An old, old, place...

The village where I live “is an old, old, place…” (Aurthur Mee, 1936, In A Guide to St Marys Church and the History of Litton, by Christopher Booker 2019). Centred on the 14th century church, itself replacing one far older, bounded by ancient Oak, Ash and Yew, encircled by the Mendip hills and the river; the Domesday Book records three watermills powered by the fast flowing Chew, Litton being Anglo Saxon for ‘a settlement by a torrent’. Traces of medieval ridge and furrow fields to the east; holloways tracing ancient routes, hewn deep into the ground. It is a landscape which gives tangible expression to Ingold’s ‘dwelling perspective’ whereby “the landscape is constituted as an enduring record of and testimony to- the lives and works of past generations who have dwelt within it, and in so doing, have left something of themselves” (Ingold the temporality of landscape prologue)

Photo etching on porcelain paper clay.

My practice has always seemed divided by the fact of 2 and 3 dimensions. There are the sketchbooks I fill with photographs, drawings and prints; and the ceramic work which feeds off this accumulation of material. Finding a process which enabled me to combine these two areas has been enormously exciting. Photographing the landscape where I live and turning these images into photo etching plates, led to some intriguing images on paper.

The depth of the engraved image led me to wonder whether it would be possible to repeat the process on paper clay. The book ‘Ceramics and Print’ was very useful on the practical details of printing onto wet clay. It is crucial that the paper clay slabs are at the right consistency- too wet and the etching plate sticks to the clay, too dry and the clay slab splits and cracks.

I mixed 3 inks using a mixture of copperplate oil, manganese dioxide, black iron oxide and black body stain. Using a small off-cut of the larger plate, I trialed these 3 inks on porcelain slabs. The results were very exciting. The image was reproduced in all the fine detail you would hope to gain from a print on paper, whilst being part of the clay body itself- leading to all manner of possibilities.

These 3 slabs are high fired porcelain paper clay (1260 degrees) with black body stain, black iron oxide and manganese inks.

I also enjoyed the way the paper clay splits under the pressure of the printing press on the image on the left.

Photograph of a puddle.

A photograph of a puddle, taken from above in low winter light; twigs and leaves from the hedgerow and rotting leaves suspended in the water. This image has become crucially important to my ongoing practice. It seems to combine for me many aspects of what Tim Ingold describes as the ‘Temporality of Landscape’. The bridle path to Hinton Blewitt through Hollowmarsh, where this image was taken, has existed for centuries, worn into the landscape through footfall and hooves and cart wheels; the puddle and the leaves the work of one season; the Oak and Ash trees bordering the lane hundreds of years old.

My Home Studio - Litton, Somerset

This space has had many lives. Built as a calving shed in the 19th century, the terracotta feed channel still remains, running along the wall under the sink. Converted to a garage and boat store, an enormous white metal 1970s up and over garage door made the space both dark and freezing. Replacing the garage door with vast aluminium windows, facing due west towards the Mendip Hills, flooded the space with light. Everything else has been left untouched. The walls still peeling lime plaster over stone, concrete and metal dividing the space, on one side the kiln, sink, drying shelves and glaze materials; on the other tables for clay work and a dry table for print making and drawing. The studio is embedded in the landscape, looking out over fields and woods and the garden. Stone walls and terracotta pan tiled roof like so many Somerset buildings. It is a space I could spend all my days in.