Tuscany.
I arrived in Italy in 1998 and took my first steps of Italian life working for the La Meridiana pottery school, but I quickly moved on to establish myself as an art studio potter.
The stoneware movement in Italy is still in its early evolutionary stages and as a result, there is very little understanding of high-temperature ceramics. I travel fairly frequently to the northern European pottery markets and festivals, where sometimes I am also invited to perform one of my experimental kilns.
The work I am producing now is divided into a small range of gas-fired reduction stoneware, teapots, bowls, and sake (or grappini) cups and my more personal work. My work is based on a technique that I developed many years ago in the U.K. In Italy it has been named “pelle d’elefante” (elephant skin). These pieces are thrown, but are pushed outwards while they are being made, to crack the surface; they give the feeling of dry burnt earth.
My studio and gallery near Certaldo were set up in 2004 and are open most days of the year for visitors."
