Landscape Vessels

(scroll down through this page to see more examples of my landscapes in ceramic work)

I began creating this style of ceramic vase 2022, I truly believe all the time I spend walking seeps out of my body and into my pottery, the result is that many of these pots represent our beautiful landscape. The scenes are more or less imaginary, but you might recognise the Oxfordshire downland, or a Dorset beach, if you’re familiar with them.

When I started the first of these pieces I had no idea what would happen, but now I'm very into this "clay-collage" approach - a gradual building up of smaller patches of clay into an interpretation of a landscape.

The clay is decorated by rolling found textures into it - seed heads, hessian, pine cones, even the corner of a house brick I found in the yard, anything is fair game. It’s then patched together in exactly the way a paper collage would be constructed.

I use underglaze to colour these pots, which makes them a kind of cross between ceramics and paintings, and they are intentionally naieve. The insides of the pots are glazed, and the outsides left entirely or partly matte.

Ceramic Vase: Uffington Hill, The White Horse and Uffington Castle

Reconstructed handbuilt vase, reconstruction using the “new kintsugi” method.

Uffington Hill is one of my favourite places, I feel a huge connection to it, to the past evident there with the Horse and the Castle - the old inhabitants of this place, who made the horse and later lived in the hillfort, and the many travellers who’ve trodden the Ridgeway alongside - never feel very far away.

This piece cracked in the kiln so I decided to repair it with gold, which made something different and equally beautiful of it.

Ceramic Vases: Summer Downland and Winter Downland

Summer Downland handbuilt ceramic vase

A celebration of the colour up on the dowsn in early summer - I thought of walks in late may and early June as I made this. There are fields of crops yes - barley, rapeseed and the like, but occasionally a sweep of poppies appears, and I’m always drawn to the beech hangars on the horizon.

Winter Downland handbuilt ceramic vase

A sibling to the Summer Downland vase, I limited my palette to browns and brown-blacks, under an almost white sky. This monochrome schene is familiar up on the hills in early winter, when the wind nips at your face and the chalk becomes sticky or liquid underfoot.

Both vases are handbuilt in white stoneware and decorated with underglaze.

They have a shiny glaze on the inside with the exterior left matte.

Abstract Landscape Vessel - this is a wild fantasy of colour - we never have turquoise fields - but I wanted to try something a little different!

Sandy Beach Vessel [view 1] Inspired by any number of sandy British beaches I've visited, imagine it being a little bit too cold to paddle, but you go in anyway!

Landscape Vessels

Ceramic Vase: Uffington Hill, The White Horse and Uffington Castle

Ceramic Vases: Summer Downland and Winter Downland

Pinch Pots : Bowls & Vases