May's Studio Journal
On the subject of change. No thing stays the same forever, and anyway, who would really want that?
My son came running into my bedroom yesterday morning full of excitement, “It is finally raining, I love the sound of it, and it smells so nice!”. The weather here in the UK has been so stable during the last few weeks with so much sunshine, I am hardly grumbling, but sometimes a change can feel really refreshing. Plus the soil is so thirsty.
And this is the subject of this month’s studio journal: change.
On Friday we said goodbye to Luna, our steadfast and loyal studio assistant of four years. It was a teary farewell and sent me into a spiral of nostalgia for the times we’ve had. Generally I like change, I welcome the fresh challenges and perspectives it can bring, but on this occasion I feel especially sad and ponderous.
Luna (left) me (middle) and Carla Murdoch (right), who was working with us at that time too - holding Nella in our studio at Persistence Works, March, 2022.
But nothing really lasts forever and we knew Luna would want to move on at some point, to develop her own practice, travel and experience new things (you can read here an interview with Luna)
And so it is for us too.
Luna joined our studio at a time when we had so much work coming in, mammoth wholesale orders spurred on by the stay-at-home Covid culture, and we just couldn’t physically make all the pieces with our own two hands. We were so excited to be growing our business and it felt thrilling, a little scary and just very very fun to be a small team.
During the four years in which Luna has worked with us the workload has constantly shifted. Some years we have taken on barely any wholesale, making instead for our own shop and these have been some of our more creative times. We’ve been constantly adapting, shifting, striving. Luna started with us when our son was about 9 months old and I was juggling studio time with maternity leave and childcare. A year ago I gave birth to our daughter and the juggle intensified yet again. And all that time there was Luna, steady, consistent and able to keep things ticking beautifully and to her we will always be so grateful.
In two months time we will leave our current studio, taking up a new premises less than a mile from our home. Leaving the Yorkshire Artspace is a big deal for us as we’ve had a studio there since the beginning of our pottery journey and we’ve loved being part of the community. It’s been our home. The change is significant, on a practical level it will mean a greater sense of flexibility, being present for our growing children and hopefully a lot more time spent making. The new studio does cost more, however, and thus we do face challenges - the same challenges that so many small craft businesses are facing right now. One plan we have is to teach more in our new studio as it is a little more ‘customer-facing’ than our current studio.
Matt and Luna working in our studio at Persistence Works in 2022 (photo by India Hobson)
But the change also presents an opportunity to assess what we are doing. To ask ourselves if we are happy with the direction we are going in. We’ve been Pottery West for 10 years and we have achieved so much. So much! In fact sometimes we take it for granted. And now we can’t help but feel we need a whole new set of aspirations to strive for, to help us focus and channel our energy towards. Because despite the exhaustion of having three children and a home that needs constant work, we do somehow still have lots of energy for our creative lives. Thank goodness, we still love what we do. And so behind the scenes for the last few months we’ve been experimenting, researching and playing around with new work so that we can form a bit of a plan, a creative plan for the next 5 years or so.
When I think about our making process, working with clay as our primary material, I think about how change is at the very heart of it. As a material clay is extremely forgiving, in that, if you make a mistake at the wheel, you can simply add it back to the slop bucket and recycle it ready to use again. It is only time that has been wasted. But once the clay is fired an irreversible change occurs, it becomes ceramic and it can’t be worked again. It is interesting, the desire to fire everything at first when you start making pottery. And now, we aspire to only fire the things that are good enough. Oh, the moral weight of producing something that can outlive you! This compass is constantly changing as we become more skilled and experienced. Certainly this is at the heart of what we plan for our next chapter. I think you can expect more limited runs of pieces, more pre-order systems and hopefully, above all, beautiful and simple pieces made well and thoughtfully - this is at the very core of our aspirations.
Drawing back to the month of May in our studio, it’s been a relatively quiet one in terms of making new things or experiments. We have been finalising a flurry of made-to-order commissions and the kiln has been in a constant state of firing, cooling emptying and restacking. We have been reflecting and documenting glaze tests (which I’ve written about here), and working on small restocks of our popular pieces in the online shop. We’ve also added a new teacup form to the shop (images above). I just love them! They are so lightly thrown and beautifully characterful.
Attention is on the next couple of months as we have three shows coming up - Craft Festival at Bovey Tracey, The Hepworth Ceramics Festival and Celebrating Ceramics at Waterperry. I’d love to meet some of you in person - if you are attending do please come and say hello.
Oh, and the other thing we have to achieve - the not so insignificant task of moving our studio… We are moving to Bullhouse Mill, which is in a beautiful location in between the market towns of Penistone and Holmfirth…