New Works

Some recent works completed in the last few weeks. I have really enjoyed experimenting with Kurinuki techniques, having viewed John Britt's excellent video and coming across the work of Lucien Koonce and Kaneta Masanao online. Both produce the most beautiful works that are created by shaping the outside of a block of clay, before then hollowing out the slightly dried block. 

Lidded pot by Kaneta Masanao

Teabowl by Lucien Koonce

My most recent piece is another large coil pot, my biggest so far. It is made from a Doble's stoneware clay rich in iron, giving it the reddish colouring. Though pleased with the outcome, I need now to give some serious consideration to developing my own style through the application of decorative slips, oxides and glazes.

Recent work

My most recent work, a coil pot completed yesterday, is based on a small scale Korean Onggi storage pot. It's one of my largest works so far, built from a buff stoneware, combined with Doble's DSS stoneware.

Exhibition Time

Last night saw the opening of our course exhibition at The Poly in Falmouth. It is the culmination of the course, and offers us our first opportunity to display our work to the public.

Despite any initial concerns about the worthiness of our work, it all looked great once set up, and seemed to be well received by those at the private viewing. Thanks must go to Penny Clifford, our tutor, who has put in a considerable amount of extra-curricular time in organising the whole event.

Final piece

My final piece emerged unscathed from its initial, bisque firing. The black stoneware clay appears as a dark red, due to the amount of iron oxide used to stain the clay, but this will hopefully darken a little when glaze fired at a higher temperature. The irregular black band around the top of the vessel is from the application of copper oxide between two lines of wax resist. 

 

Moving forward

As my second course comes to a close, and we start to put the finishing touches to our final pieces in readiness for our little exhibition at the Poly in Falmouth at the beginning of July, I realise just how important pottery has become to me. Whilst working full-time, I often find myself thinking about new ceramic projects, considering what glazes I would like to experiment with, and just how much I would like to commit more of my time to this new creative outlet that I have discovered a passion for.

It's easy to waste time wishing that I had discovered this new found love earlier in life, at a time when I could have studied it at college properly, without having to worry about paying the mortgage, or when I could have spent time with my uncle Frank, a man who as a young boy I loved to spend time with on the golf course, totally unaware of what interest I might also have had in the vast knowledge and experience of ceramics he gained from a lifetime working at many of the major pottery firms in Stoke, and teaching at Staffs. Poly. But there's no time for all that.

In a world that is blighted by unrest and distrust, and in a week that has witnessed both the massacre of so many innocent members of the LGBT community enjoying a night out in Orlando, and the gunning down of a young, brilliant MP who had devoted her life to humanitarian causes around the world, it is hard not to despair. Time seems too short to waste arguing and fighting, when we should all be concentrating on pursuing our interests and passions, caring for our loved ones, and doing whatever little we can to build a fairer, more honest society, in which its members can coexist peacefully. So I intend to vote to stay within a community that will support each other as well as those escaping more difficult situations for the sake of their families, do all I can to continue to look after my lovely family, and pursue my creative interest in pottery, in the hope that, one day I will manage to produce work that I'm happy with and hopefully brings some degree of enjoyment to others.

Finally - firing

I've been waiting a long time for this day, but finally it has arrived! The first firing of my kiln started yesterday, and I've just unpacked it, and apart from one slab pot with a thrown neck, which clearly wasn't quite attached well enough, everything else bisque fired successfully.

Over the past few months, building up to this stage, I have been concentrating on producing a range of pots using mostly coil techniques; I have also become the proud owner of a pugmill, courtesy of Ebay (what else?), and spent a warm Sunday afternoon earlier this month reclaiming all the clay waste from the previous six months. Despite being obtained very cheaply, the pug performed beautifully, and will quickly earn its keep, as I continue to strive to produce pots that I feel happy with.

It's a very difficult position to find yourself in, whereby you are creating a craft item from scratch, with only your own thoughts to guide and assess your progress, and in my case, without the benefit of having spent three years at art college, with the freedom to explore and experiment, build your making skills to a confident level, without the pressures of having to find buyers for your wares. Though I have no realistic aspirations to earn my living as a potter, I do aspire to produce work of such a quality that someone, somewhere might consider it of sufficient merit to exhibit it in a gallery, and for it to hold its own against established, trained potters.

However, placing my feet more firmly on the ground, and not getting too carried away with myself, I need to be content with taking smaller steps, and today, pulling my intact, bisque fired pots out of the kiln, takes me one step further.

Its taken a while to muster up the confidence to invest in a new controller for the kiln, but with the assistance of Simon Warren at SM&K Ltd, I now have the ability to bisque and glaze fire my pots. Simon and his colleague were extremely helpful, not only in supplying and installing the controller, but also in taking the time to talk me through the firing process, demonstrating how the controller works and inputting a couple of introductory firing programmes. My thanks to them both.

Now just the tricky task of deciding how to glaze them - a whole new challenge to overcome.

In the meantime, I am continuing to work towards completing the NCFE level 2 course I'm working on at evening class, and the exhibition of work at the end of the course, at The Poly, Falmouth in July.

My final piece for the course, which I producing in BIS, black, grogged clay from Doble's clay pit in St Agnes, is my largest coiled piece to date, measuring 18 x12".

Pot photos

Have spent a fair bit of time taking photos of my more recent pots, all small scale, not got round to firing any of the coil pots yet, due largely to the limited access to a kiln, though hope to have my electric kiln wired up in the next few weeks!! Can't wait. In the meantime, you can see my photos at:
http://alistairwillshawceramics.weebly.com/

 

 

 

Coiling's the way

Though still fresh to this new, and seemingly fantastic form of pottery construction, and yet to have any of my first attempts fired, I have taken to coiling with great vigour, and whilst I used to produce many a small bowl and the odd medium sized vase,  my throwing skills are still too limited to allow me to make anything larger without collapse.  However, I have now coiled a series of largish pots. all standing around 12-14 inches high, and up to 10 inches in diameter, and appear to be limited only by the size of the kiln, or the available amount of clay.

My most recent coil pot (shown left) is 14 x 9 inches, and is still drying out as I write. The discovery of coiling led to me carry out a little research to investigate which other potters mainly use this technique. Pinterest is a wonderful resource, and has been responsible for bringing to my attention some fantastic potters, like Toshiko Takaezu, Ashraf Hanna, John Ward and Monica Young and Sarah Purvey, all producing quite large scale work using hand building techniques, either coiling, pinching or slab building. The scale is a huge attraction for me, though I am still to figure out why. Follow my Pinterest boards at:

https://uk.pinterest.com/alwillsha/ceramics-inspiration/

https://uk.pinterest.com/alwillshaw/ceramics/

As we are lucky enough to live in Cornwall, on a recent trip to St. Ives, I was able to pop into the New Craftsman Gallery, and was delighted to see, up close, work by John Ward. It remains a mystery to me how he manages to produce such fine and delicate work, using the same basic techniques as Sarah Purvey, who, by contrast creates beautifully bold and robust work. 

 

Oval Pot with Shaped Rim and Green Banded Design by John Ward

Landscape Series – Visceral Form 2015 by Sarah Purvey

Turning Points

Towards the end of my ten week series of sessions with Richard Phethean, I was lucky enough to make the winning bid on an old momentum wheel on Ebay. There were two reasons for my auction success, firstly because momentum wheels tend to be old, are very basic and fairly uncommon, and possibly not overly desirable to most potters, (most of whom, for some reason, seem to prefer the silent reliability of top of the range electric wheels), and secondly, therefore, because I was the only bidder, giving my winning a certain inevitability. In fact, I was able to make an offer on the item, which, despite being considerably less than the 'Buy it Now' price, was readily accepted by the seller. This was, to my way of thinking, a great step forward, not only because I could now start to practice at home again, but also because momentum wheels are particularly suitable for producing large scale pots, and are preferred by some the potters I most admire. Apart from the fact I had to travel to Ludlow to collect the wheel, and subsequently cut the frame in half just to get it into my studio space, I was chuffed to bits, when finally, bolted back together, I was able to use it for the first time. Of course, since the showing of the BBC's Throw Up series, potters wheels of any description have doubled in price, so I was even luckier than I originally thought, to have bought it the week before the first episode.

Having amended the wheelhead to accept bats, I have grown to love my wheel, and have used it regularly since I got it. In fact, I now produce almost all my work on it, preferring it to the electric wheels at my evening course venue. It quickly got to the stage where I was producing so many pots that it was becoming a little awkward as I still had no means of firing them, other than to take them to my Tuesday evening class.

It was not too long after getting my new wheel, that I decided to try some coil building. Having originally been rather scathing of any hand building techniques, considering them to be rather too basic to produce professional results, I was rather taken aback to discover that not only does coiling offer greater control, and versatility, the slow pace is very therapeutic.

Moving on - or indeed standing still.

By the time it came to September 2015, and the start of both my second Adult Ed course, and Richard Phethean's evening workshops, I had managed to burn out the motor of my electric wheel, after many hours of producing what I considered to be mediocre, medium and small sized teabowls and vessels. I had subsequently attempted to build an alternative electric wheel, using parts from the original and a motor from a secondhand treadmill running machine, from a local man advertising it on Gumtree. Judging by the size of the guy, it seemed amazing that the running machine was in such good condition, and I can only assume that it had been one of those purchases that seemed a good idea at the time, until he had realised he would actually need to break a sweat if he was to reduce some of his considerable bulk. Anyway, having ripped the guts out of it, I was able to retrieve the motor and control pcb, and was very pleased with the end result. That is, until I started to use it, when I realised that the controls were very slow to respond and the wheel generally too fast, good for initial centring, but making it difficult to make any delicate finishing touches to almost completed pots. It also had a slight, but noticeable wobble! It had required quite a lot of work to get the wheel to the stage where I could sit in front of it, and begin to throw, so it was frustratingly disappointing to realise that this was not going to provide the answer going forward (an entirely unnecessary corporate phrase seemingly thrown into business conversations willy-nilly and needed no more at the end of this sentence than in many of those used in discussions between shiny-suited, self-important men, other than to prove a point about how pointless it is).

However, I had reached a stage where I needed to be making pottery, there was no turning back, but unlike many of the middle aged, mainly women (I imagine), who had been inspired by the recent BBC airing of 'The Great British Throw Down', (or 'Throw Up', as it was known in our house), I couldn't either afford or indeed justify paying up to a grand for a brand new Shimpo wheel (apparently the must have item in any new ceramics graduate's studio - for those lucky enough to find and be able to fund such a course or live comfortably with the student debt towering over them). I needed another means of making pottery, and you might imagine that my luck with wheels so far may have pointed me in a different direction by this stage, but no, I continued to fixate on throwing, so I was over the moon when I noticed a Gumtree advert offering an old electric wheel, free to a good home, and even more miraculously, located in the same village as us. On the 'gift horse' and 'mouth' basis, I gratefully accepted this offer, but unfortunately, following the hassle of lugging this heftie monstrosity of a wheel into my van for the half mile trip home, I was to discover just why it had been so freely given away. Although in theory fully working, it was in far from good condition, and my initial thoughts that I would easily be able to strip it down and recondition it, gave way to the rather more negative realisation that I would never be able to make much use of it. So, for several frustrating weeks, I relied on the use of wheels at both course venues to continue to develop my skills, whilst unable to practice between times.

Whilst less formal than the qualification based course offered by my local Adult Ed. service, Richard Phethean's evening workshops offered an excellent opportunity to reinforce the basics of throwing, whilst exploring the use of coloured decorating slips, that I hadn't previously used. Whilst the drive down to Penzance/Helston (a round trip just shy of 100 miles), just as what classes as a rush hour in Cornwall was getting going, was at times a bit of a pain, it was well worth it, and I can recommend Richard's classes to anyone, and would welcome the opportunity to attend again at some stage in the future. Richard is a very affable and amusing tutor, with many a tale to tell, whose knowledge of ceramics seems second to none (as well as being the current chair of the CPA, he is an authority on throwing and author of 'Throwing', part of the New Ceramics series, published by A & C Black). He teaches in a very casual but informed manner, and everyone seemed to both enjoy the sessions and gain enormously from his instruction. Though the series of ten classes that I signed up for were over far too soon, I feel I finally began to produce some more mature pieces that took me to a new (and thankfully higher) level, despite being clearly influenced by Richard's direction.

Level 1 - A (not so) brief glimpse at a growing obsession

I'm not sure if it's a necessary part of blogging etiquette or not, but having not added a second post to my new, and only, blog, since the day I started it, I feel the need to apologise to those waiting, breathe baited, for my next update. Quite who those unfortunate souls might be, or indeed, what the actual purpose of my blogging is, I have absolutely no idea. But if it acts as a useful journal of my ceramic career to date, it might at some future stage be helpful to me in my increasingly forgetful state, and, who knows, may even be of some passing interest to others. At the very least, it is doing no harm to anyone, as far as I know, and might even provide a welcome relief from the ever increasing political turmoil that we as a race seem hell bent on creating.

That said, it is over a year since I started my first, Level 1 NCFE course in pottery run by the Cornwall Adult Ed Service. Initially, I started the course, for an entirely unknown reason, with a view to learning and gaining experience of mould making and slip casting. Consequently, it was with a heavy heart that I left the very first session, having been told that the course would not cover these aspects of pottery, which were themselves outside the experience of Penny, our tutor. After a few early sessions, I began to realise that any thoughts I had of creating professional looking pots using the most basic of introductory techniques of pinching and coiling, seemed an awfully long way off. However, it was not uninteresting learning some of these basics, and we created a series of tiles so that we could test the different oxides and glazes available to us. That said, I was very keen to move on to what I considered to be rather more advanced techniques that offered more potential for producing successful results. The introduction to throwing covered all the basics of centring, hollowing out, and opening up, and within the first two hour session, I was moderately pleased with my largely asymmetrical results. It was not long before my one session per week was proving to be frustratingly inadequate, and I was soon looking for a potters wheel that would enable me to continue my experimentation at home between lessons. My first wheel, collected one damp November evening from Stoke-on-Trent, was a Wenger kick wheel. Sturdily built, and coming from the heart of the British Ceramics Industry, I felt I should have been able to turn out more professional pots within days of manhandling it out of my van and into the shed. However, as ever, it didn't quite turn out that way. Though I managed to produce some reasonable results, I always struggled to maintain a constant speed, and found it difficult to brace my elbows and forearms sufficiently to centre the clay as exactly as on the electric wheels at my Tuesday evening class, because of the constant movement of my left leg.

Working small on my Wenger kick wheel.

Selection of early earthenware pots

It wasn't long before my obsessional side was demanding what I considered to be a more professional means of production, and when I saw an electric wheel for sale on Ebay, in Cornwall, I decided I must have it, if I was to produce items of a higher quality, and more importantly, on a larger scale. From the very beginning, I wanted to be in a position to create large scale pots. My Internet research for the project we were required to produce for the Level 1 qualification, had made me aware of some of the greats of contemporary ceramics, like Nic Collins, Svend Bayer and Lee Kang-hyo (if you have any interest whatsoever in pottery, and if you're reading this, I hope you have at least a passing regard for the craft, or you'll quickly begin to find this blog increasingly dull, you should find the time to take a look at the Goldmark Gallery video on this fascinating character and the way he creates his beautifully massive pots - visit You Tube to learn about the work of Lee Kang-hyo ) all of whom work on a wonderfully large scale, and I, for a reason I have yet to comprehend, aspired to recreate work of a similar size.

On second thoughts, having reread the above paragraph, I feel I might be doing you a disservice by suggesting that only those with an interest in pottery should view the You tube video linked above. In fact,  I recommend it to all of you reading this as it may just refresh your belief in human kind, in offering a privileged glimpse into the world of a man at peace with himself and his work.

Anyway, back to the tale of my own progress towards clay-based enlightenment. 

Small earthenware bowl decorated with copper oxide and turquoise crackle glaze.

By the time I completed that first course, and was awarded my first ever qualification in ceramics, I was spending most of my spare time, working on my electric wheel, and producing endless small teabowls, and struggling to throw anything larger. Whilst pleased with the developing refinement of my thrown bowls, I was still frustrated not to be able to produce work on a larger scale. I was also disheartened by the lack of opportunity to further my ceramic learning in Cornwall at an affordable price. Having released a passion for working with clay, I was keen to pursue it further, much further. So much so, that I considered enrolling on the Contemporary Creative Practice degree course at Cornwall College, specialising in Ceramics. Unfortunately, having discussed this with the head of department, to establish the feasibility of studying part-time, whilst continuing to work; further investigation into how I might fund the course led nowhere, unless I was prepared to take on a huge new debt. Quite how we arrived at a stage where the desire to learn, meant undertaking to pay back a loan larger than the mortgage I took out on my first house, I have no idea, but am predisposed to blame Mrs. Thatcher, who. lets face it, is solely responsible for most of the negatives of modern British society, one way or another.  

As you can imagine, my progress seemed to have come to a halt. I would have to fathom it out on my own, with the help of You Tube. Possibly not the best way to proceed, so it was with relief when I received a call from my tutor, Penny, to let me know that the Adult Ed. service would be offering a Level 2 course starting in September 2015. At the same time, I also discovered that Richard Phethean, current chairman of the CPA, who had moved from London to Cornwall the previous year, had set up his workshop and was offering evening courses. I enrolled on a series of ten sessions. In the space of a couple of months, I'd gone from completing my first course, struggled to find a higher level course, then ended up enrolled on two separate courses. I couldn't wait.

Initial Beginnings

Whilst I'm still fairly new to ceramics, I am a complete newbie to blogging, so please be patient with me.

My journey in pottery began last year, when I decided to start an evening class with the local Adult Education service in Cornwall. My fairly varied career, which has included teaching Craft and Design in secondary and special education, as well as working in a self-employed capacity as both a photographer and furniture maker, took yet another change of direction when I moved to Cornwall with my family in 2005. Since then I have worked mostly as a service engineer, and was feeling that my life lacked any creative stimulus, and it was with a mixture of scepticism and excitement that I started my initial course back in September 2014. Scepticism because I felt sure that it would take years of training to even begin to churn out pots of a reasonable standard (especially given my inbuilt tendency towards perfectionism), yet excitement by the prospect of beginning to learn a new and creative skill.

Much to my surprise, though I was never keen on some of the basic techniques of pinching, slabwork and coiling, I did find that I immediately enjoyed the process of throwing, and as long as I didn't get too ambitious, I could centre the clay, hollow and open it out and throw a basic cylinder from the first few weeks of the course.

Now on my second, slightly more advanced course, I have become fascinated by both the process of ceramics, and inspired particularly by Japanese and Korean pottery, as practiced by both historical and contemporary potters, such as Shoji Hamada, Ken Matsuzaki and Lee Kang-hyo, as well as those western potters using similar techniques, particularly wood firing, and creating work influenced by eastern ways and following the styles and techniques brought back from Japan by Bernard Leach.
The list of names of potters that inspire me grows by the day, as do my Pinterest boards, full of images of pots by the likes of Svend Bayer, Nic Collins, Phil Rogers, Edmund de Waal ,

The aim of this blog is to keep an on-going tale of my progress and setbacks as I work through my course and develop my skills.