I met Jo in the first year of the ceramics course in Farnham, Surrey in 1971. We both wanted to be ‘potters’ and thought the course would prepare us to become just that. It was not until our final year that we realised, to our astonishment, that none of the tutors had ever successfully earned their living by making and selling pots. However, we loved the course and made lifetime friends. There was lots of ‘Zen’, brown rice, raku tea bowls, brush painting of leaves, and the glamour of eastern mysticism and aesthetics which seemed to appeal to us then. We gained our first workshop experience when the visiting tutor, Gwyn Hanssen, asked us to work for her for two summers at her pottery near La Bourne in France. It was beautiful there. Michael Cardew came to stay and we discovered the traditional French country pots in Bourges museum.

Jo met David Canter at Cranks and the CPA through her thesis ‘pots for food’. He saw her pots - (oval casseroles, lemon squeezers, colanders, tea strainers) which were quite unusual in 1973, and said that if she could produce them he would buy them. This turned out to be the key to our getting off the ground two years later. We were excited by seeing pots being used by Cranks and Elizabeth David, and would always make a point of visiting the David Mellor kitc hen shop in Sloane square to see the Richard Batterham and Johnny Leach pots on display. An ambition to make and sell pots in that way was, by now, burning in us. After the cosiness of Farnham, we found ourselves in the real world of east end London schools while doing an ATC course at Goldsmiths. I was offered teaching posts, but Jo said that if I accepted one she would not hang around! We ended up at our respective homes in Norwich and Suffolk . We wrote to the Coal Board, British Rail, the National Trust, The Church of England and anyone else we could think of that might just have property they didn't want that would make a workshop. We would scrounge a parental car and drive to anywhere from the north coast of Scotland to a deserted railway station in the middle of nowhere – anything that might do. It was a frustrating and quite depressing time.

At college I had made some gargoyles which, through a visit from Alan Caiger-Smith, were exhibited in the Royal Exchange in the City. Someone with a penthouse in Chelsea saw them and commissioned a salt glazed portrait of their Tibetan prayer dog. Peter Starkey, who had left Harrow the previous year, offered me kiln space in his salt kiln in north Norfolk. We went up to meet him and his wife Fran. and our world changed. Here were a couple who had just set up, and seemed happy to spend evenings talking to us about money, pot boards, Atlas A’s, HTI’s, vaccys, the wholesale price of mugs, buckets and all the other things we were so passionate about. It was amazing for us to hear about the Harrow course and the way in which Mick Casson equipped his students to go out into the world. Peter convinced us that we could do it too.

In the spring of 1975, days before we were about to start working for Alan Caiger-Smith at his Aldermaston Pottery, Peter phoned to say he was starting up the Dartington Pottery Training Workshop and that we could take his workshop space in some old flint barns at Hunworth, north Norfolk. Much as we had wanted to work at Aldermaston, this was an opportunity we could not miss. I taught for the summer term at a comprehensive school in Essex to earn some money, and Jo and I got married the day after the end of term. We cut short our honeymoon, rented a pickup truck and drove up to Hunworth with all our worldly goods on board. The rent on the workshop was £10 per. week, and we found an estate cottage nearby for £2.50 per week. We bought Peters old pot boards, buckets etc. and we managed to find a bakery that was closing down from which we bought a dough mixer, scales and weights for £25. We also bought the useable bricks out of the salt kiln, but Peter was still using it. Eventually we had to dismantle his kiln with his pots still hot inside! Now our lack of workshop experience began to show. We built a 120 cu. ft. oil and wood fired kiln which took a while to fill. The talk at college had always been about who had the biggest kiln, but you can't develop your clays and glazes in such a beast. The first few firings were a disaster. The clay bloated, we melted the props and the pack collapsed etc. and we got scared of the whole venture. At about this time we applied for a Crafts Council ‘setting up grant’. Victor Margrie came to see us. He stood in our unheated workshop in his white suit and turned blue with cold. We got £2000 and this kept us afloat.

We wanted to produce (and still do) a raw glazed whiteware range of pots, having much admired the Apilco ware, but, by accident, found a clay/glaze that worked and was quite like brown salt glaze. We tried, with limited success, to sell this in Norwich – or anywhere. What we did sell was on sale or return. Our first years profit was £32. After nearly two years we felt the pots were good enough to show to David Canter and our world changed once again. He ordered lots of pots for his Craft work galleries, made us apply for the CPA. and gave us an exhibition. Selling in London made the difference. We embarked on an era of virtually living and eating in the workshop, sleeping by the kiln, loading the Renault 4 with pots and driving to London at 3am to deliver to Libertys, Heals, D. H. Evans, Craftwork, CPA, Naturally British, the British Craft Centre etc., and dropping pots off for Henry Rothschild at Primavera on the way home ready to start again. It all seemed so permanent.

Eventually, through Fiona Mellor, we started selling at David Mellors, and through them Maceys in the USA as well as many outlets throughout the UK. We had to buy a pickup truck to cope. We were included in many exhibitions and collections. The pots also started appearing on television adverts, cereal packets and in magazine articles. Although we didn't realise it, I suppose we had ‘set up’.

We bought a derelict house and barn in 1981 and set up the pottery there. It was a desperate struggle paying the mortgage and loans. Orders far outstripped production, the pots stopped developing, the creative element was unsatisfied, we had terrible trouble with the kiln and clay, and we became exhausted. In 1989 we received a Crafts Council bursary, were paid a lot of money for our designs for Next and Jo received some money from her Granny, all within the space of a few weeks. Everything changed again. We packed up and went to South America for two months hoping to find a new direction or inspiration. The pots there were fantastic; vital and essential to their culture, but we came back realising how English we were. So we spent the next two years setting up again. We bought a new gas fired industrial truck kiln, new clay making equipment and made the floors, doors and windows sound. We entered the world of the Country Living shows and became very busy again. I tried to replace Jo with some jolleying machines while she was having babies, but it didn't really work out. The last ten years have been spent enjoying our children, but now all of us are feeling ready to move on with our lives. Recently we have enlarged and smartened up our shop, started looking at new fairs and built this web site. These are all ways of selling our work directly which we hope will give us the freedom to let our ideas for pots develop once again.


BRIEF C.V.

Joanna and Andrew met at Farnham Art School on the BA Ceramics course
1972 & 1973
Went to France to work for Australian potter Gwyn Hanssen for a few months. She had taught at Farnham and seeing her workshop running was an invaluable experience.
1973
Andrew made some gargoyles for Farnham Town Council. A further commission needed salt glazing. Peter Starkey in Norfolk fired this in his salt kiln. He offered us work and in 1975 we took over his workshop when he went to run the Dartington Training Workshop.
1975
Got married Worked for six years developing pots in the ‘ Functional Studio Pottery’ tradition made popular by Leach, Cardew, Ray Finch etc.
Started selling at The Crafstmen Potters Association in London after
meeting David Canter of the Cranks Wholefood shops.
Other orders followed; D H Evans,Heals, Liberties.
There are a few of our pots in the V & A collection of modern studio Ceramics.
Bought a property near Cromer with house and barns. Moved kiln etc.
Trained three students over following few years. Did some designs for Next Interiors Took a sabbatical to South America
Re-fitted workshops, new kiln, better workspace
Had a daughter
1993
Featured in Delia Smith’s Summer cooking programme & book. Had a son. Started making more decorative pots using white stoneware clay and dark green glaze. Sold through shows such as Country Living. Liked direct selling.
1994/5
Developed techniques of roulettes and stamps to decorate pots.
Did up our little shop at Common Farm
Expanded shop and smartened it up. Decided to cut down on wholesaling and concentrate more on selling from home.