Fired Up

The department stores have suddenly become enamoured of the handmade look in ceramics. Sainsbury’s (advert, left) has a range of Sung-type bottles in pale celadon green, a candle-holder in the shape of a pebble and an oval shaped dish that might possibly pass for studio pottery. Meanwhile the Conran shop have a cup and saucer in speckled creamy-white and black (below) that definitely takes on the ‘craft’ mantle, on offer at £19. Quite what all this means I am not sure, but where there is a market there is a supplier. Large companies are adept at appropriating ideas and goods, but need to produce it at department store prices. Studio potters cannot hope to compete quality with quantity – nor should they. What we have to do is to forcefully argue our case for products that are superior in every way.

Staffordshire Oatcakes

With the ‘credit crunch’ continuing to bite, newspapers and magazines are full of advice of ways to save money and reduce expenditure. One topic that arose was the Staffordshire oatcake, not to be confused with the pikelet, a stauch, filling and healthy standby, traditionally eaten by workers in the ceramic industry. Unlike its Scottish equivalent, a Staffordshire oatcake is a type of pancake made from oatmeal, flour and yeast. It is cooked on a griddle or ‘baxton’. The oatcake is a local food, normally referred to as Staffordshire oatcakes or possibly Potteries oatcakes by non-locals, because they were made in this area. In and around Staffordshire they are simply known as oatcakes. Each baker or even each household has their own recipe and these are jealously guarded secrets. It was once common throughout the Potteries for oatcakes to be sold directly from the window of a house to customers on the street. Few such producers of this style remain, their role being taken over by more commercial producers; they are, apparently, now available in supermarkets. Recipes are notoriously hard to find but one on the web gives the following mixture for serving two people.

50g wholemeal flour

50g fine oatmeal

½ tsp dried yeast

15g melted butter

Rapeseed oil for shallow frying


Mix together the flour, oatmeal, yeast and season well. Whisk in the butter and 125ml of tepid water. Cover and set aside in a warm place for 30 minutes.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and add 4 large spoonfuls of the batter into the pan to make 4 oatcakes. Fry for 2 minutes on each side until golden.

Maybe others have better alternatives.

Eating Clay

There is an amusing photograph of David Leach looking up from making one of his rounded ‘egg’ pots immediately after he has blown into it. Around his mouth is a ring of clay, in this case porcelain, forming an extra pair of lips. Whether he licked his lips to remove the clay, and hence swallowed it, or wiped his mouth clean is not known, but in the course of their lives potters must, accidentally, ‘eat’ quite a bit of clay. This is quite different from breathing in clay dust, which is not good. The question of whether consuming clay is beneficial has been around for many years. The medicinal qualities of kaolin – as hot poultices for easing boils or as a stomach calmer for jippy tummy – are well known, but there are serious clay eaters who advocate consuming clay for the wider health benefits. This is the topic of a fascinating article in the South African magazine National Ceramics by H Klump, emeritus professor of biochemistry. Quoting pacifist and vegetarian Mahatma Gandhi, who ‘advocated eating dirt to clean your body and relieve constipation’ the article discusses the value/relevance of eating clay.

In a recent gardening programme, the experts were asked whether they would garden with gloves to protect their hands. All were adamant in expressing their belief that no gloves were required except for rough work, and all expressed their belief in the cleanliness of soil. After growing tomatoes in his greenhouse my grandfather used to sterilize the soil to kill off any possible infection, a process that may also have killed off anything useful to human consumption. There is a difference, of course, between clay and soil, the latter containing vast amounts of organic material. I doubt whether eating any old clay can be safely recommended, but despite the crankiness of the concept, maybe the answer does lie in the soil.

Mug's Mug

Writing in the January issue of Icon magazine, editor Justin McGuirk describes going into a shop in Tokyo that sold Japanese handicrafts. Inside one particular cabinet he saw a handmade mug made of black clay with a white glaze. It was, he says modestly, ‘rather beautiful’. The crunch, however, was the price tag – nearly £30 – and he hastily put it down thinking it was way over the top. Several minutes and two streets later the mug remained in his memory as he recalled the pleasing way that the dark clay resonated behind the milky glaze, the uneven surface, a base that was not quite circular and the handle not perpendicular. ‘Eloquently imperfect, the mug lingered with me’. McGuirk contrasted the quiet beauty of the mug with the ‘factory-smooth and mute’ mugs he used daily, adding how much he would rather have the black and white one than all of his own.

It is a paean of praise for the discretely handmade, for the quality of individual expression, for an awareness of character and the pleasure of intimate contact with an object that performs a simple but important task. McGuirk’s reluctance to buy was down to perceived worth or value when contrasted with functional mugs produced by industry that could be purchased for a fraction of the price. Yet, in terms of satisfaction value, he makes it clear that the handmade product far outweighed any material cost, its intrinsic worth more than justifying the higher price. He concludes by saying that, in his opinion, ‘the only way forward for us as a consumer society is to buy fewer things that we value more’, a statement with which it is hard to disagree. When Icon magazine features the best/liveliest/inventive/pleasing/beautiful handmade mugs from the UK then this will, indeed, be a sign of change.

Should you want to support Justin McGuirk in his appreciation of the handmade his email is justin@icon-magazine.co.uk.

Save Harrow Ceramics

It has come as a shock to hear from the ceramics course team at the University of Westminster, Harrow, that, after working to create a beautiful, well-equipped new department after last year’s devastating fire, management has prepared a case for the closure of Harrow’s world-renowned BA Hons Ceramics course. Recruitment of new students has been suspended in a run-down to closure, which is planned for 2013 – the fiftieth anniversary of ceramics teaching at Harrow.

The University of Westminster has taken the closure decision despite the national and international reputation of the course, its first-class academic standing and its huge significance for British art, craft and design. Far from its standards being questioned, it is said to pose problems because it takes up too much space. As a senior manager justifying the course closure said: ‘the trouble with clay is you can’t store it on a memory stick’.

This issue appears to not only be London-centric, but nationwide. A feature in the forthcoming edition of Ceramic Review (CR235, Jan/Feb 2009) reports on Mapping Current Activity and Sustaining Future Making, a symposium called in response to the recent closure of Glasgow’s BA Hons Ceramics, the last dedicated ceramics course in Scotland. It seems that ‘bums on seats’ is the priority and ceramics departments are being pushed out as a drain on resources. As Jane Cairns, spokesperson for the Ceramics Students Action Committee says: ‘This is an appalling act of cultural vandalism – it is all about balance sheets, square footage and accountancy, not art. It is a betrayal and a disgrace.’

Current students and staff have embarked on a determined campaign to save Harrow ceramics and are seeking as much support from the wider ceramics/arts/education community as possible to stop the closure. Please write or email your views to Vice-Chancellor Geoffrey Petts (G.Petts@westminster.ac.uk), with a copy to the Dean of Media, Arts and Design, Sally Feldman (feldmas@wmin.ac.uk), and also to the Ceramics Course Leader, Kyra Cane (canek@westminster.ac.uk).

Real Wages

Following on from my piece about potters’ income, I was fascinated to see a quote by Roger Deakin, offering a somewhat different perspective.

‘The real wages of the potter are in the daily silent appreciations of each of their customers as they pour tea from their teapot, or drink coffee from their mug, or eat dinner off their plate.’
From Notes From Walnut Tree Farm

It is true that the ‘use value’ of tableware is likely to far outweigh any financial cost or worth. As a maker of domestic ware for many years, customers write to me after a gap of twenty years or more asking for replacements for broken pieces. Alas, materials have changed and, try as I do, the results barely match the older wares. However, what was bought for a few pounds many moons ago has consistently given pleasure to the user. This is ‘real worth’. It does not help to pay my bills, nor do I get PLR or any other rights on it, and I like the fact that the pots have been and still are in use.

Rather than thinking ‘real wages’, maybe it would be more helpful to talk of ‘real satisfaction’, an alternative way of describing both the enjoyment of making and the pleasure of using pots.

Stoke-on-Trent

To quote a truism, Stoke-on-Trent is not what it was. In the 1960s it was one of the world’s major producers of ceramics, and was the UK’s single biggest manufacturers. Giants like Wedgwood, Spode and Worcester were unstoppable, secure in buoyant sales here and overseas. The old, smoky, inefficient but, to us, romantic bottle kilns were pulled down to be replaced by gas and oil-fired continuous tunnel kilns. The air cleared, order books were full, there was work aplenty. Workers were skilled, and much of the making was done by hand.

As Harold Macmillan remarked, the industry was overtaken by ‘events’. Overseas manufacturers, working with a vastly cheaper labour force, started to produce similar items at much lower cost. Few factories seriously researched the changing market as the traditional wedding present – the dinner service or teaset – went out of favour for something less formal. Like the redundant bottle kilns even many of the factories have now been reduced to rubble.

Now comes welcome news of a phoenix rising from the ashes. Later in 2009 a giant ceramics biennale is planned for Stoke that will look at the new while acknowledging the past. An inventive series of exhibitions, events, happening etc will occur throughout the city that will reenergise and transform the area. Maybe they will even fire one of the few surviving bottle kilns.

Watch this space.