I have always seen copper as a very plastic material, maleable and tactile with it’s own special properties.

In recent years I have had ideas which needed even more plasticity, and have been experimenting with various mediums – wax, plaster, papier-mâché and air-drying clay. I have avoided clay with the words of a tutor rining in my ears, as he proclaimed he’d ‘never seen a healthy potter’ and my asthma positively flared up based on those words alone.

Luckily, with the wisdom of age comes the coinciding improvements in H&S rules in workshops, the contents of glazes, and ceramic practice. Oh frabtious day! So two years ago I ventured back into the pottery studio to get my hands as dirty as I’d been yearning for, and it’s good to be back. Having bunked off most of my A-levels hiding in the pottery studio throwing crank pots, it feels so good to get back to more varied clay bodies, and really work on the lifelong learning process which is ceramics.

The silica content of the clay is key to my interest, and alongside the salvaged copper I use, I feel I am making my own hand-made devices.