August 6th 2016. Updated February 19th 2025
I first sunk my hands into a ball of soft, buttery clay and turned it on a wheel two years ago. From that point, I was hooked. Clay bit me hard.
I find there's a special feeling of accomplishment that comes from making things, maybe it's because I've always been quite a practical and self-reliant person. My Dad was a do-er. I remember building a swimming pool with him in our garden completely by hand when I was about ten, using an old baby bath to mix up the cement.
One way or another in my life, I've worked with a wide range of fabrics and materials. Of all of them, I have found clay the most wonderful.
Doble's clay pit, near St Agnes Head.
I'd never thought about the many amazing properties it has too much before, though. That was an error on my part. I am reminded now, every day, what an amazing ingredient clay is. It has been here for us for millennia and has a special place in my life today.
Clay sits in the ground, under our feet, all the time. It's one of the most elemental, primal ingredients on earth that exists.
I love the various stages in which it can be worked, how it has solid and liquid states and can vitrify and turn to hard, durable ceramic. It is very reconstitutable. It can last forever. Solid as a brick, because it’s what bricks are made of. These are all phenomenal properties.
For me, clay is both a canvas and a vessel. Clay sits at the centre of many of the narratives and stories of our civilization.
In its most basic state, clay is simply a collection of platelets that sit and organise themselves in relationship to heat and water. This reconstitutability makes me think of people and how we organise together.
Having a career in digital business strategy alongside this artistic life, I am working in the cloud, and virtually, most of the time. The studio here in St Ives is a lovely place to land and feel grounded.
I try to capture the essential relationship between [people] and [ceramics]. I want to be able to give people a feeling of being grounded in their busy lives with my pieces.
The making of honest, solid things with one’s bare hands is appealing and therapeutic. Going back to our artisanal nature is, perhaps, a necessary counterpoint to a reliance on everything that technology does for us now. I like to connect these things together in the way I work.
When everything's pre-packaged these days, it's wonderful to be able to make breakfast, bowl included. There's no hiding place in being a potter, you either make something, or you don't.
Clay is a unlimited material for makers and has been for the ages. Code is its digital equivalent, another raw material. There are parallels, here. It is also up to us what we make of it.