In the year I worked as an assistant to Deborah of the Golden Bridge Pottery, I must have picked up from her a strong penchant towards the Japanese interpretation of clay. I am fascinated by the simple and yet vibrant, the unmistakable beauty that doesn't come from flashy color or form, but from the feeling of balance when the pot is in your hands. The quiet beauty that touches more deeply the inner senses.

Elements of Ceramics

When you break down the teacup that sits on your breakfast table into the elements that made it, you find yourself on a voyage through some pretty interesting stages of matter.  It is hard to equate the clean looking receptacle of your daily morning tea or coffee as having once been a bit of slush, smooth, gooey stuff that you could stick your hand into with a feeling of ‘oooh, I hope this stuff washes off!’ The consistency could be described as somewhere between cake batter and melted chocolate. The potter looks at this mass in his drying tank, and figures a few more days before she/he can get it out and between sheets of cloth weighed down by terra cotta tiles for the next stage of hardening. Eventually, the bit of slush (we could call it the prehistoric tea cup) ends up with a lot less water in it, in a plastic bag.

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