MEET THE POTTER – SIMON SHAW
Many of us who choose clay would argue that clay actually chose us, and our ClayCraft thrower, Simon Shaw, is just one such person. We recently had a lengthy telephone conversation about his life and work. Yes, I did say telephone. Not Zoom or Skype or WhatsApp – a good oldfashioned ear-to-ear conversation!
Simon told me how he left school at 16 and went straight to Wirral College of Art & Design because he knew he didn’t want to take an academic route through further education or pursue a mundane, 9-5 type job. Art and sport had been the subjects he had been most interested in at school and although academically okay (his words), his worst nightmare was the thought of going to an office every day.
The course Simon enrolled on was Foundation Art and Design and, as many of you will know, courses like this introduce the student to all disciplines – fine art, printing, textiles, among many others, and of course, ceramics. Simon was smitten as soon as he touched clay and knew this was what he wanted to do.
From the Wirral, his next move was to Braintree College in Essex to do a diploma course in ceramics. It was a three-year course, but he lasted only one year – it was the early 1980s, Simon was 17 and living in a caravan on a turkey farm. “It was about as much fun as it sounds,” he told me, “but in fairness,
