I recently received a new challenge; a commission to make two friends a pair of breakfast bowls using my Clee Hill clay that would fit with their beautiful kitchen in their home in West Yorkshire. I was delighted to be able to respond as they had been particularly supportive during my MA work.

Here are the two versions I made for them to choose between. They both use Clee Hill hand-dug clay, with my Clee Hill glaze (a mix of dhustone rock dust from the hill-top quarry, wood ash, local clay and a small quantity of quartz) inside and out – the rims being wiped clean and then dipped in two different blue / grey glazes, giving very different effects. These blue glazes both had a tendency to run on this clay body (pretty disastrously), and I found that by using the Clee Hill glaze below, I could achieve a successful transition and colour banding, rather than dribbles or rolling folds of blue glaze.

The third picture shows two of the bowls with some of the test pieces in the background. This small test bowls are vital in ensuring that I get the right glaze effects – even beyond using test tiles, as the glaze behaves differently on different curved surfaces of a bowl.