A Coromandel tea set.
This is one of three sets I made for the Coromandel Easter Exhibition at Hauraki House. Started in the 1980s by Barry Brickell, Deirdre Airey, Wailin & Tom Elliott and Jenny Shearer, the exhibition has been showcasing the work of a group of exceptional potters and creatives for 39 years.
I was honoured to receive an invitation as a guest exhibitor this year, alongside Jenny Shearer, Tom Elliott, Mike O’Donnell, Janet Smith, Fiona Tunnicliffe, Maureen Allison, Pete Sephton, Paul Cornwell, Trish Waugh, and Callum Trudgeon.
The tea set is made from local clay and glaze materials gathered from around Te Tara-o-te-Ika-a-Māui, Coromandel, and wood-soda fired @drivingcreekpottery .
A family of wonky jars. This is my first collection made entirely from Coromandel clay and glaze materials, something I’ve been working towards for a couple of years now. Developing local rock glazes is slow work - crushing, milling, sieving and endless testing. This glaze came together with minimal tinkering, made almost entirely from a local mudstone, thanks to a tip from @janeen.page.pottery . Gas fired in reduction @drivingcreekpottery .
A little teapot from a recent wood firing at Driving Creek. Made from local Coromandel clay, left raw on the outside and lined with an ash glaze. Soda fired in the Phoenix Kiln during a recent staff firing.
This pot is part of a selection by DCP staff for the Clay + Ash exhibition, showing at ArtsPost in Kirikiriroa until February 18th. This biennial exhibition profiles woodfiring potters in Aotearoa. Photos by Jess Lovie.
A little teapot from my last wood soda firing, made from 100% Coromandel materials. A blend of a few different lighter clay bodies, liner glazed in ash and left raw on the outside. This one was a gift for Lindsay Garmson, dedicated NZ studio pottery collector and author of “The Intriguing Story of Coromandel Granite” (a great read). Lindsay sometimes pops into the studio to drop off buckets of mud or granite silt that have washed up (literally) at his place. Lindsay is planning to build a museum in Colville to house his collection of 600+ NZ teapots. It’s a privilege to join the story.
From the Driving Creek photo archive. Two of my older sisters visiting Driving Creek in 1989, hands in one of Barry’s buxom sculptures. Big day for these two, Rita is giving birth to her first child in Tairāwhiti and Bess is in Hilo, Hawaii, competing in the waka ama world champs. Kia kaha to you both!
Some pots from my firing @theleachpottery this week. The culmination of the learnings and experiences from the past six months here in St. Ives. Before I left NZ I learnt that our family has some Cornish ancestry. So after a bit of digging I discovered that my mum’s mum’s mum’s mum’s parents had sailed out from Cornwall to Oamaru in 1872. They both belonged to families who had been mining and farming in West Penwith. I wanted to incorporate a little bit of this connection to the land into my pots. So I dug some raw materials from Penwith to make a porcelain slip. I’ve used the slip on top of the red Doble’s stoneware that we use at The Leach and finished them off with Leach ash and shino glazes. A small part of this land in me, a small part of this land in my pots
A collaborative, commemorative plate created by @niek_hoogland and the production team @theleachpottery . Niek has been in residence here at The Leach for the past ten weeks. It’s been such a pleasure to get to know him and learn a little about European slipware. I threw this plate for a workshop we did with Niek and he did the sgraffito decoration, with Bernard preaching the gospel (A Potter’s Book) while I throw a board of bowls. I love all the little details Niek has captured - the studio mop and bucket, the tools, Godrevy light house and the infamous gulls in the distance and my North and South upside down on this topsy turvy half of the Earth. Each of the production potters here at The Leach have signed and stamped the plate for me, the perfect pot to commemorate my time here.
