Greenware

Vessels thrown by Principal Potter Leanne Percival

When you work in a studio making pieces daily it's easy to forget the simple of beauty of the clay we use. When it comes out of it's pack we run it through a pug mill to extract impurities and air. We end up with a long grey sausage which we cut in to lengths to work with.  The potter then determines the weight of the clay necessary to produce each piece. On a day where the business of running a design company can overwhelm you, it's truly relaxing to watch an object take form on the wheel. There's something about the noise as it rotates and the gentle metamorphosis of a ball of clay. 

Every single piece we work with has so much thought behind the form and the colours we use. It's also quite calming to stand alone at the end of the day and see how the sheen of moisture on the thrown clay pieces evaporates. A satin exterior remains and over some four to six days it dries by the action of the air. As I'm writing this post I do recall the stench of rising damp and a low thud coming from my kiln recently. That was the consequence of an overly keen worker (myself) firing vessels which still had moisture trapped inside them. As well as the successes I promise to show you some of these 'unfortunate consequences' in a future entry.

Drying Greenware in our Canberra studio.

Photos: Brian Tunks