I nearly 2003 I was working for the potter Colin Kellam in Totnes, Devon. It was also when I met Lauren, who was working as an apprentice at Dartington Pottery (undertaking the same training I had two years before). Lauren and I accidentally became f latmates, and I could not have guessed back then that 14 years later, we would be married with children and in the process of setting up Clay Works Studios, the business we now run from our workshop in Dumfries.
Back then, I had worked as an assistant at various potteries and was keen to develop my work and become a potter in my own right. I was fortunate then that Colin allowed me to use his workshop in the evenings and weekends. My making skills were steadily improving, however, I found that as I only had his clay, glazes and firing process available to me, my work always ended up looking a lot like his. Aware that this was preventing me
