Russell Kingston: A UK Slipware Potter

[00:00:00] Hi, I'm Bob Acton and welcome to the Colour and Ceramics Podcast. Today I'm pleased to share a conversation I had with Russell Kingston from Devonshire in England. Russell produces beautiful slipware done in the tradition of Devonshire, but with a contemporary edge that I think fits nicely into the modern home. And I think you'll love his work. He has some beautiful colours and surface designs using a red locally sourced

[00:00:30] clay, a white slip and a finish with a clear glaze using oxides. And of course you can find links to his work in the show notes. So let's get to the interview.

[00:00:47] Welcome to Colour and Ceramics, the podcast for ceramic artists who want valuable ideas about using colour from leading artists and world-class experts.

[00:00:56] Here's your host, Bob Acton, a sculptor and ceramic artist who's fascinated with colour and how potters, sculptors and artists use colour in their work. Tune in as he talks with his guests about colour, techniques and the impact of colour on people and art itself.

[00:01:14] Hey Russell, thanks so much for joining me today on the Colour and Ceramics Podcast. I am pumped to have you here.

[00:01:22] I love your slip work and colours and surface designs that you use in your work.

[00:01:28] So I think I'm really interested in finding out about your work and I hope our audience is as well. So welcome.

[00:01:36] Oh, hello.

[00:01:40] You know, Russell, it seems to me that you've been doing this work for a little while.

[00:01:45] I don't think you started just yesterday.

[00:01:47] So I wonder if you could give the audience a little understanding of kind of where you've come from.

[00:01:52] Like, where did you start with this and a little bit about your journey?

[00:01:58] Well, I've been, I've made stuff my whole life, I suppose.

[00:02:04] Ceramics was late, like, well, medium late, I suppose.

[00:02:09] But through school and it was always art.

[00:02:13] And, you know, I was all right at other subjects, but I couldn't concentrate or I couldn't be bothered half the time to like put my energy into it.

[00:02:24] So art and like DT and practical anything with my hands, it generally was.

[00:02:33] So I did that and then was a carpenter for a while.

[00:02:40] I ran with timber framing.

[00:02:43] And my group building with my dad, who's a stonemason and my brother and did a bit of part time work in my mum's shop when she was a florist.

[00:02:55] So there's always stuff doing stuff.

[00:02:58] And like I was always making things and I like structures and I like functional stuff, I suppose.

[00:03:06] So I did it like a foundation degree in ceramics, which is on a whim at one point, got really into it.

[00:03:18] Yeah.

[00:03:19] And then I was doing like ash glazes, stoneware.

[00:03:26] And then I moved back to North Devon after being away.

[00:03:29] North Devon's where I'm from.

[00:03:31] Read the history.

[00:03:33] That is slipware.

[00:03:35] It's one of the places of slipware.

[00:03:37] So then I was like, well, that's that I'm doing that then, I suppose.

[00:03:40] And then I just like played a slip for four or five years.

[00:03:44] And now I'm in, I've been doing slipware for about 10 years now, I think.

[00:03:50] And ceramics for about 15.

[00:03:51] Yeah, cool.

[00:03:52] So you're a full time production potter, it sounds like.

[00:03:57] Yeah, full time potter production happens because you need to make money, I suppose.

[00:04:04] How true is that?

[00:04:05] Because you can't just make one mug, can you?

[00:04:07] So, you know, to make a living, you need to be, if you want to make tableware, you need to make loads of it, I suppose.

[00:04:16] Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[00:04:17] I think that's probably true about a lot of things, though.

[00:04:20] You can't just make one or two pieces.

[00:04:21] You need to make a lot in order to get your work out there and have galleries and whatnot carry your work.

[00:04:28] And I see that there's lots of places in the UK that are carrying your work.

[00:04:33] Yeah, yeah, I do all right.

[00:04:35] I am.

[00:04:37] Yeah, get around, I suppose.

[00:04:41] And I feel like my work's all right at the moment.

[00:04:47] And it does a thing.

[00:04:50] It's bright, it's a bit vibrant, but it's also kind of traditional, which I like.

[00:04:55] Yeah, yeah.

[00:04:56] So we'll talk about that in a bit, for sure.

[00:04:58] I'm excited about that.

[00:05:00] Now, you said that you had moved back to Devon and did some research looking at the history of play there.

[00:05:07] And so that sounds like, to me, you were inspired by some people or some things.

[00:05:13] Can you talk a little bit about what's inspired you to do the work you do?

[00:05:17] Well, you've got to make a decision which route you're going to go.

[00:05:22] And to get somewhere, you've got to kind of develop something.

[00:05:25] You can't just jump around all the time.

[00:05:29] And I quite like being from Devon.

[00:05:33] It's a big county.

[00:05:35] Counties are like states of England, but they're tiny compared to states.

[00:05:41] But Devon is one of the biggest counties in England, and I like it.

[00:05:46] It's where I'm from.

[00:05:47] It's like green.

[00:05:47] It's got the beach.

[00:05:48] It's got moors and trees and, you know, it's country.

[00:05:54] And then I kind of had this history in my head.

[00:06:00] That I didn't really know was there, I suppose.

[00:06:03] And then I read about it and I realized that it had been all around.

[00:06:08] But you kind of just soaked it in without knowing about it.

[00:06:12] And then I realized I kind of half knew about it when I started reading about it.

[00:06:16] And I was like, oh, wow.

[00:06:17] Oh, yeah. Okay.

[00:06:18] That kind of makes sense.

[00:06:19] And I like the tradition of the like medieval, because that's what England has.

[00:06:27] It has a long history.

[00:06:29] So I really like that, bringing that forwards instead of leaving it behind and just moving

[00:06:37] on and then kind of making a contemporary version of an older thing.

[00:06:45] In North Devon, it was the fish leaves of Framington and they were like a production pottery.

[00:06:52] A lot of it got exported.

[00:06:56] North Bounceball and Biddeford is like a pottery area in the old days.

[00:07:01] And a lot of it because Biddeford's straight out to the sea and went straight over to America.

[00:07:07] So half of it's over in America.

[00:07:11] And yeah, I kind of prefer the like normal pots.

[00:07:17] Not necessarily the my pots are quite decorated.

[00:07:20] They wouldn't have been like that in the old days.

[00:07:22] I prefer the like, you know, the pots that probably got smashed because they would would have been used and they were like nothing.

[00:07:31] And they weren't marked and they were done really quickly.

[00:07:34] And that quickness read this like spontaneity of a thing being made so it could be used so it could be cheap.

[00:07:44] And so that people could use it and then break it and then use another one.

[00:07:50] You can't do that in the same way now.

[00:07:54] Because well, doesn't work.

[00:07:55] Cheap things are plastic and other things, you know, but it all comes from that kind of idea.

[00:08:02] Yeah, cool. Now. So slip where was really commonly used in your area.

[00:08:09] Could you just give a brief description of slip where to somebody who might not know exactly what that is?

[00:08:17] OK, so slip is a liquid clay.

[00:08:20] Slip where is is pottery, general pottery, like anything decorated with liquid clay.

[00:08:30] So generally, traditionally it would have been in my area of red clay as the body of the pot and then decorated in a lot of white liquid.

[00:08:41] And then sometimes scratch through, which is graffiti, sometimes finger swipes just free while it's wet.

[00:08:50] And a lot of the time, there would be a lot of the clay body still showing because the whole ground was red clay.

[00:08:59] They find these pockets of white clay and they were like a bit more precious and like less abundant.

[00:09:06] So they make liquid out of them and then they could turn the red pots into white pots without using up all the white clay.

[00:09:18] I feel like everywhere in the world where there were two clays, they kind of did a version of it because it's like simple and it's like mud with mud.

[00:09:31] And then you've got your thing and yeah, you know, that white mud with an orange mud makes, you know, whatever.

[00:09:38] Yeah, that's cool. That's really neat stuff.

[00:09:41] So. So tell us about your work. I know that your work has some color to it. Right.

[00:09:47] So it's not. Yeah, it's not just red and white.

[00:09:50] Yeah. So so tell us about your approach to the the functional work that you do and how you approach what you do.

[00:09:58] And and maybe we'll talk a little about surface after. Yeah.

[00:10:01] Yeah. So my kind of thing, I like tradition.

[00:10:05] So my kind of what I've kind of stumbled into by making work is I make, I suppose, like a contemporary traditional.

[00:10:16] So new old, which quite like that term.

[00:10:23] I make with terracotta, which is very clay.

[00:10:26] I decorate with a white slip and then I slip trail generally with a black slip over the top of that.

[00:10:35] That's done with a bit of gusto.

[00:10:39] So it's spontaneous.

[00:10:41] The idea that I realized what I was striving for now after doing it for a while is a celebration of liquid slip is liquid.

[00:10:53] So it's like the decoration is a celebration of what clay can do in its liquid form.

[00:11:00] Which and those are the ways I decorate.

[00:11:03] You can't do unless it's liquid.

[00:11:06] So that's kind of a celebration.

[00:11:08] And that just happened by looking at all these different things in the past and then making marks and looking at the marks.

[00:11:19] And I've got a repertoire of lines, dots, zigzags, sometimes crisscrosses.

[00:11:28] And it's a combination of all of those with five colors.

[00:11:34] So I've got a clear glaze.

[00:11:36] So I color my slips black and white.

[00:11:39] And then all the actual color, the like not black or white color is from glaze.

[00:11:46] So I put glaze over the top.

[00:11:47] So I've got a clear glaze, which is like an off white cream color.

[00:11:52] I've got honey, which is quite yellow.

[00:11:55] I've got an ambery like orange.

[00:12:00] And then a blue and a green.

[00:12:02] And it's combinations of those.

[00:12:03] I generally use a cream with one of the colors because it makes the color pop more.

[00:12:11] You know, that's just what it does.

[00:12:14] If you have a whole pot that's one color, it's kind of that color.

[00:12:18] And that's a nice thing.

[00:12:18] But if you have like a stripe of like cream down the side, then that blue all of a sudden is really blue.

[00:12:26] Mm hmm.

[00:12:27] It's a contrast.

[00:12:29] Yeah.

[00:12:29] Yeah.

[00:12:29] Yeah.

[00:12:30] That's the word.

[00:12:31] Yeah.

[00:12:32] Yeah.

[00:12:32] Yeah.

[00:12:33] Yeah.

[00:12:34] Now, when I look at your work, I see that I'm looking at some pots now on my screen as we're chatting and you will contrast even a darker shade of one color with a lighter shade of the same color, along with some of your lines that you use.

[00:12:51] Yeah.

[00:12:51] Black lines sometimes or.

[00:12:54] Yeah.

[00:12:55] And I sold slippy line in between.

[00:12:58] I find it work.

[00:13:00] I used to color some slips like green slip and then I started.

[00:13:06] I had like a honey glaze and a clear glaze.

[00:13:09] So then some of my slips were colored and some of my glazes were colored.

[00:13:14] And then it just didn't really work in my head.

[00:13:17] So I stopped coloring the slip.

[00:13:20] So just have a black and white for contrast.

[00:13:22] And then I had color my glazes and that allows me quite a lot of freedom because I can make all the pots and then color them how I want afterwards.

[00:13:33] Yeah.

[00:13:34] For sure.

[00:13:34] And I decorate in, in my set, you know, you make rules for yourself, don't you?

[00:13:40] So I, I, and things that work and don't work.

[00:13:42] So I decorate knowing that that's going to be a color and that's not going to be a color.

[00:13:47] Like that will be, you know, the cream bit and that will be a color bit.

[00:13:50] And don't necessarily think, oh, that's going to be an orange one or that until I'm glazing him.

[00:13:55] Yeah.

[00:13:56] Yeah.

[00:13:57] So it sounds like you have a, it sounds like you have a really spontaneous way of working that, you know, you've got your pieces finished and, and I've used slip.

[00:14:08] So I assume you're slipping use when they're in a leather hard stage.

[00:14:12] Are you?

[00:14:13] And, and so that sounds like you approach your work very spontaneously to get that energy and the movement in the slip as it moves down the piece.

[00:14:25] Yeah, definitely.

[00:14:26] That's the same kind of vibe I want for how I make as well.

[00:14:32] So I don't like, I don't turn anything.

[00:14:35] I don't like turning.

[00:14:37] I haven't got time for it in my brain.

[00:14:39] Doesn't do anything for me.

[00:14:41] Um, so I, yeah, channel these old, in my head, these old potters just making, I know, bowls after bowl after bowl.

[00:14:50] And that's all they ever did.

[00:14:51] They were the bowl guy.

[00:14:52] They make the bowls.

[00:14:53] It becomes normal.

[00:14:55] Um, they make them so quickly that the quickness of that thing becomes its life.

[00:15:05] I'm never going to be as quick as them to do that because they're the bowl guy and they've made it, you know, and they had to work, you know, they did millions of them.

[00:15:14] Yeah.

[00:15:14] Yeah.

[00:15:15] Yeah.

[00:15:15] Yeah.

[00:15:15] Yeah.

[00:15:15] But that's my, in my head, that's the idea.

[00:15:21] And that's only become the way because that's the way I ended up working.

[00:15:26] I tried turning and stuff and it didn't work.

[00:15:29] And I used to do, so North Devon, one of the North Devon traditions, um, I'm from North Devon, uh, is Sgraffito.

[00:15:38] So you make a pot out of red clay, you cover it in white clay.

[00:15:43] You'd let that go leather hard or bone dry.

[00:15:46] In the old days, they probably let it go in bone dry, but you don't want silicosis.

[00:15:50] So these days you do it at a level hard.

[00:15:52] Um, and then you scratch through, um, to make a design that's like a really North Devon style.

[00:15:59] So I, I started off doing that and I just found that each pot took so long to decorate that, um, it was doing my head in.

[00:16:09] And I was this, it didn't gel with me.

[00:16:12] And I was like, until I picked up a slip trailer, I would, I looked at some more contemporary North Devon style.

[00:16:21] So Clive Bowen, if you've heard of Clive Bowen, um, his son, Dylan Bowen, which are two ends of the same spectrum.

[00:16:29] Um, Clive's like traditional, but moving on.

[00:16:34] And he was started in the seventies or whatever.

[00:16:36] So he took it from one thing and moved it onto another thing.

[00:16:40] And then Dylan, because he's got such a famous dad was like, oh, well I could do that.

[00:16:46] But then I'm just going to be that.

[00:16:48] So then he went like fully crazy and like slip everywhere and like make a pot and then turn it upside down.

[00:16:55] And, you know, like really free, which is cool.

[00:16:58] Yeah.

[00:16:58] That is very cool.

[00:16:59] So I saw a bit of that and I was like, oh yeah, I could fit in the middle there somewhere probably.

[00:17:05] Yeah.

[00:17:05] Um, and that's kind of where I've ended up.

[00:17:08] I think.

[00:17:08] Yeah.

[00:17:09] Free and a bit tradition.

[00:17:11] Yeah.

[00:17:12] Yes.

[00:17:12] And so one of the things that I'm hearing from you is that, uh, one of the keys to your success has been to, uh, recognize inside yourself what you love and what fits best with you.

[00:17:27] And for you then to make the work that fits best with you.

[00:17:30] You're not sort of.

[00:17:31] You can't make work to that.

[00:17:34] You think people are going to like, or you think that it's cool because there won't be, there won't be an instant.

[00:17:41] There won't be, it won't sing.

[00:17:43] You know what I mean?

[00:17:44] It like I, when I was making these graffiti mugs with like loads of mackerel around the outside and they sold really well.

[00:17:51] And I was done with it.

[00:17:53] And I was like still making them because they were selling.

[00:17:56] And this was quite early.

[00:17:58] And then I like just decided I wasn't going to make them anymore because they didn't do anything for me.

[00:18:04] And then I found the more I make work that I like the better it sells.

[00:18:10] Absolutely.

[00:18:11] There's an energy.

[00:18:12] I think there's an energy that we put into our work that somehow, I don't know the mechanism, but somehow that gets, that emerges when somebody else starts to look at our work, they pick up on that energy.

[00:18:26] Yeah.

[00:18:26] It's the same with music.

[00:18:28] It's, you know, you can try and manufacture music that people like, and some people will like it and that's fine.

[00:18:34] There's nothing wrong with that.

[00:18:35] Um, but it won't change anything.

[00:18:39] It won't like me making you genre.

[00:18:42] It won't, you know, you know what I mean?

[00:18:45] Yeah, I know exactly what you mean.

[00:18:47] Um, now you've used the phrase and I've seen it on your website, this notion of using a modern approach as well as traditional and bringing the new with the old, so to speak.

[00:19:01] Can you describe how you do that or how you think about that?

[00:19:04] So, um, if you were to be completely tradition, like I like tradition essentially.

[00:19:12] And if you keep tradition exactly the same, it doesn't change at all.

[00:19:19] You've got one thing.

[00:19:21] I like traditions that evolve, um, with now.

[00:19:25] So, um, I feel like that there's, you can't have, I can't have done what I've done without what's happened before me.

[00:19:36] So I don't want to ignore what's happened before me, but I don't want to make the person before me pots.

[00:19:43] I want to make my pots for now for me, not necessarily for me because I don't want them.

[00:19:49] I want other people to have them.

[00:19:49] Yeah, I know exactly.

[00:19:51] But, um, I want to make something that feels of now.

[00:19:59] And, um, like, so I've developed the cut my colors, which are quite bright, but muted if, if, uh, that's a thing.

[00:20:12] Um, uh, for what my eye would like rather than what I think looks good in the line of the time.

[00:20:23] Yeah, yeah, for sure.

[00:20:25] Um, yeah.

[00:20:27] And the same with shapes and, you know, it's all the same.

[00:20:31] It's like, uh, I think if you're making functional work, the thing's still got to do the thing.

[00:20:37] So the bowl has got to have cereal in it or the, the baker's got to be able to cook a pie.

[00:20:43] And, but, you know, you can change anything about that as long as it does the thing and someone enjoys it doing the thing.

[00:20:52] And once it becomes annoying to do the thing, you've gone too far, unless that's, unless that's the idea in this, you want to take it away from its function.

[00:21:02] Um, but I like, that's half the reason I like it because I like food.

[00:21:08] Um, so it, the functional pottery is like food and craft and you get to make stuff, you know?

[00:21:18] And there's a sense of community too, because, uh, we're, when we're eating and using ceramics as part of our food production or our serving, there's other people there.

[00:21:30] We're having a sense of community over the, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And, um, you know, when you first cooked something, when you're little, I don't know if you're, you like, you cook something.

[00:21:42] It's probably the first time you've cooked like an apple pie or whatever you've cooked and you like serve it.

[00:21:48] And people were like, Oh, this is really tasty. And you made that. And then the next level of that is you make a dish, then you make the pie, and then you serve that circle.

[00:21:58] And then once you buy pot, I buy a lot of pots from other people. I use, Oh, we only have handmade pots in our kitchen. Um, obviously we've got metal and other things as well.

[00:22:10] But, um, you know, there's pots that you gravitate towards using for something cause they're perfect for that.

[00:22:17] You've got friends. We've got all your friends in your kitchen, even if they're not there, you like, Oh, so-and-so made that Josie made that blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:22:25] And then, and then that's all on the table together. And it kind of just enhances the whole situation.

[00:22:31] Yeah. I think.

[00:22:32] Yeah, no, I agree. Totally. I've got a collection of mugs that I've acquired from potters around the world.

[00:22:38] And, and so, um, uh, lots of times our friends would come over and open up the cupboard to pick, pick the mug they want to use.

[00:22:45] Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:22:46] Because we don't have any commercial stuff there. So, uh, uh, so that's great. That's awesome.

[00:22:51] Now, you know, one of the things that you've mentioned is the form that you're using and, um, and, and, you know, when we're putting on color and surface design, it has to marry with the form.

[00:23:05] yeah can you tell us a little bit about how you think about that um there are definitely

[00:23:13] shapes that work better with certain bands of color i tend i've tend to just make what i want

[00:23:23] now and then decorate it um i don't tend to because i've done enough round things and i've

[00:23:35] done roughly what's going to work i only get into like a flow state like if i'm making

[00:23:43] loads of something um when i'm decorating sometimes decorating it's like i've got to

[00:23:50] decorate and like because you have to decorate to finish things before it dries out and sometimes

[00:23:57] it's like oh i get to decorate um and but some i find that i get most into it if i've got like

[00:24:05] 80 plates plates are always a good one because they're flat and they're like just a practice

[00:24:11] you haven't got any um gravity against you with a plate all the slip is flat yeah that's right yeah

[00:24:18] this is totally different once you've got a vertical surface and you get to see the whole thing too

[00:24:23] whereas a bowl a bowl or a jug or something yeah it's got another side that you've got to either

[00:24:29] turn the piece or you walk around it yeah which is nice as well because you can do two sides you know

[00:24:34] i do like bands sometimes so i'll do like two lines of slip and then something in between those

[00:24:42] like a zigzag or some dots or but then sometimes on one i'll do a band with zigzags and then flip it

[00:24:48] around and then do a band with dots so that you've got kind of two pots even at one pot two two pots in

[00:24:55] one hey hey tell me you were talking about bands that you use and i think visually this is an

[00:25:02] auditory podcast so people are listening as opposed to watching and my and of course on our information

[00:25:08] we'll put links to your work but yeah um and so people go and see it there and i really hope people

[00:25:14] do go on and see your work because it it's not only beautiful but i think they'll really start to get a

[00:25:20] sense of of uh what we're talking about yeah now but you've used the word band so do you think about

[00:25:29] your work like if you're making something a vertical piece like let's say a jug that's taller versus a

[00:25:35] bowl that's a bit flatter do you approach horizontal lines or vertical lines a little differently

[00:25:44] uh depends on how i'm feeling i suppose um uh some pots you want on the whirler so you can do it

[00:25:54] 360 some pots are too big to do that if you're making a storage shower it's like

[00:26:02] uh 60 centimeters tall um that i'll have that on a big whirler but that takes some time you have to

[00:26:10] think about that you only get one go you can't you don't get any redos so what's once you've started

[00:26:18] um you kind of have to have a plan to start the pot you can't just go in oh you could go in but i

[00:26:26] don't i have a rough idea of and that will change if if the mark i've made is interesting

[00:26:35] or if i was going to do quite a busy plate some are quite busy and i do a nice mark and i see it

[00:26:41] i'll go oh i'll leave that because that's nice um so i don't yeah i don't plan i kind of plan but

[00:26:49] don't plan i just feel i suppose it's quite hard to explain um because i don't normally have to

[00:26:56] explain you just you just do it i often that is true right we have when we're talking we end up

[00:27:03] translating what we do with our fingers right and uh into words i often think that's true about

[00:27:10] athletes i'll see some sports announcer ask an athlete why they did something or how they did it

[00:27:16] and they go and just doing it their answers are kind of well well i just did it right so yeah

[00:27:20] i kicked the ball yeah yeah yeah yeah well that's very cool i really enjoy that um

[00:27:25] um that notion of uh spontaneity and but behind the spontaneity is a real solid understanding of the

[00:27:35] technical aspects of what you do yeah i mean you you can just slip trailer pop like first time um

[00:27:44] but once you've used the slip trailer 20 000 times let's say you know roughly what it's going to do you

[00:27:54] know the different thicknesses if what you're trying to achieve i have like five or six different

[00:27:59] nozzles in my slip trailer so slip trailer for anyone that doesn't know is like a turkey baster

[00:28:05] but um and you fill it with liquid clay and then you decorate um that's my main form of decoration

[00:28:12] i do a few finger marks here and there but it's mainly pour some white slip over it and then slip

[00:28:20] trail some black or pour some black and then slip trail some white or pour some black then pour some

[00:28:27] white then slip trail some black but it's all done within a minute of the pot being decorated

[00:28:32] yeah a minute or two yeah it's pretty quick that work and then you can't touch it again either

[00:28:37] because you'll make a mark so you have to work out ways of moving pots that are

[00:28:43] uh leather hard and getting wet again because you've covered them in liquid to somewhere out the way

[00:28:49] that they don't need to be touched for a couple of days yeah that's often that's been always been a

[00:28:54] big challenge for me i'll move it yeah darn i yeah and then you touch the one behind it yeah

[00:29:00] yeah that's crazy hey so what so you've been doing this work you make beautiful work and you've come

[00:29:06] up some great designs and and but i bet you that you've had some challenges over the years that you've

[00:29:13] had to face in terms of making the beautiful work that you make what what challenges might you have

[00:29:19] encountered and how did you deal with them uh well it's ceramics is just a new challenge every

[00:29:26] you know every time you do anything it presents a learning lesson doesn't it um which you can either

[00:29:33] ignore or you can learn from um it's because it's like you decide to do a thing um the way i work i

[00:29:46] make a lot of pots um so you have to learn to manage a lot of pots you then have to have somewhere to put

[00:29:54] them then you have to learn how to fire that many pots um so i suppose the challenge is like

[00:30:05] allowing myself to make what i want to make in the quantities i want to make and learning what that

[00:30:12] actually looks like in terms of a kiln a thing you know studio how many shelves do i need more is

[00:30:21] always the answer how many shelves you need yes absolutely so and then like colors that you develop

[00:30:29] over a year or half a year or however long it takes because nothing's quick is it you get a test

[00:30:34] out however long after you've done it and it's not quite what you wanted or it is what you wanted

[00:30:40] and you put it on and it's totally different the next time and um and then you finally decide you're

[00:30:46] doing that thing and then you mix up a batch and it's fine for a year or two and then it starts

[00:30:53] reacting with something else all of a sudden so then one of the materials that you've been buying

[00:30:58] has changed somewhere and that's yeah which is classic um so it's just like i think overcoming

[00:31:08] things is more just about listening to what's happening and i like i can't afford to pay someone

[00:31:13] to fix a kiln or do this or do that so every challenge i'm like can i do that i don't know

[00:31:20] probably let's have a go if i can't i'll put my hands up and go i need some help pay someone or

[00:31:26] like get some advice if not it's just like bodge it fix it see if it works and if it doesn't work

[00:31:36] why doesn't it work and if if you can learn from that and make it better next time doesn't have to be

[00:31:41] perfect next time but as long as it's like forwards and so they're backwards you will go backwards

[00:31:48] by doing that process but you'll learn if you're looking at what you get i think one of the the like

[00:31:57] most the strongest kind of um things i've learned from ceramics is like acceptance and and looking

[00:32:09] like you've gone down this rabbit hole of what you're trying to achieve

[00:32:13] only you are ever looking at that you like so you make something you put it in the kiln it's not what

[00:32:20] you wanted if you can immediately ignore that or not ignore that accept that it's not what you wanted

[00:32:26] and look at what you've got you'll learn loads more than going i didn't do that how am i gonna do that

[00:32:35] you know you can still try and achieve that thing that you're trying to achieve but without

[00:32:39] looking at what you've actually done you're not gonna progress towards that and without looking

[00:32:46] at the mistakes and going actually i like that how do i redo that mistake or like you know that's how

[00:32:53] you kind of develop your voice in you know because that's only those things that you've done only

[00:32:59] you've done nobody's told you to do that that mistake or whatever and if you see that mistake and go

[00:33:05] i hate that that's fine and you can then try and avoid that mistake again but then if you look at

[00:33:11] that and go i wasn't trying to do that at all but i really like that how do i do mistakes more often

[00:33:20] yeah that work yeah yeah yeah and then it's the same with that so then it's like i was i've got this

[00:33:26] 12 cubic foot electric kiln which i've done all my i i'm a firm believer in uh you any kiln can make

[00:33:36] a good pot and anybody you know that i'm not like an elitist some people think like wood firing's the

[00:33:44] way and wood firing's beautiful love it um some people think you can't do it in a gas kiln compared

[00:33:50] to wood you know and i don't think that way i think they're all viable they're all beautiful

[00:33:56] things if you make what you want to make out of it um so i've got this i've most of my work was

[00:34:03] fired an electric kiln for ages i needed a bigger kiln i was never going to get a power supply for the

[00:34:09] kiln size i wanted to build so then i built a gas kiln to achieve what i needed to do because

[00:34:18] it was volume that's all i wanted um but then that all my work is oxidized so then you're bringing

[00:34:24] in a flame into an oxidized situation and when you reduce slip earthenware slipware it really knackers

[00:34:32] it like bad ways um which i learned the hard way so um but that's only through doing that and then you

[00:34:40] learn the limit you've got to push that limit to learn it you know yeah i mean really what i

[00:34:47] hear you saying is that um a good potter is somebody who's a great problem solver adaptable

[00:34:56] adaptable resilient and being able to see what you've got in each firing because i bet you even

[00:35:03] though you're using an electric kiln in the electric kiln they can be different yeah it can be different

[00:35:09] then the gas kiln they can be different yeah absolutely yeah that that you have to take a

[00:35:15] a certain mindset to your work you have to have the right attitude and that sounds like to me that

[00:35:21] you're there to observe and accept and see what's going on and to pay attention to the work not just

[00:35:28] sit in judgment of it like not just sit yeah that's good bad right or i'm happy yeah but to dive into the

[00:35:35] because also it's it's um what's the word you know art is to the beholder totally different from me and

[00:35:44] you oh so yeah it's the classic like you make a couple of pots like say you make 10 jugs one's your

[00:35:51] absolute favorite you could like smash the others and not be bothered that one's good that one you

[00:35:57] think it's absolutely like nothing you wanted you give it no time sales first straight away it is true

[00:36:04] yeah yeah yeah but so now that also taught me of like at there is a point where i'll go that i'm not

[00:36:11] even firing that on because i don't like it but if it looks like a good jug it's a good you know

[00:36:19] someone will like it that's my kind of vibe you know and then i will fire it and it usually sells

[00:36:26] because someone will like it that's right everybody's got different tastes yeah hey i've got one last

[00:36:32] question for you and that is about uh any advice that you might have for uh what i would call a more

[00:36:39] junior potter somebody who's coming up in the field and working hard to get better at what they're

[00:36:44] doing yeah what what advice do you have for them about how to how to achieve success make loads of pots

[00:36:53] i i i do quite a bit of teaching now like master classes and uh things and the whole i kind of

[00:37:03] try and get them a bit frantic in because because usually people want from my courses they want to

[00:37:10] make something and they want to decorate it and it's two days and uh you make something and then

[00:37:16] you've got to try it and decorate it but if they haven't made enough they get one 20 second go at

[00:37:22] decorating um and then that's over so the like instead of faffing on that just make another one

[00:37:33] instead of like you'll look back at the pots you make at the beginning go some of them will be really

[00:37:39] cool and you'll go oh that was actually all right and most of them you'll go oh that's a bit ropey

[00:37:44] um and even like a year last year's pots there's some really good ones they're they're like the

[00:37:53] quality is getting better overall oh there's a few ropey ones you know um but for me the best thing i

[00:38:02] could do is make more pots um because it's just repetition and then once you've got the skills

[00:38:09] in your hands just to remember what you're doing um without thinking without fighting the process like

[00:38:19] without fighting the wheel like just thinking how my hand's in the right place when you can think

[00:38:24] about the pot or the decoration or the you know firing as a thing instead of you your brain isn't used

[00:38:34] up learning it you're doing it and you won't have mastered it none of us have mastered it but you'll

[00:38:42] be to a point where like you can write on a page at some point in the past you had to learn how to

[00:38:49] write on a page to get your hand to do that and now you just write on a page and it's the same with

[00:38:56] uh making a pot so if you're making a mug you'll be fighting making a cylinder over and over again

[00:39:04] and it'll be frustrating and it's annoying and just make another one and then have a break

[00:39:10] come back to it and you'll realize your muscles will have remembered more than you think and you'll

[00:39:17] be ahead than you were but you will always move the goalposts straight away because that's what it is

[00:39:24] you're always trying to go to the next thing and that's that's one of the nice things about ceramics

[00:39:32] is it's a never-ending quest as it were because as soon as soon as you've achieved something

[00:39:40] you've already got 10 things ahead of you that you're going oh that and that and that

[00:39:44] and it's which branch you go off and there's no right or wrong answer

[00:39:50] and if people tell you you can't do something you'll work out a way if you want to do it you'll

[00:39:55] work out a way of doing it um so i would just say make loads of pots if you can yeah yeah i think

[00:40:03] yeah i think you're right i think that muscle memory starts to occur and and you stop thinking

[00:40:09] about how to hold your fingers and you start thinking about something else and so it's that

[00:40:13] journey that uh that we move through yeah and play as well is important totally gotta have some fun while

[00:40:22] you're doing it don't you yeah yeah because else what's the point that's right yeah no absolutely

[00:40:28] and sometimes it's a job but sometimes it's wicked you know and there's a balance of everything you

[00:40:34] know it's not easy but it's rewarding it's there's always two sides of everything

[00:40:41] well uh i'm really appreciative and i hope our audience is the same of you spending some of your

[00:40:48] studio time here today with us sharing with us a little bit about your journey and some ideas for

[00:40:54] people to take to their journey so thank you so much russell good thanks for having me i hope i

[00:40:59] didn't waffle too much that was perfect thank you cheers thanks for listening to the color and

[00:41:08] ceramics podcast with bob acton and his guests please help others find the podcast by subscribing

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