Masterclass with Jeremy Steward

I grew up in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, above the beautiful Porthkidney Sands. The sprawling trail of vibrant galleries, life-drawing classes on Back Road West and the Leach Pottery, all in nearby St Ives, weren’t to become defining influences until my late teens. However, there is little doubt that the Cornish landscape and the creative communities that are bedded into its history, softly influenced my future from a young age.

My creative journey with clay began with two formative years of A-level Ceramics at Penwith College in Penzance. A year’s study in Falmouth helped solidify my affinity for the material and in 1992, I joined the Ceramics Degree course at Cardiff. All the expert tutors played pivotal roles in shaping this brilliant course, including Alan BarrettDanes, Pete Starkey, Graham Williamson and Mick Casson. Here, I first began experimenting with gas salt and soda-firing using a gutted electric kiln carcass.

At Art College I met Petra Reynolds, also a potter, to whom I am now married and privileged to share my home and work life. We live on the edge of the Forest of Dean and commute a short journey to Wobage Farm Craft Workshops in Herefordshire, where we have now potted for 29 years. For eight years, up until Mick Casson’s death in 2003, Petra and I were his and his wife Sheila’s part-time apprentices. During this time, we were involved in all aspects of workshop production. It was a precious time, a working relationship and friendship that we cherished. The experience and breadth of skills and knowledge imparted were the roots that established confidence and independence in our own practice and later in my teaching.

My clays are blended from dry, powdered ingredients, with an old baker’s dough mixer and Venco pugmill. The process of bringing these materials to a usable plastic clay is time-consuming and physical work, but it is where the magic begins and I consider it an influential luxury. It allows me the freedom to alter recipes, both for colour and to suit the type and size of pots I am making, and where they are placed in the wood-kiln.

I am resolutely drawn towards fusing eminently utilitarian design with a more abstract vocabulary of artistic exploration. I draw strongly from the tools, materials and processes of production, and in doing so, first aim to capture the soft fluidity of clay on the wheel. Wheel-thrown symmetry is then often gently foiled with the slow and rhythmic impressions of textured roulettes. Wood-firing and salt-glazing in our Phoenix kilns, forms an intimate and dynamic component in the completion of these pots. These enthralling processes invite an elaborate set of challenges: the preparation and strategic packing of the kiln, the pre-heat of once-firing, the reduction cycle, salting and soak, then finally cooling and the first glimpses of a kiln-load of hot pots. The variation in shifting colours and surfaces, the iridescence and traces of f lame path through the pots, all make for a very seductive and rewarding process.

I love good food and drinking tea, so f inding ways in which my pots can enhance these daily rituals is deeply satisf ying. Making and f iring robust, everyday stoneware pots that are only fully realised in the hands of their user is my chief source of inspiration. There is no greater or more enticing challenge than that of making teapots.

For more details visit: jeremysteward.co.uk; @jemsteward; wobage.co.uk. For courses visit: workshops-at-wobage.