Our workshop sits next to our shop in a large range of old flint barns. It comprises a throwing and glazing workshop, clay making workshop, machine room, large kiln room, packing room, clay storage room and some outbuildings. In the making rooms we have heating and hot water!
Nearly all the pots are thrown by us both; Joanna using her old Leach kick wheel and me using my old Fitzwilliam electric wheel. There are two basic clays which are made using an old bakery dough mixer and a de-airing pugmill. The ‘brown’ clay which takes the brown glaze (often mistaken for salt glaze ) is made with AT ball clay, Hyplas 71 ball clay, Grolleg china clay, Kings Lynn sand and felspar. The whiter clay is made with Grolleg china clay, Hyplas 71 ball clay, quartz,
Kings Lynn sand and felspar. Because we now find clay making a chore and the old dough mixer needs nursing quite a lot, we have been trying (unsuccessfully ) to have our clays made in Stoke-on- Trent. Apart from cutting out our labour, this should bring more consistency to the clay – but we do like it just the way we make it.
The pots are thrown onto roof tile bats. Many have their shapes altered – squared, ovaled, pulled, pushed and dented – when still quite soft. ( Too soft and they collapse, to hard and they crack. ) Knobs are thrown onto turned lids and strap handles are pulled by hand. Joanna makes the lemon squeezers, salad bowls, casseroles, oval baking dishes - ( her ovals are different to mine ), butter pots etc. whilst I make the teapots, mugs, jugs, mixing bowls, bread crocks, store jars, cutlery drainers etc. Her pots tend to be softer and rounder than mine, but not many people can tell the difference.
The pots are glazed on the inside when ‘leather hard’ and on the outside when ‘bone dry’. We make our own ‘raw’ glazes. We use a brown, salt glaze like glaze, a white glaze and a very dark blue glaze on the brown clay, and a green, white, aquamarine and copper glaze on the whiter clay.
The numbers made of each item vary considerably depending on orders, complexity of making, time available, motivation and several other variables. We are not ‘ how many mugs can you make in an hour’ potters, but we do work long hours.
On the green, white and aquamarine pots we often use stamped, roulletted and sprigged decoration which we pick out in contrasting glazes. These decorative tools are usually carved out of plaster of paris. Some of the pots have become quite ornate recently – maybe a reaction to the more austere brown ware which we made for so many years in such large numbers. We do intend to make a range of plain pots using these more
colourful glazes, but the satisfaction gained by applying a stamp or sprig to the rim or the side of a pot still remains.
The pots are once fired to thirteen hundred degrees centigrade under reduction in our sixty cubic foot propane gas truck kiln. We allow twenty eight hours for reaching top temperature, and a further fourteen hours to cool before unpacking. We are still in search of the perfect firing cycle.
At the moment we have one part time assistant who divides her time between making clays and glazes, packing pots and making pots on the jolleying machine. We have trained throwers in the past, but find that making the pots ourselves gives us the liberty to make changes to the shapes or just allow them to evolve as they will.
