Aside from markets and other selling events I have mainly preparing the kiln site at the farm for wood firings in the spring. In search of wood suitable for the kiln’s fireboxes, I searched near and far, and eventually found exactly what I need. But sadly it’s halfway across the country! In November I combined collecting some sticks with dropping pots off in Worcester for the Bevere Gallery show.

Here’s me and Simon loading up with missplits from chestnut fence post making, on a beautiful day in Hereforshire!

Then there were a some splitting and stacking days and also I had to commission some new steels for the bottom of the fireboxes. The kiln is 18 years old, give or take, and the steels that were originally put in have completely burnt and disintegrated from repeated heating and cooling.

Out with the old, in with the new! Let’s hope the new ones work at least as well as the old ones did?! I’ll find out in May

Alongside all of that, I have been obsessing about and working on a new body of work inspired by the relationship between baskets and pots. There’s a theory that perhaps one of the ways humans may have begun making pots was to do with lining baskets with clay so they could carry water. Maybe someone put on of these in a fire once and discovered the basket burning away to reveal a ceramic pot?! I should read up more about it but at the moment I just think about this while making basket pots!

Here are a couple of the first ones I made, I’m still refining the technique and glazing but hopefully there’ll be more of these in the world soon…

Now, I am working on 2 different bodies of work. Tableware to be fired in oxidation, testing some different oxides and pigments for mark making over and under glazes. I’m also making pots for gas and wood firing in reduction, some of these will be garden pots to dress the kiln site so it looks a bit more loved! But mainly it will be tableware for sale to anyone who needs a really special mug;)