NM: It occurred to me that you really enjoy how stories thread themselves within and around objects, so I was hoping we could use the ceramic shards you have collected since childhood as a timeline to explore your life with clay; how they each contain their own histories and continue to influence your ceramics…
WK: That sounds good.
NM: So, what do you have for us?
WK: Well, we've got (I've got) a whole box full of bits. I don't know where to start really, probably best to start with a couple of bits of salt-glaze. These are pieces of salt-glazed stoneware that were made at the Fulham Pottery in the late 17th, early 18th century. And they're simply thrown out of clay, dipped in a slip to get a slightly darker colour – which you can maybe see there on the inside, it’s bleached out on the outside in the firing – but then they're just put in a kiln and salt thrown in to get it glazed.
Now my Dad was very keen on museums, and I was sort of infected by the same passion, which I still have, and we would go to (say) the Museum of London, and look at what the completed object would look like from the bits we found.
This is the base. As I hold it up you can see it has a hole in it. Now, that suggests it was used as a minnow trap, and you would put a bit of cloth over the front end of it, with a little bit of bait inside and then drop it into the water and little fish would go in and find it difficult to get out. Then you'd use the minnow as bait for catching other things. People also did this with a wine bottle with a sunken base that you could bash through, and as the fish was feeling around the edge to get out, it would be baffled by the base. Obviously, it’s not sophisticated, but it would have done the same job… bear with me. That’s a piece… a pot of the same period. Yes, it’s got a wonderful pyroplastic dent. Where it was, they piled them up in the kiln, and that one was dented as a result, it becomes pyroplastic. So that’s the sort of thing I've got. It is this kind of basic, everyday pottery that was made with these simple, straightforward processes – and that really interests me because these processes are also used elsewhere…
I mean, this particular little piece is from Westerwald, Germany and is probably 18th century; probably George III. It would have had GR on it, and they used a different firing – a process that gave a grey finish rather than a tan finish, and cobalt to decorate within the details… and the details I find so interesting because you just have to have a little notched piece of wood, and hold it against the pot as it rotates, and you get these sorts of things happening.
If I continue rummaging, I’ll find… ah, there it is, a handle of one of the German salt glazed pieces that’s about early 1700, and yet another piece – probably 19th century and maybe Dutch. It just gives you a flavour of the sorts of pottery that I was looking at, at that time. And when these particular pieces were collected I was probably in my early teens, you know, a young thirteen, fourteen.
NM: What is it about the salt glaze that really interested (and still interests) you?
It’s hard to say, I like the way the salt-glaze responds to the detail on the surface of the pots, and that it emphasises detail. I mean, this is a German piece that a visitor gave me and it’s a face from a Bellarmine jar, and it looks quite good. I mean, when you place it next to me who’s who? You can see how the salt
