This year there will be a good variety of ceramics in the gallery and the garden.
There is a range of pots in porcelain and stoneware glazed with the carbon trap shino that I have been using for over ten years now. It is a mysterious and distinctive glaze - ranging from amber through charcoal according to the ferocity of the reduction process. It is enhanced with sprinklings of rose ash and calligraphic gold lustre brushwork.
I managed, last year, finally, to fire the salt kiln that stood in the barn so there will be a selection of pots thrown, impressed, slipped and salted.
I am still making mugs and espresso cups and painting them, on a tin glaze, with coloured metal oxides. The practice is similar to that of Aldermaston but I use stoneware so, strictly speaking, it is not majolica.
Most exciting is the collection of pots that I have been making over the last couple of years which will be fired in the anagama kiln in the Charente at Easter this year. Most of these pots are not glazed but decorated by flame and ash during a five day wood firing (pine, apple and oak). I will bring back what I can in time for Artweeks (6th - 14th May). The pots range from sake cups and shots to jars for house and garden two foot tall.
In addition, I have devoted some time in the last couple of years to working with wood and will be exhibiting a range of wild edge charcuterie boards in walnut, elm and oak and sake trays in yew with cups in porcelain and shino.
I have been a potter for nearly forty years now, having started as a very green apprentice to Alan Caiger Smith in Aldermaston in 1984.