A life in clay
Nick's work is grounded in the English slipware tradition and shaped by decades of close observation, patient hands and an instinct for character.
“I'd rather make one good jug than thirty bad ones. The point of doing it this slowly is the slowness.”
I came to clay slowly. The first time I sat at a wheel, an evening teacher put a lump of red clay in front of me and said almost nothing for the next hour. I went home knowing what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
Sgraffito is a simple idea with nowhere to hide: white slip over red earth, then a line cut through the surface. You cannot unscratch it. The letters are planned; the flowers, figures and bees mostly are not.
English sgraffito
The work grows from late-Victorian English slipware, especially the incised animals of Hannah Barlow and the foliage of Arthur Barlow. That history matters, but each pot still has to speak in its own voice.
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