Last month I was invited to give a talk by the Yorkshire Artspace, for a group of ceramicists, all about the relationship between clay and storytelling. As someone who loves to write, I realised I hadn’t interrogated this aspect of our work in much detail before, and I found the process of putting together the talk fascinating. I thought I’d share elements of the talk in this journal post

Here in the UK we celebrate Mother’s Day this year on the 19th March. As a mother myself I would be very satisfied with a cup of tea and cuddle from my kids - but - sometimes it is nice to buy a gift too. I’ve selected five gifts from our shop I think would be lovely for Mother’s Day.

We’re at the phase of the year I like to think of as being the ‘dregs’ of Winter. Any sunny day offers a tantalising glimpse into the longer Spring days and the energy bound up within anything fresh and new. I’ve put together a list of 5 things to enjoy this month.

February is almost amongst us, the month of Valentine’s Day. I thought, what could be more romantic than a Winter’s walk, collecting foliage and then returning home to make an arrangement in our new faceted flower frog….

I spent a day last week reflecting on our work and business in 2022, and setting some ideals for 2023. Normally we do this sort of thing at our year end in May, but for some reason the long break this Christmas has given me some food for thought.

With most crafts an array of the most wonderful words for technical processes and tools can be found, and pottery is no exception. We have things like ‘leatherhard’, ‘biscuit’, ‘chuck’ and many more. But this week I’ve been thinking about the word ‘slip’. Clay slip is clay mixed with a little water. It’s generally a lower viscosity than say, a lump of clay for throwing with, and can be used for slip casting - but in our studio we mainly use slip as a tool for joining components together, such as a handle to the body of a mug or a spout to a teapot.