Brakspear Ceramics: Landscape, clay and function. Please click on photographs to see projects / information etc….
On January 27th, we put up our work for assessment. It was my first opportunity to start experimenting with installation; using my photographs, drawing, samples of raw materials, maps, tests and finished pieces.
Over New Year, we were lucky enough to spend three days out on Pen Caer, where I know a ditch that I can trim to collect some clay that makes a great throwing body and fires up to 1260 degrees C. The sun shone, wind blew, rain and sleet fell – four seasons in a day – or more like in an hour……
I am enormously grateful to Alan Ault (junior) and the team at Valentine’s Clays (Stoke on Trent), for showing me around the factory and taking me through:
I am particularly interested in finding a source of clays that are local to me that I can buy commercially. This would be in addition to my practice of collecting small quantities of clay by hand for projects that explore their properties for throwing / making and glazing.
A few photos of my hand blunging clay from near my sister’s house in Wales….. The clay slakes really well and mixes by hand with virtually no obvious organic material or stones. I sieve it through a kitchen sieve and then dry it naturally on wooden boards in the sun and wind on blowy days….
Here also is a picture to show the sieving of the dhustone (olivine basalt) I collect from Clee Hill. I soak the “dust” and then sieve through a kitchen sieve and then brush it through a 100 mesh sieve – collecting the residue in both the 100 sieve (for grog) and the fine material that goes through it – which I dry for use in glazes. I was given the tip on using dolerite as a grog by the very kind and helpful people at Valentine’s clays.
I have really enjoyed working with the clay from Clee Hill over the summer and making a range of glazes from the locally named Dhu Stone (dhu meaning black in Welsh, this is an olivine basalt rather than dolerite as I have said before) mixed with the local clay, wood ash and small quantities of quartz (to help produce a more glassy glaze). I have also wanted to represent the copper seams running beneath the Shropshire Hills, and have used a zircon silicate white glaze with 2% copper carbonate to help give a band around the external rim to represent these layers. I have loved working in this amazing landscape and will be increasingly representing this connection and fascination through my photographs and drawings:
I have entered some of the small cups / bowls made using Clee Hill clays and glaze materials as part of my response to the Holburne Museum collection (wanting to represent the beautiful simple Middle Eastern drinking cups referred to by Omar Khayyam in the Ruba’iyat). Here is one that went to the shop for sale along with a postcard of the photographs shown above.
Brakspear Ceramics 