Bio

My interest in pottery began when I was 20, in 1980 after reading Bernard Leach’s “A Potter’s Book”. I realised that this was the life I wanted and so, starting from scratch with no art experience or training, I began to make pots with a second hand kickwheel and electric kiln. Soon after this I was lucky enough to get work as a thrower at Best Beech Pottery in Wadhurst, before setting up on my own as a full time potter and teacher.

From the start, I wanted to use as many locally sourced materials as possible and began to make slips and glazes that used wood ash and local clay. This has continued ever since.

In 1992, I built a good sized wood fired kiln which coincided with annual winter coppicing in my woodland which I had begun a couple of years earlier. This work provides wood for my kiln and domestic wood burner, as well as ash from the coppice bonfire. I still use a “Coppice ash” glaze to this day. From the time I built my kiln, I also began to make my own stoneware and porcelain bodies, both of which contain small amounts of Sussex clay.

Working within the studio pottery ethos, I have always blended functional pots with purely ornamental pieces and I have moved through many aesthetics and covered a lot of techniques in the last 45 years, including Raku, salt glaze and terracotta, in addition to wood and gas fired stoneware. I am less impressed by studio pottery now and in the last few years have made a much deeper study into early Chinese ceramics and pottery making generally, from times when handmade pots were a part of the fabric of everyday life and had purpose and meaning. Now, I like to make pots that are well designed for their intended use and are not simply vehicles for glaze and kiln effects.