Islay clay

Posted on July 5, 2018May 18, 2019 Posted in Collecting clays and glaze materials, Islay clay, Islay whisky tumblers, WorkTagged Islay, Shows, Wild clay, WorkLeave a comment

There’s a bit of received wisdom that was shared with me amongst the ceramic community – there’s no clay on the Scottish inner or outer isles. I have followed other ceramicists working in Scotland, mostly experimenting with hand collected glaze ingredients added to stoneware and porcelain clay bodies, but then something prompted me to push a line of investigation further…..

A conversation with my father-in-law in Clydebank (who used to work at the Chivas Regal bonding warehouse in Dalmuir, Clydebank) and then later, with some friends of my son drifted to my project with pints and my local pub, and then onto other possibilities and the subject of whisky. I went on-line to investigate, and searched using Islay – the source of some of my favourite whiskeys and ‘clay’….. and hey presto, a site focusing on Scottish Back and Tile works over the centuries ( https://www.scottishbrickhistory.co.uk/foreland-brick-and-tile-works-isle-of-islay/ ) brought up a link to a site that produced bricks and tiles, mostly for agricultural drainage, in the 1840s. I was hooked.

I arranged to visit the site in April of this year, helped with advice from various phone calls and email exchanges – particularly from the Islay Natural Heritage Trust. I found the site using the grid references given on the site mentioned above, and the clay pits highlighted on the 1840s edition of the OS map. I took a few small bags as samples, and later that week came back to the workshop to experiment.

The clay is sandy, and silty. It’s like throwing mud. But taking it through a 30, 60 or 100 sieve makes in workable – just, and adding 20% of my hand dug Clee Hill clay helps. The real advantage is that it fires to stoneware temperatures – hence the glaze tests – which is very exciting.

A walk through the woods to the clay and tile works

The original 1840s blunger – for mixing clay, with Rowan tree

The ‘Standing Stones’ – which are the piers that would have supported the roof of the drying shed

Window – clay and tile works building

The clay – being dug at the site of the 1840s clay pit

Samples of clay for the first biscuit ware firing experiments

A tumbler fired to stoneware temperatures with draff ash and rock dusts

Landscapes

Posted on March 8, 2018 Posted in UncategorizedLeave a comment

Landscapes fascinate me. It’s not just the big sweeping forms, although they are at the centre of the aesthetic that I often connect with most easily, but the almost imperceptible details; the trace of a path, the vegetation, the soil profiles, the archaeology and geology beneath….and the social dimensions that may be almost invisible. I love the way that it is possible, by training your eye to either start to locate clues visually, to work in sharp focus, or to squint and blur the view, so that you only see the big shapes.

Sometimes, as on a visit to my beloved Donegal, you need to blur things, where the scatter of modern houses, left as if by a giant with a saltshaker, can be almost such a distraction as to prompt a disconnect. Other times, whilst walking in those same hills, which on a bleak, grey, wet day can leave the senses potentially numb, just focussing on the flowers in amongst the heather; tormentil, lady’s bedstraw, heath bedstraw, thyme, harebell, asphodel, lungwort, milkwort, you can be drawn into the web of connections that is at the heart of any place, whether they be natural…., social or economic.

The main feature of many of these photographs is the path. I spend a lot of my time walking, at least an hour a day, but more when I get the chance. Walking opens up so many connections and stories, whether through what we see, what we find, or through the people we meet.

These photographs are a start at capturing my obsession with layers in the landscape.

Finally, I include a photograph here of the late, great Mick Wilkinson, taken on an Autumn morning in 2015, where I stumbled across him, emptying out-of-date cherries from small tubs into a bucket for his cows. Mick worked with the legendary country potter Isaac Button in his youth, and was a veritable mine of information. He could tell a story and give you a depth of understanding that is so often missing in the books and web-pages, better than pretty much anyone I have ever met. The gate was his clue for me to find clay that he was happy for me to dig. I will never forget his kindness and enthusiasm.

Green road, Clee Hill

Calderdale from Soil Hill

Path, Chapter Meadows, Worcester

Path and view to Worcester from Chapter Meadows

Funeral; with view to Soil Hill from Mount Sion

Path and Worcester cathedral from Chapter Meadows

Mick’s gate

Mick Wilkinson, Bradshaw, October 2015

Looking forward to new glaze tests for the last few bags of Clee Hill clay…..

Posted on November 3, 2017November 3, 2017 Posted in Clee Hill Project, WorkTagged Clee Hill, PlaceLeave a comment

I’m down to the last few bags of my hand-dug Clee Hill clay…. although I’m still hoping I’ll find someone else in the village who’ll let me did some more, or perhaps someone will decide to dig a new set foundations for an extension, or a septic tank and I’ll be able to get a small lorry load….. fingers crossed.

In 2016 I carried out glaze experiments with the dhustone rock dust from the quarry on the hill, wood ash and the clay, working through a very simplified triaxial approach to glaze testing – with some beautiful results. I also have a few bags of samples taken from the soil heaps from the coal workings and some lime rich deposits from the limestone outcropping further down the hill, and so I want to push the experiments a little further over the next few weeks.

Here is a small test bowl with a 75% / 25% mix of wood ash and clay, and the picture I now use as my logo, which has the full set of test bowls and a pancheon with the rare blue chun glaze outcome that I achieved for a few firings…… I find it almost impossible to recreate that effect (the more recent chunning has been more grey than blue). I’m guessing it must have been something to do with the type of timber that I burned in my stove – because nothing else changed? Or did it?

Sense of place:

Posted on November 2, 2017November 13, 2017 Posted in Ceramics and related work, Clee Hill Project, Local: The Plough and the Pint Project, Soil Hill Project, Uncategorized, WorkTagged Clee Hill, Ockeridge, Palimpsest, Place, Soil HillLeave a comment

A central theme in my work is the focus on place; on the landscape, the environment, the economy and culture and from this – the connections between people, locally available materials and function (for example, tools / buildings / fuel etc.). All human activity has an impact, and yet over the centuries, it seems as if there were occasionally systems that established some kind of balance between the natural world and our actions. Take the countryside of the British Isles for example, where until the development of more industrial approaches to farming following the second world war, the fields were characterised by species diversity – of plants, invertebrates, birds etc. I’m not suggesting this was a panacea – something usually has to give. Some kind of balance also seems to have been established in the management of woodlands for coppicing, creating fuel for firewood and early industrial activity. The coppiced woods created opportunities for a wide range of flowering plants such as bluebells and wood anemones and particular butterfly and bird species – whilst also creating a carbon neutral source of fuel.

Whilst it may seem almost impossible to re-create these systems to serve a world with a growing population of 7 billion people, it does inspire me – and the whole concept of sustainability deeply underlies my work. How could these more balanced systems inform our future actions and innovation? It also means that as I explore landscapes, with ceramic materials in mind, I know that I need to think carefully about the relationships that I will have with both people and place, if I am to stay true to my own values and commitments.