2023
1. LYDE GREEN POTTERY
In 2021 I was comissioned to create a temporary artwork responding to the area and Lyde Green Pottery was born. We worked with Brandy Bottom Colliery to build a replica medieval style kiln made of and fired from industry waste. Now the first phase of funding has finished, we want to keep the project running by creating a space where we can continue to hold firings, researching the best methods to create consistent successful firings for the community of artists, potters and the curious who don't have access to wood firing.
The land around Lyde Green is also rich in clay, supplying a brickworks for hundreds of years. We'd like to make this site a testing ground for local clay body development and teach others how to dig and develop your own local clay. In this way LGP can become a site for wild clay exploration.
It is my hope that LGP will become a space for all artists and potters who would like to get involved, where work can be made and fired in the most sustainable way. Our pottery will use no electricity or gas, instead using reclaimed pallett wood and other waste wood that would otherwise go to landfill.
The kiln at Lyde Green is totally unique in it's design and vision, having been created entirely from building industry waste. The orginal kiln is based on a traditional European medieval kiln and was built with the help from Oliver Kent, a ceramics expert and founder of the Bickley Ceramics Project which over a twenty year period built and fired replica kilns from this period.
Over the next three months we will continue to research and experiment using industry waste wood to create a kiln that fires at earthenware and stoneware temperatures with repeatable results relying solely on recycled materials.
The kiln will be redesigned with higher grade insulation bricks to become a functioning, living resource that will help teach everyone about wood firing the importance of understanding natural materials and wokring with them in a sustainable way.
2. MEADWARE
Meadware is a serries of functional works commissioned for use in TACO!’s new Cygnet Square space, utilising locally foraged materials to create a site responsive and circular approach to ceramic production. Over a 12month period new glazes and forms were developed that come from, and are inspired by, Thamesmead as a place.
Drawing from Thamesmead’s natural history as a marshland as well as it’s brutalist architecture, Meadware balances the ancient and modernist by making use of locally foraged shoreline materials from the Thames riverbank, including mud, plant ash, sea shell, and more modern materials such as road surfacing granite.
The Meadware Standard glaze was developed using a Nuka glazing technique- a traditional japanese ash glaze that used burnt rice kernal husks. Meadware Standard glaze incorporates all the foraged material and embody in its both form and its application, the flowing alluvial banks of the River Thames.
The first two works to be produced in the Meadware series are a Carafe/Vase and an Olive Bowl, both these works are produced for use in the TACO! space in our hosting and welcoming of artists, communities and audiences, and both the Carafe Vase and the Olive Bowl are available as editioned artworks from the TACO! shop.
Each individual edition is unique with its own variation in form & glaze , and are artist initalied on the bottom.
3. Absolute Beginners
Absolute Beginners is a new factory for Park Royal Industrial Estate, where young people can learn how to make the basic goods that were once produced here – and which we might need to make again in the uncertain economies of our future.
4. COURSES AND WORKSHOPS
More info in Courses