Description
‘Blue Cat’ Mug in Earthenware
H 9.2 x ∅ at base 8 cm
Collect from gallery £35
Including UK delivery £45
Potter Josie Walters makes tableware and cooking pots in earthenware clay, which are decorated with slips and coloured glazes. Most of the pots are thrown on a traditional momentum wheel, even though many of the finished shapes are oval or rectangular.
The pots are decorated either with thin white slip, which lets the colour of the earthenware body through, or with thick slip that is brushed on to the pot while it is rotating on the wheel.
Over the past years Josie has experimented with combinations of paper resist, first cutting and then tearing the paper to give a softer effect, then using colour infill and slip trailing to decorate with. Having decided that the surfaces being created have become static with colours that looked too dense, she begins exploring the qualities inherent in her materials such as pouring slips thinly to let the colour of the body show through or applying white slip very thickly with a brush while the pot is rotating on the wheel to give a ‘wrapped’ look. At present she uses paper to mask an area to decorate, which gives a greater flexibility for variation and experimentation. Using brush marks, highlighted with sgraffito has created a greater sense of movement and a fresh perspective. “I am always on the look out for new brushes or a way of applying slip – my two favourite brushes at the moment are a coarse pastry brush and another made from dried grass collected from the beach on Anglesey, North Wales. Many of the pots are decorated with coloured glazes used thinly but with detail in thick, rather like applying watercolour, moving from light to dark.”
