Tag: Pancheon

Thanks to The Handmade Bakery Co.

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Thanks to Matt, Aaron and the team at The Handmade Bakery Company in Slaithwaite, West Yorkshire, who helped me with my recent MA project, linking an exploration of Soil Hill (the site of Isaac Button’s pottery up until the late 1960s), with the pancheon, the form of baking bowl which became a key link object for the project. This was, in part because it is a form I have always been drawn to (as readers of several previous posts will know), but is also because many of the broken sherds of pottery that I found on the surface of the bridleway leading to the pottery at Soil Hill, were rim fragments from large 49-50 cm diameter pancheons.  This association led to investigations into the potential local clay sources have for making these beautiful bowls, a series of photographs to try and capture the  unique landscape of the hill and the area around it, and to my visits to the Handmade Bakery Co to discuss the contemporary choice of bowls for mixing, rising and proving dough.

I made two small c. 27 cm / 11 inch pancheons for the bakery as a way of saying thanks – photographed yesterday…… One was made of clay from the hill, the other from Valentine’s terracotta.

Soil Hill clay – earthenware pancheon

Place and pancheons project phase 1 approaches conclusion:

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The past year gave me a chance to explore a form that I have long been obsessed by….fascinated with for over thirty years. The form, as you might know from previous posts is that of the pancheon (a bowl for mixing and rising dough or separating cream from milk) that has been used for centuries in the British Isles, and is one loved by many potters and bakers. However, bakers have moved on from these beautiful, practical but heavy and ultimately breakable pots over the past fifty years. More on this in later posts.

The past year has been busy, but a crucial part of it has been the exploration of old / abandoned potteries (such as Isaac Button’s “works” at Soil Hill), searching out natural clay outcrops (and permission to dig samples), and increasingly – visits to the bakeries nearby as I seek to explore the connections between place, material, form and function.

This might make sense of many of the photographs and notes you can see in the blog below. In future posts over the coming weeks, I will expanding on the overall aim and purpose of this project, as I prepare for my final MA assessment and MA show.

The piece below is a pancheon I made for my mother – it was during the experimental phase and is made with Valentine’s earthenware rather than with clay from one of my exploratory trips.

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Pancheon. October 2015. Valentine’s clay with china clay slip and lead sesquisilicate glaze.